EDISON — Frustration was on the faces of seemingly everyone June 1 as a divided Board of Education made another round of sweeping cuts to its school budget for next year.
The board approved a list of cuts that included privatizing the district’s 137 paraprofessional and teacher aide positions, and cut 11 library aides and 12 guidance counselors, to name a few, in order to achieve the $6.5 million worth of additional cuts ordered by the Township Council in May. The board made the cuts in front of a standing room-only crowd of teachers, staff, students parents and other residents in the Edison High School auditorium.
The reductions were made to a budget that the board had already cut back in response to a state aid cut of $9.7 million. Voters defeated the budget in the April 20 school election, sending it to the council for the additional cuts.
Students came to the June 1 meeting with poster boards bearing names of programs and teachers they would like the board to save. A seventh-grader from John Adams Middle School presented the board with a petition of signatures from students against the cuts.
Paraprofessionals, who wore red T-shirts to the meeting, and parents of students with disabilities pleaded with the board to reconsider privatizing the paraprofessional positions. Many said the move will be “destructive” to the most vulnerable of students in the district.
The board voted 6-1 on the revised $198.6 million budget, with David Dickinson casting the lone vote against it.
Then, the board voted 5-4 to approve the list of reductions, which now cuts approximately 343 positions from the budget — 131 before the election and 212 during the June 1 meeting. Board members Dickinson, Veena Iyer, Joseph Romano and Deborah Anes voted “no” on the presented cuts.
The board had at first voted 5-4 against the reductions, but after school Business Administrator Dan Michaud explained that he needed to send a budget to the state Department of Education with a list of where the cuts have been made, the vote swung the other way.
Michaud noted that after the school budget is approved at the state level, the board still has control over it and can add positions into it at any time as money becomes available. If the board did not approve the budget, it would have been sent to the state, which could then decide on additional cuts.
On May 19, the Township Council, having hired an auditor for the school budget review, voted unanimously on the $6.5 million cut, recommending that the Board of Education reduce allocations for salaries and benefits. Council members said extra money had been budgeted in those areas.
The council said its recommended cuts, which included a $2.3 million reduction in the health benefits line and roughly $900,000 from salaries, would not require additional layoffs or program reductions.
Michaud explained to the crowd that the extra money the council claimed to have found did not actually exist, and called the council’s recommendations “ridiculous.”
Council members said wished that the Board of Education members spoke up at the May 19 meeting.
Board President Gene Maeroff said the board and the school administration were not happy with the latest round of cuts they decided upon; however, he said they took “careful and conscientious” consideration to produce the necessary reductions to achieve the additional $6.5 million cut ordered by the council.
Maeroff noted that Michaud and Acting Schools Superintendent John DiMuzio had spoken extensively with the auditor that the council hired prior to the May 19 meeting.
A resident asked Maeroff if the board would consider appealing the council’s decision to the state. He said it had been advised not to because of the potential for the state to cut even more than the $6.5 million.
The budget now raises school taxes by $190 on the average home, assessed at $176,400. Before the council’s cut, that tax hike stood at $268. In 2009, the average school tax bill in Edison was $4,203; it will now be $4,393.