HILLSBOROUGH: School board to consider final tweaks to budget

More math teachers may be back for discussion

By Gene Robbins, Managing Editor
   School board members are likely to consider tonight (Thursday) a last-minute tweaking of next year’s proposed school budget to add one or two math teachers at the high school.
   The Board of Education meets tonight — a departure from its normal Monday meetings — at 7:30 at the Auten Road School, primarily to vote to adopt the 2013-14 school budget. It will be the final action to put the budget in place; there will be no April election for the voters to approve the local tax levy to support the plan.
   The $114 million spending plan was introduced March 11 and sent to the county executive superintendent for approval. However, members and administrators held out the possibility line items within the budget could change as long as the bottom line stays the same.
   The human resources, education and operations committees of the board met in the last week to discuss any additions as long as they carried offsetting reductions.
   Math instruction concerns the district, particularly since about one-half of high school graduates attending Raritan Valley Community College must take remedial math courses, Superintendent Jorden Schiff said.
   Dr. Schiff reprised his budget explanation to the Township Committee on Tuesday night. He said the main reason the budget could hire new staff in the next year was a projected $900,000 savings in busing costs. By changing the start/end time of the school day at the middle school, he said, the district could add more “triple tiers,” or runs with the same bus and driver.
   He said the budget would continue its technology plan by giving tablet computers to another 10 percent of middle and high-schoolers, adding classes for Chinese language instruction at the intermediate and high schools and implementing a new teacher and administrator evaluation system as required by a new state law.
   The district is budgeting about 15 percent more to pay for health benefit costs, he said, and has reacted in part by withdrawing from the state health care plan and signing on with Horizon.
   The proposed budget would increase property taxes by $53 on the “average” assessed house at $368,700, he said. The increase is about $14 for each $100,000 of valuation.
   Until this year, the Township Committee was the body that would have reviewed the budget if the voters defeated the tax levy question at the polls. The school board took the option this year to eliminate the election as long as the operating budget proposes no more than a 2 percent tax rise. The proposed tax levy increases by 0.5 percent and, in fact, is $425,000 lower than the maximum it could have risen.