HILLSBOROUGH: Staff, community speak for nighttime custodians, substitute teachers

School budget decision still in flux

By Gene Robbins, Managing Editor
   Speaker after speaker stepped to the microphone Monday night and beseeched the township school board to keep nighttime custodians and substitute teachers under its employment control.
   As staffers talked about the years of service of night custodians in each of the nine school buildings, others held posters with the names, years of experience and photos of the 35 custodians whose jobs dangle on the board’s decision how to craft a 2014-15 school year budget.
   The board has introduced a $117.7 million budget that includes hiring contractors to provide nighttime custodians, as well as day and long-term substitute teachers for classroom.
   The school board has also made a pledge to provide tablet computers to all students in grades 5 through 12 next year. Along with doing other things — like expanding the Chinese world language program, hiring five additional special education teachers and starting an energy-savings facilities plan — it would mean a 4.3 percent increase in school taxes. In dollars, it would be about $252 more for the owner of a home assessed at $363,900.
   The board is having a hard time providing the “growth budget” it wants without reducing its fulltime staff or going back on its technology pledge.
   The focus has shifted to cuts that would bring about $700,000 in savings from privatizing night custodial services, $$300,000 from contracting substitute teachers and $300,000 in reducing or stretching over more years the proposal to buy personal computers for students next year.
   For almost two hours Monday night, at least [gro: xx : ]speakers stressed how night custodians and long-term substitutes were part of a trusted, caring “family” within the school system and community.
   Before the meeting dozens of staffers, students and parents stood outside the high school with lawn-sign-like placards that read “Strangers? Not in my schools.”
   Many in the more than 200 in the audience wore a blue T-shirt of allegiance to the Hillsborough Education Association, the 1,000-member union of teachers, support staff, aides and custodians.
   Speakers recounted vignettes about custodians who returned valuable items, and intimated that would not happen with contract employees. Some teachers told how custodians do little, extra niceties, like cleaning their coffee mug when they forget, or carrying heavy boxes to cars. A student athlete said custodians helped her find her lost sweatshirts and even helped her when she couldn’t open her intermediate school locker.
   Jim Cox, head custodian at Woodfern School for 25 years, said contracted custodians would not do as good a job cleaning.
   Parents said they worried about unknown people in schools at night, when children were in activities. One woman called custodians “keepers of the gate.”
   ”Why are cost savings more important than who is in our children’s company?” asked one woman. Another said, “Security should be our first priority.”
   Christy Kanaby, a former Hillsborough teacher and now an NJEA employee, said savings in health care benefits will disappear in future years under the new health care law.
   ”These decisions come back to haunt you,” she said, adding “I believe there are other options.”
   Although all budget-cutting options are “on the table,” board members said, teacher Susan DiCenzo’s call to “cut technology, not staff,” brought long applause. Another person who saw the worth of long-term subs said “keep highly qualified teachers over a Chromebook.”
   ”We owe it to people who work so hard for us to think of a better way to make this work,” said Roberta Henry, a high school consumer science teacher.
   Many, like Auten Road teacher Henry Goodhue, reminded that they and others had used jobs as substitute teachers as a springboard to being hired fulltime in Hillsborough. “Why risk a proven track record?” one person asked rhetorically.
   People peppered the board with hypothetical scenarios of a “revolving door” of constantly changing substitutes who don’t get to know students or school well.
   ”Who are you going to get to work for low pay and no benefits” asked one teacher.
   Superintendent Jorden Schiff said the school board, under any contract, would authorize approval of a substitutes’ list.
   School board members intend to keep trying to agree on a budget plan that will be presented and voted upon April 28.
   Vice President Jennifer Haley said she favored reducing administrative jobs over reducing substitutes and custodians — an option she couldn’t accept, she said.
   Member Deena Centofanti assured the public the board was working hard to come to a balance. In any event, it heard and understood that the public doesn’t want privatization, she said.
   Member Lorraine Soisson said privatization was a “last resort,” but she wanted to go with the full 1-to-1 computer initiative. It was not going to get any easier financially in future years, she said, and the school owed it kids in a technology-driven century to embrace the future.
   Member Judith Haas said she too was against privatization, but didn’t like that a decision seemed to be coming down on pitting the computer initiative versus job restructuring.
   Board President Thomas Kinst said he was concerned about spending that couldn’t be sustained in years after 2014-15.
   He said at the beginning of the meeting the board would look at reducing supply accounts, and using lease-purchase over buying equipment.
   Dr. Schiff blamed two major factors — insufficient state funding and soaring health care costs — for the predicament. District information shows state aid being virtual flat for the last three budget years.
   He also said that if the school could budget for just a five-percent increase in health insurance — instead of the 15 percent that is in the budget — the expense would be $1.6 million lower “and we wouldn’t be having these discussions.”