If Gov. Chris Christie signs the bill this week, school boards will have the option of skipping the traditional spring school election or to have a vote at all on the local tax levy that largely finances the budget.
Under a bill that passed the Legislature overwhelmingly Monday, if the school board drafts a budget that doesn’t raise local property taxes by more than 2 percent, the board can avoid what often becomes a fatiguing season of explain and justify, attack and riposte with the public. The election of board members would move to the November ballot, when candidates would be subject to more or less scrutiny by the public, depending on your point of view.
The new system may prove to be more efficient and save a little bit of money, but we mull the change with some trepidation. There was something historic and nostalgic about people getting riled up at least once a year about the public enterprise that takes two-thirds of their local tax dollars.
There’s was drama in the possibility that the school budget had to be reviewed and analyzed in much greater detail than we have ever seen anyone question the local government’s budget which was never put to the public for a vote. Maybe it’s because schools are so essential, so critical to a child’s future, or so intertwined in our lifestyles. If we screw up a road project, we can always rip it up again. Not so with a child’s mind.
Now, school boards will become closer to the representative government we see in town hall and the county seat. In those bodies, we elect people who make decisions. If we don’t like the judgments, we vote them out.
Somehow, schools were different. Schools are personal. You could go to a school board meeting, raise a question and, if you didn’t like the answer, always wield the cudgel of leading an insurrection at the polls. It often turned out to be an effective veiled weapon.
Alas, voters yielded the field on the question by staying away from the spring school elections in droves. Year after year, with slight variation, only 20 to 30 percent of the voting population came out in April elections. The majority is either very wise, resigned to their ability to make a difference, or generally well-intentioned but apathetic.
Giving up on school elections is a chink in the home rule stubbornness of New Jersey. Without money on the line, there will be less impassioned discussion of school issues. School administrators won’t feel the pressure to cut just a few more dollars to try to make the election-season point.
It may be progress that takes a little time to get used to.
