Elaine A. Warner, Lambertville
It was with great dismay that I reviewed the school board election results for Hunterdon County school districts.. My comments regarding the election results and budget votes are not meant to be inflammatory nor should this letter be viewed as the opinion of a school board member or as representative of the Lambertville Public School Board of Education. I am speaking as a parent and taxpayer of the City of Lambertville.
I have read with interest the ongoing heated debate over the proposed and now defeated budget for SHRHS. I have also witnessed the defeat of the LPS budget for the first time in over a decade, which I attribute to collateral damage of the negative campaign waged against the South Hunterdon budget. I feel compelled to comment on these events and the negative impact on our school districts.
LPS is operating with a budget that is lean in the extreme. LPS has continually found new and innovative methods to save money within the district while maintaining the integrity of programs. There are many shared services with other districts, including a shared superintendent, business administrator, teaching staff and Child Study Team. Our administrative team has voluntarily frozen their salaries in response to the current economic climate.
Each year the school board is obligated to prepare a legal budget to operate the district for the next school year. The budget process is approached by the board as a balancing act, weighing the needs of the children while remaining fiscally responsible to the taxpayers. Historically this district has never asked for more than what was absolutely necessary to operate our school and provide a thorough and efficient education for the children of Lambertville.
It is the obligation of taxpayers and registered voters to delve into the issues facing the district and sort fact from fiction.
Each year the board is required to hold a public hearing for the upcoming budget. Only one person attended our public hearing regarding the 2009-10 proposed budget. How can voters make an informed decision if they do not know what they are voting for?
The majority of a school budget dollar is directed to salaries and benefits of district employees. The NJEA continues to negotiate contracts statewide in which they are requesting annual salary increases in excess of 4 percent and there is refusal to entertain the idea of employee contribution to health insurance coverage. This logic flies in the face of what all of us in the private employment sector have been experiencing for the last decade, yet I have not seen any letters to the editor detailing the inequity of this scenario. It is also not within the local school district’s power to change the amount of state and federal aid received by the district. Programs are continually mandated by the state and federal government with no financial support.
These additional costs are absorbed in small districts by pulling funding from one program to pay for a mandated program, frequently negatively impacting the education of each child in the district. Essentially the state and federal governments are quite adept at passing the financial responsibility for mandated educational services back to local taxpayers, all the while lamenting to those same taxpayers that they need relief from increased property taxes and our local school budgets are the place to get that relief.
Actually the place to obtain relief is from our elected officials. We need to find a better and more equitable way to fund education in New Jersey, as long as our state government can keep us focused on school funding as the basis for high property taxes they do not have to develop a responsible funding formula.
I am most disturbed by the defeat of the SHRHS budget and the negative campaign waged by community members regarding the budget vote. It is destructive to vote down a school budget and does not achieve the desired outcome. It is my opinion that the board of South Hunterdon was sensitive to the economy and how their budget would affect the taxpayers of West Amwell, Stockton and Lambertville.
The proposed budget for 2009-10 was fiscally responsible, requesting a 1.1 percent operating budget increase over the prior year. There was significant commentary regarding the cost per pupil in comparison to all other New Jersey districts. While the cost per pupil is high, the method to calculate this cost is not widely disclosed. The state simply divides the number of students in the district by the budget dollar, there is no distinction made for the services rendered to the students. Many children have special needs and receive services not provided to the student population as a whole. Some students require out- of-district placement for appropriate programs, the district must pay tuition, transportation and support services to meet the needs of these children. State law requires that these programs are funded prior to any other program for each school district. The costs associated with placements, services and transportation can approach $100,000 per child in some instances; significantly impacting the cost per pupil calculation dependent on the placements within the district.
South Hunterdon has made significant progress over the last five years in the areas of curriculum and pupil performance. While some of the class sizes are small, they are offering more challenging and varied courses and have increase d the number of AP classes offered to our students. We have the same diverse student population found in larger districts, should our high achieving students be denied honors classes and advance placement simply because there are fewer of them? Is it the desire of the communities of the sending districts to foster the philosophy that average is adequate and drive more students to private schools? I would have thought we laid that to rest with the approval of the referendum.
Five years ago this same district was chastised openly by parents and community members for the facility and curriculum deficiencies. The administration has made great strides in improving community confidence in its ability to deliver a quality education in an enhanced environment.
Why have we so quickly forgotten our goals and allowed our vision to be muddied over a few ill- explained “facts.” There are improvements that can and will be made in education and within our school systems over the next couple of years, but in the interim we are charged with the responsibility of providing the best education possible to the children of our communities. Everything we have worked for, especially our property values, is directly affected by the quality of our schools.

