John Sunkiskis, Lambertville
Your Feb. 19 article “N. J. report cards give student measurement data” is certainly helpful to the taxpayers in the three sending districts to South Hunterdon Regional High School (SHRHS). Your listings of the SHRHS tests scores, as well as the state averages, informs readers that SHRHS is achieving good results as are many other New Jersey public secondary schools. However, at what price?
In the second paragraph of your article you quoted New Jersey Commissioner of Education Lucille Davy, who said, “With our state and nation facing such a severe economic downturn, we have an increased mandate to provide accountability for every dollar we spend on education.”
With the commissioner’s statement in mind, it would have been helpful for your readers if you had also included cost data from these recently posted NJ Department of Education School Report Cards 2008. The total cost per pupil at SHRHS has now climbed to $24,196. The state average is $14,598 for secondary schools that are non K-12 regional schools. So SHRHS is now $9,598 per student over the state average. Consequently, with 345 students, total expenditures over the state average in this category are now $3,311,310.
It should be mentioned here that in the NJ Department of Education school report cards 2007, SHRHS was then $9,076 per student over the state average. This indicates that it seems the administrators and board members at SHRHS are reluctant to make budgetary cuts since their total cost per pupil is now even further from the state average, which is growing at a slower rate than SHRHS’s spending.
Additionally, if one examines the school report cards for the other 335 NJ public secondary schools, one sees important cost information that may not have been realized by community members. In total cost per pupil, SHRHS is the most expensive in the entire state. Further, SHRHS is $3,153 over the second most expensive high school in total cost per pupil. Therefore, with SHRHS’s enrollment of 345 students, their proposed 2009-2010 budget would need to cut $1,087,786 from last year’s $10,077,754 budget to be the second most expensive N J public secondary school.
SHRHS administrators and board members might insist that it is not possible to reduce last year’s budget by 10-15 percent and still deliver quality education. However, one needs only to look at the Report Cards 2008 for the 57 NJ public secondary schools ranked above SHRHS in the September issue of New Jersey Monthly Magazine. Many of those schools had a total cost per pupil at or below the state average, and none were even close to SHRHS’s $24,196
A school district can deliver quality education with fiscal responsibility: just look at the School Report Card for Millburn High, the top-ranked school in New Jersey. For SHRHS to achieve fiscal responsibility, its administrators and board members must be willing to not only look at, but also change the current structural configuration of how education is now delivered.

