SPOTSWOOD — After two straight years of passing budgets at the polls, the Board of Education saw its 2010-11 package defeated April 20.
The $25.8 million budget, which included a 3.5 percent tax hike and the loss of 18 positions, went down by a vote of 905 to 577. The spending plan will now go to the borough councils in Spotswood and Helmetta, which share the regional school district.
Also at the polls, voters re-elected Jerry Hook and John Lavelle to three-year terms on the school board. Hook received 822 votes while Lavelle garnered 772. The lone challenger, Ronald Dittman, was unsuccessful with 622 votes. Some 23 percent of registered voters cast ballots, including 5,054 from Spotswood and 1,410 from Helmetta.
Spotswood Board of Education President Rich O’Brien said he was pleased with the incumbents’ victories, and he also found the relatively high voter turnout to be gratifying, “as it showed our residents continue to care about Spotswood schools.” The budget result, he said, was somewhat expected, given the climate.
“While we were disappointed in the budget being voted down, we weren’t surprised, given the drumbeat from the governor’s office,” O’Brien said. “At this point we will meet with representatives from our two governing bodies of Spotswood and Helmetta and see what further cuts they might require. Our hope is we can avoid further layoffs, but it may be out of our hands at this point.”
The board’s budget already included the elimination of 15 full-time positions — eight teachers, two media specialists, two guidance counselors and three buildings and grounds workers — along with three part-time teachers, two part-time secretaries and three aides. Programs being cut include the pull-out basic skills program, some of the sports offerings at Spotswood High School, the reading specialist program, the high school vocational foods program, and stipends for middle school teachers.
The cuts, along with the tax hike of $143 on the average Spotswood home and $51 on Helmetta homes, came in response to a state aid reduction of more than $1.4 million, or 22 percent. Also, the board was forced to do without $375,000 in surplus funds that had to be used in the current school year’s budget after Gov. Chris Christie cut the aid that the district had anticipated for 2009-10, O’Brien has said. Further widening the budget deficit was the stateimposed regionalization of the Helmetta and Spotswood school districts last year. A change in the funding formula due to the merge will result in Spotswood getting $783,102 less from Helmetta than it would have received under the former tuition-based formula.
The budget includes a salary freeze for nonunion employees, bringing savings of $21,017. Officials said the teachers union declined to take a wage freeze.
Helmetta Mayor Nancy Martin said she interprets the budget’s defeat as a message from the voters, and that it is the governing bodies’ “duty to comply with their wishes.”
“I am against the laying off of anyone in this economy and believe that the teachers union should consider this economy and take the freeze on their salaries to save many of the positions. I know it has been the position of the union in Spotswood not to consider this ‘wage freeze,’ but listening to the voters, I feel they should consider it,” Martin said. “I also believe it should not only be the teachers, but all employees in the education system. I have received a copy of the school budget and was surprised at some of the salaries that are currently being paid to the employees.”
Spotswood council President Curt Stollen expressed frustration that the borough has been suffering from inequitable state funding for
years. In 2008 the state began shorting the town $370,000 in municipal aid because its population was under 10,000, he noted, and never corrected the “unjustified reduction.” Then, in 2009, Gov. Jon Corzine forced the Helmetta and Spotswood school districts to merge, creating “a tremendous injustice”; Spotswood now pays 75 percent of the education costs of Helmetta students, including
busing and out-of-district special education. Though the former education commissioner promised additional funding as compensation, that never came through, he said, and now the school budget is short more than $700,000 due to the consolidation.
“We of the hardworking middle class in New Jersey have been fleeced,” Stollen said. “We have had the sales tax imposed on us to ‘fund education.’ Then, when that wasn’t enough, we had the income tax imposed on us to ‘fund education.’ Then, the state began AtlanticCity gambling to ‘fund education.’ Then, the state began the lottery to ‘fund education.’ Our wallets have been picked and our hardearned income was sent off to the Abbott districts, leaving our suburban schools underfunded by the state and overtaxed locally. What the state has really done with the redistribution of our monies is to enter the room of public government and education with cauldrons of money. All the players grabbed what they could as fast as they could. This has caused the inflation of providing services in both municipal and school venues.”
With last week’s budget vote, Stollen said, voters sent a message “that enough is enough.”
“And while I believe the vote really means that once and for all we must insist on a fix to the inequitable distribution and return of our own funds paid to the state, the voters are also clearly unwilling to pay additional taxes for the proposed increase in the school budget,” he said. Stollen expected that the two governing bodies would hold workshop meetings to discuss the budget, and that a public meeting would then be held for residents to comment. Then, if both towns’ governing bodies agree on a course of action, they will approve resolutions to send to the Board of Education. If the councils do not agree, however, the budget would be sent to the state Department of Education for a decision regarding cuts.