[gro: SECOND: Your last chance to comment on the $114.5 million school budget is 7:30 p.m. Thursday, March 21, at the Auten Road Intermediate School.
By Gene Robbins, Managing Editor
Education is a people-intensive industry.
That reality is reflected in the proposed 2013-14 Hillsborough school budget, a large percentage of which would go to salaries and benefits for nearly 1,000 employees.
The total of all salaries in the $108 million current expense budget is more than $70 million with an additional $18.6 million in benefits, said Business Administrator Aiman Mahmoud.
The school board and Hillsborough Education Association, which consists of about 739 teaching staff and more than 908 total, Mr. Mahmoud said, are negotiating a contract to succeed one that expires June 30.
The budget proposes adding people in three people in technology training, two parttime job coaches, two to teach the Chinese language, two in special education and 2.5 clerical jobs.
Those hires might change slightly in the next week. At the budget introduction March 4, a motion to increase the spending plan by $250,000 — ostensibly to add math teaching support at the high school — was defeated.
The board did resolve to meet in committees this week to review the budget more carefully (a majority of members had only a day or two to see the finished proposal) and see if there are places where they would trim the budget in order to add money in other places.
The administration might have proposed adding math teachers had more than a tiny state aid increase come the district’s way. As it stands, Hillsborough’s $25 million in state aid went up by only $13,000 — a rise of .0005 percent.
No state aid increase was “the real challenge coming into this budget,” Superintendent Jorden Schiff said.
The only way the budget was able to recommend hiring any new people was through a projected efficiency in bus transportation, he said. New routes could save the district $900,000 to $950,000, board member Greg Gillette said.
With a suggested eight hires, the school will have recovered 45 of the 66 jobs lost in 2009-10. That was a year in which the school district suffered a double whammy: a loss of state aid and a subsequent million-dollar reduction when the tax levy was voted down at the polls.
A budget defeat won’t happen this year. Hillsborough became the last in Somerset County to abandon the April school election. The school board’s vote next Thursday, March 21, will be the last necessary action to approve the budget and impose $84 million in local property taxes.
That would mean an increase of $53 for the “average” Hillsborough home assessed at $368,700, school officials said.
The budget would continue the district’s technology initiative. In the current year, a pilot program has given about 480 tablet computers to about 10 percent of students in grades five to 12. The new budget would double that number. The plan calls for all children to have devices in the following year.
There’s money for facilities projects in the budget. The capital outlay is just a few dollars shy of $1.4 million, dramatically up over the last few years. The current year’s budget is $821,464, and the 2011-12 expenditure was $552,665.
Planned are:
• Repairs to leaks around skylights at the intermediate school, $38,850.
• Paving a parking lot at Woodfern School, $183,150.
• Renovation of rooms to prepare for a more elaborate science-technology courses at the middles school, $127,270.
• Repair of the roof edges and exterior walls at Woods Road School to combat leaks, $22,200.
• Hallway flooring on the Amwell Road side of the Hillsborough Elementary School, $19,980.
• Front porch lighting at Sunnymead, $22,200.
• Playground paving at Triangle School, $94,350.
• Repaving at Amsterdam School, $450,000.
“”The budget summary is printed on Page 3A of today’s Beacon.

