It’s that time of year when phrases like “it’s all about the kids” are thrown around liberally, but aren’t backed up by actions. Local politics doesn’t get much messier than when a school budget fails, pitting a town council against a school board.
Councils have the unenviable obligation to heed the will of the voters by making some level of cuts to a tax increase. But too often, “the kids” are used as rhetorical human shields, tools of guilt which school boards use to protect the same spending plans that were already rejected by their bosses, the voters.
You’ve heard it all before. If the council makes any cuts at all, several sports will have to be dropped. The band will have no uniforms. The school nurse will be laid off. The honors program will be scrapped. The lights will go out.
But the truth is that the areas a council recommends for cuts can be completely disregarded. At the end of the day, all that counts is the number, and the board has the freedom to take it out of any area of the budget that they see fit.
And have you ever noticed how after all the warnings of the crippling effects any cuts will have, life always goes on at the schools?
It’s irritating to watch the games school boards sometimes play with town officials when a budget goes down. A good example was in Holmdel recently, when school officials attended a Township Committee meeting to discuss an appeal of a failed supplemental spending question. Superintendent Barbara Duncan has done a fantastic job since starting in that district last year, but her decision to hold back public information from a Township Committee member, and demand he fill out a formal OPRA request for them, was disappointing. The district was asking the committee for a major favor – overriding the expressed will of a majority of their constituents – so supplying an elected official with the basic information to make that decision should be viewed as an obvious professional courtesy.
When a budget fails, school officials should avoid trying to push councils into a corner of guilt, where any cuts they make are portrayed as evidence that they don’t care about education. They have a job to do. When a budget fails, especially in a landslide, they must act.
The best move for school officials is to check their past disagreements at the door and work with their local councils before the budget is even introduced. The school budget is the most important matter an administration will handle all year, and it pays to have these important people on their team. They can help generate votes, and will be crucial allies in the unfortunate case that a budget fails.
Superintendents are not politicians, but a school budget vote is a political matter. Therefore, they need to exercise a little political finesse to ensure the best chance of passage. They must work hardest to sell the plan to the people least likely to vote for it – everyone already knows where the PTAs will stand. They should be up front with the public with the bad news if the increase is high, and keep the process as open as possible.
And if it fails, they shouldn’t disrespect the message the voters sent them or start a petty war with a town council. That energy would be better spent on the more important goal of lobbying Trenton to reform the state’s lousy funding system.