PRINCETON: School board reconsiders moving election date

By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
   The Princeton Board of Education will decide next month whether to move school elections from April to November, a choice the board has rejected once before.
   School Board President Timothy Quinn said Tuesday that officials had decided after the initial vote earlier this year to revisit the issue. It’s due to come up at the Dec.18 school board meeting, he said.
   For his part, Mr. Quinn said he was not sure how he would vote at that time, although he had opposed moving elections the first time the board considered doing so.
   A state law gives boards of education, municipal governing bodies and voters through a referendum the ability to move their school elections to November. The change was seen as a way to increase voter participation in what are generally low turnout contests and spare districts the cost of holding a special election. In Princeton, turnout historically has hovered between 8 and 12 percent at elections that cost typically between $18,000 to $25,000 depending on how many other districts are holding elections that day, Mr. Quinn said.
   This year, 468 school districts that have elected boards of education made the change, according to the New Jersey School Board Association. Seventy-three others did not, while 45 appointed school boards are not impacted.
   Mike Yaple, a spokesman for New Jersey School Boards Association, said his organization had backed the law because it allowed local communities to decide the issue rather than have a state-imposed mandate forced on them.
   According to the law, districts that have November elections no longer have to put their budgets on the ballot for voters to consider — provided they stay within state-mandated budget caps. Mr. Yaple said defeated budgets typically get cut when they go to local governing bodies for review.
   Mr. Quinn said he opposed removing the public’s right to vote on the spending plan. He said Princeton has had a strong track record of supporting the budget; only one has failed in the past 20 years.
   ”While I would like to see turnout higher in April elections, I suspect we get a better informed electorate in April even though it is smaller,” Mr. Quinn said.
   For her part, board Vice President Andrea Spalla said she was thinking hard about both sides of the issue.
   She said she was concerned about the “potential politicization of school board candidacies if the elections are moved to November.”
   ”We have been so fortunate here in Princeton to have avoided much of the political turmoil that undermines the effectiveness of so many school boards around the state. I would hate to see us go down that destructive path,” she said in an email Thursday.
   She also expressed concerns about taking the budget vote off the ballot.
   ”On the other hand, I also hear from many community members about how much higher voter turnout would likely be in November, and that point is extremely compelling,” she said.