More than three decades have passed since the New Jersey Supreme Court declared that providing the “thorough and efficient system of free public schools” required by the state constitution is the responsibility not of local school districts, but of the state.
In the two centuries that preceded this landmark ruling, New Jersey’s system of free public schools was generally operated and paid for at the local level. But the high court ordered the governor and the Legislature to redress the imbalances in educational opportunity fostered by this system, and to assume greater control, both operational and financial, over public elementary and secondary education.
The result has been a veritable avalanche of state mandates, covering everything from administrators’ record-keeping to teachers’ lesson plans to students’ test scores. In return, the state has increased its share of funding for the public schools, particularly in those districts where the performance of administrators, teachers and students lagged behind the rest of the state.
Despite this sea change in education policy and funding, one quaint artifact of the old system remained in place. Every spring, local school budgets continued to be submitted to the voters for approval or rejection. Because these were the only budgets at any level of government that were voted on directly by citizens, they often became the target and the victim of public frustration over taxes in general.
As the years passed, however, the will of the electorate came to have less consequence than the force of the educational bureaucracy. Defeated school budgets were reviewed by local governing bodies, which could recommend, but not mandate, spending cuts. The proposed cuts were then reviewed by the county superintendent of schools, who could restore any funds deemed essential. Ultimately, the budget was submitted to the state commissioner of education, who could likewise make whatever financial adjustments might be necessary for the local district to fulfill its educational mission.
Thus, the review of defeated school budgets became a shell game, making the budget vote itself a sham. And the whole process turned even more farcical when the Legislature and the state Department of Education determined that any school budget that did not exceed a state-imposed spending cap could not be reduced, even if it was defeated by the voters in referendum.
Today, what should have been obvious more than 30 years ago is finally beginning to dawn on lawmakers that submitting school budgets to voters is a meaningless exercise. And the Legislature has at long last taken the first step toward reform; by a 45-31 vote, the Assembly has approved a bill that would eliminate the public vote on school budgets except in those instances where the district proposed to exceed the state spending cap.
The measure now moves to the state Senate, where it faces an uncertain future not because anyone, including the state’s education establishment, opposes eliminating the budget vote, but because the bill would also move the annual school election from the spring to the general election in November. This concerns some people (notably the education establishment), who fear the shift will subject the election of school board members to partisan politics.
We believe this fear is groundless. In our experience, we’ve found many school boards to be more deeply divided by ideology than most partisan bodies are along Democratic and Republican lines. Moreover, we think tax dollars are better spent combining the school election with the November balloting than holding a separate election in the spring, when only a relative handful of voters bother to show up. But the real bottom line here is eliminating the meaningless vote on school budgets a reform, in our view, that is long overdue.
