NEHS students protest failed ballot questions
By: Cara Latham
PLUMSTED Out of 540 students enrolled at New Egypt High School, any student who showed up for classes Friday also walked out of the building onto the football field at 1 p.m.
The entire study body gathered to protest the community’s defeat of the school budget and three of four additional questions on the ballot in this year’s school elections, held April 17.
Voters in Plumsted shot down the district’s $19.8 million school budget by a vote of 810-671. At the same time, they also saved the job of one full-time school nurse, but denied reinstatement of two assistant principals and existing extracurricular activities, including the high school’s swimming program, the freshman sports program, field trips and school dances.
Voters turned down reinstatement of a school resource officer, courtesy busing and expanding the technology programs.
Because of the new 4 percent state cap on the tax levy, the school board was forced to cut all of these items because they are not considered "thorough and efficient" education items a designation that would have allowed them to be kept in the base budget.
Students, equipped with megaphones and speakers, peacefully marched out of the building in unity and onto the football field carrying signs and blasting music, until they reached the bleachers. Among the signs were those that read: "A vote no takes away the meaning of a warrior" and "S.O.S.; Save Our School."
Once there, close to a dozen students addressed the entire student body using the speaker system, voicing their outrage at what they say will eliminate the progress school officials and the community worked so hard to achieve over the past couple of years. Students listened intently from the bleachers and cheered on their fellow students.
New Egypt High School senior Ford Minton, 17, one of the speakers, said when he learned that community members who had found out the students were planning a walkout "were calling it deplorable," he said his response to them was "if they did not think that voting down the school’s budget would not have an effect on the students of this establishment, they were wrong."
He added that it is their responsibility to ensure the next generation will continue to make not only the community, but the country, a better place.
"Now they have forfeited that responsibility, so it is passed on to the ones who it really affects us," Ford said. "Only together can we hope to overcome the irresponsible choice to vote down the budget because it is together that our voices will be heard."
"It is our future, and we will be the ones who have to live with the consequences," he later added.
Other students spoke of their experiences playing sports, entering the programs as freshmen, and how they are upset that future students, including close friends and relatives, will not have the same opportunity.
Still others spoke that safety of the students would be threatened, both by not having the 2.5-mile courtesy busing, and by the voters’ choice to remove the district’s resource officer.
Rosario DiGangi, 17, a senior at the high school and one of the organizers of the event, said students got together and began discussing the walkout after many students in the school became upset upon hearing the budget and questions were shot down.
He said the mood of most of the students was "disheartened."
The students plan to attend the upcoming school board meeting and Township Committee meeting to urge committee members to reinstate the programs at the school.
"We’re just going to keep pushing," he said.
Superintendent Jerry North, who alerted faculty and police of the imminent walkout after hearing a caller phoning the plans in on a New Jersey radio station, said he couldn’t keep the students inside, and that district officials could have either chosen to "make it punitive or educational."
They chose the latter, and when he heard that the students were planning the walkout, he organized a meeting with student leaders to have an honest dialogue and urge them to do so peacefully.
He said he thought "it was very well organized."
"The kids, as usual, do themselves proud with their behavior," he said. "With all the violence in today’s society, it’s a great lesson in how to do something peacefully."
The defeated ballot questions and budget now head to the Township Committee, where committee members will decide whether or not to reinstate the programs, or make cuts to both the ballot questions and budget.
School officials had previously said that even if voters turned down the budget, because it was reviewed by the Ocean County superintendent during the budget preparation process and still keeps the district below the amount it should be spending on per-pupil costs, that it would be automatically restored by the county superintendent.
Mr. North said Friday that that’s what should happen, but the Township Committee can still choose to make cuts.

