BEACON EDITORIAL
By:Hillsborough Beacon
Students at Hillsborough schools got a piece of good news late Tuesday night as the votes were tallied: Voters had agreed to spend $12.9 million over the next 20 years to improve school facilities.
But while the outcome of Tuesday’s referendum is good for the students whose classes will be spared worsening overcrowding, we believe the time has come to draw a line in the sand. The school board and the school administration need to cut expenses.
As a result of Tuesday’s referendum, the Board of Education will proceed to sell $12.6 million worth of bonds to pay for the anticipated improvements to Amsterdam and Auten Road elementary schools, along with a number of other upgrades and facility improvements throughout the district.
The tax impact of the construction is projected at an average of $75 a year for the owners of a $250,000 house – not too bad. But anyone familiar with school taxes in Hillsborough knows that that $75 increase isn’t even the tip of the iceberg of recent tax hikes.
In the past five years, school taxes have increased a whopping 29.8 percent across the board. Nearly everyone was amazed when the 2000-01 school budget passed in April with an imagination-defying 7.3 percent increase in the school tax burden. In fact, the average taxpayer – one who has a $250,000 home – has seen a hike of $757 in just the past two years.
With a recent history like that, the school board is going to have a devil of a time explaining any substantial tax hike in the 2001-02 school budget. And if the next budget requires an increase on the level of what taxpayers have seen the past two years, the board should expect it to fail at the polls.
We’d like to see the board next spring present a budget that shows no tax hike beyond the rate of inflation, even if – and this is the tricky part – even if state aid drops again next year as it has the past two.
Administrators can do that, but it’s going to take some doing. It might mean reducing the number of administrators in order to maintain a good teacher-to-student ratio. It might mean scrapping a few programs in order to keep the core subjects on a solid footing. It might mean outfitting science labs with perfectly good equipment that’s a few years old and not state of the art, and it probably will mean making some unpopular decisions. But a successful education doesn’t require having the latest technology, following the current trends or making everybody happy. As often as not, those things get in the way.
We think the administration can deliver a sound budget without undermining the quality of education in Hillsborough schools. Will that take work? You bet. Can it be done? Absolutely. But now is the time to start planning it.