By Geoffrey Wertime, Staff Writer
BORDENTOWN TOWNSHIP — Residents came out in force to last week’s Board of Education meeting to protest the rumored cutting of the district’s paraprofessionals from the 2009-10 budget.
About 75 people showed up March 4 to discuss an agenda item about school aide contracts, only to find it had been moved to the board’s March 18 meeting.
But the board did address the topic after it came up during the public comment portions of the meeting when several residents drew applause by lambasting the board’s proposal to cut a number of jobs and to reduce the majority of those remaining to part-time positions.
“We understand why the room is full,” said Board of Education President Brian Lynch. “Last year, we presented a lean budget to the community, the budget was defeated, and there was $702,000 removed from that budget.
“The expectation was to do more with less, and it’s a very challenging expectation. This is the result of decisions like that.”
The district plans to cut the funding of its aide staff by $428,000 from this year’s paraprofessional budget of about $1 million, said business administrator and board secretary Peggy Ianoale.
The savings in the proposed budget, she continued, would come from cutting 11 of the district’s 30 full-time classroom aides and replacing them with similar part-time positions, which would increase from two to a projected 40.
The district’s seven full-time and single part-time one-to-one special education aides would be unaffected, Ms. Ianoale said.
Additionally, new state accountability regulations will necessitate the cutting of five full-time clerical aides and nine full-time aides who rode the buses with students, the latter of whose responsibilities will be distributed among the remaining paraprofessionals.
Ms. Ianaole said the new state regulations “do not allow us to have aides who are not supported by an IEP (Individualized Education Plan). It’s very clear in there you cannot have aides that are not tied to special education student services.”
Next year’s available aide positions will be posted later in the year, and everyone will be asked to reapply for those positions.
“We anticipate we will have as many employees in September as today,” Superintendent Constance Bauer said March 5. “Some will be restructured and have different responsibilities.”
At the meeting, she emphasized the projections for the number of needed paraprofessionals are based on students’ IEPs and change yearly along with the student body.
In an interview March 5, she also stressed that the district faces a serious need to cut costs and had to eliminate or limit a number of other anticipated budget items in order to stay under the state-mandated 4-percent cap on school budget increases.
Each building and program has received 15 percent less funding than administrators requested, she said, and the schools will not be adding any new teaching staff next year. The district also will reexamine its scheduling to increase efficiency and will no longer hold classes of fewer than 15 students.
“It’s a difficult situation here,” she said.
While the district is seeing cuts, she said it is not all bad news. The school will be able to update its technology, she said, and academic and interscholastic programs all will be maintained.
“Minimizing the impact on students has been a priority for us,” she said, “and we’ve built a budget over the last couple of months that’s required a great deal of revising in order to meet cap obligations.”
During the public comment period March 4, resident Nick Casey accused the board of changing full-time positions to part-time ones in order to reduce employee benefits.
Ms. Ianoale said that was “not the primary reason,” but admitted it did save the district money. Benefits for an individual employee and his or her family, she said, cost between $12,000 and $13,000 a year.
Later, Mr. Casey spoke again, saying “a lot of information and misinformation” had circulated regarding paraprofessional contracts prior to the meeting.
“I think the aides are the heartblood of the school system,” he said. “Teachers can’t function without the support staff.
“They’re the lowest-paid people in the school district,” he continued. “The only real benefits they get are those that come with a full-time position. If you have one aide in a class in the morning and another in the afternoon, it’s a gross injustice, and I don’t think the community will stand for it.”
Mr. Casey’s comments drew applause from around the room.
Reba Snyder, longtime president of the Bordentown Regional Education Association and an instructional aide for special education, expressed concern about retirement benefits. She said paraprofessionals who are approaching 25 years of experience in the district, the milestone at which they can receive retirement health benefits, would lose out on that opportunity if they are moved to part-time positions.
“I don’t believe it’s fair for you to come under cap on the backs of people who work very hard,” she said, also drawing applause from the crowd. “I’m very disappointed in this decision.”
Ms. Ianoale said March 5 the district will account for seniority when it reviews the applicants for next year’s positions.
“Seniority provisions,” she said, “will protect those people as well as the goodwill of the board. It’s not our intent in any way to impact their retirement. People who are very close to retirement — certainly, we will make every accommodation possible for those individuals.”
The board projected an apologetic tone throughout the March 4 meeting.
“We’re doing the best we can,” Mr. Lynch said at the meeting. “We really don’t want to impact peoples lives in such a negative way, but there’s a lot to do, and it’s not an easy job.”
The board will next discuss paraprofessional contracts at its meeting Wednesday, March 18, at 7 p.m.
The public hearing for the school budget will be held April 1.

