‘School Budget Woes’ Written by Michael P. Riccards, Executive Director, The Hall Institute

Thursday, 22 April 2010 15:21

Rarely do people vote in school budget elections.  We don’t know what the numbers mean in terms of our property assessment, and we don’t know the school board candidates.  Yet this election, nearly double the number of citizens voted, and in 59% of the districts the allocations were turned down—the toughest verdicts in a generation.  Incumbents on the school board were often defeated, unheard of in this state.  The people who vote in these low visibility election are usually the teachers, their families, and people with young kids in the schools.  When on Election Day 2010, I voted in Hamilton (Mercer) and I was surprised about the large number of older people voting.  That signaled trouble, and indeed it did as the budget fell by almost a two to one margin.

I asked my neighbors how they were going to vote, and uniformly they were negative.  Some are fed up with the retiring superintendent who, critics say, has an indecent number of relatives and friends on the township school payroll.  One of the candidates for the school board actually took out a full page ad in the newspaper denouncing him.  Property taxes are just too high, and even in a town with large numbers of active state employees and retired state employees, citizens are feeling the strains of budgets that do not acknowledge the realities out there.  Once again, the teachers got their 4%, and the local union leader in Hamilton arrogantly scoffed at Governor Christie’s proposal for restraint.

Clearly, the repudiation of school budgets across the state, especially in working class areas, reflect sympathy with the governor in his war with the NJEA.  Even the Democratic politicians are relegated to taking potshots at Christie, but they have few alternatives except soak the rich.  The difficulty they must admit is that all the gimmicks Trenton lawmakers have used over the decades are no longer available.  The time for reckoning has come.

I was surprised how in my town, the quality of people running for the board was frankly so low.  Even one candidate acknowledged it; he was the angry bearded man who said he thought block scheduling was about construction of buildings.  Another candidate was an old teacher who insisted on taking us down memory lane.  Other candidates did not understand either No Child Left Behind or Obama’s changes.  One candidate could barely talk, and another insisted that he knew more than the trained counselor about whether his kid was autistic.  Imagine being a superintendent and dealing with those guys!

One of the problems is that to save money, one must really re-think from the bottom up the whole array of services we offer.  Let me propose some heretical notions: 

Do we really need high school athletics?  Let them be run by community clubs.

Do we really need to bus older kids?  Let their parents be responsible for getting them there and then home.

Do we need to fund special education at the very high levels we do?

Isn’t it time to end the Abbott and class based alternatives to funding, and simply set a level that is acceptable for a thorough and efficient education?

Why do so many of our kids not meet national standards, let alone international standards?  And let us stop saying that New Jersey schools are the best in the republic.  They are not.  Massachusetts schools are, so let us adopt their content standards.

Let us offer parents charter schools and voucher alternatives, but let us be honest with parents and tell them the research does NOT show they are any better than public schools.

Give teachers merit pay that is significant (not $300 or so) and establish some accountability to get rid of those teachers who cannot teach.

It is time for all of us to start selling education and the American dream, and we can best start by holding families, kids, and teachers accountable.

Michael P. Riccards is Executive Director of the Hall Institute of Public Policy - New Jersey.

Listen to a podcast on NJ School Board Elections

School Budget Woes

Written by Michael P. Riccards   

Thursday, 22 April 2010 15:21

Rarely do people vote in school budget elections.  We don’t know what the numbers mean in terms of our property assessment, and we don’t know the school board candidates.  Yet this election, nearly double the number of citizens voted, and in 59% of the districts the allocations were turned down—the toughest verdicts in a generation.  Incumbents on the school board were often defeated, unheard of in this state.  The people who vote in these low visibility election are usually the teachers, their families, and people with young kids in the schools.  When on Election Day 2010, I voted in Hamilton (Mercer) and I was surprised about the large number of older people voting.  That signaled trouble, and indeed it did as the budget fell by almost a two to one margin.

I asked my neighbors how they were going to vote, and uniformly they were negative.  Some are fed up with the retiring superintendent who, critics say, has an indecent number of relatives and friends on the township school payroll.  One of the candidates for the school board actually took out a full page ad in the newspaper denouncing him.  Property taxes are just too high, and even in a town with large numbers of active state employees and retired state employees, citizens are feeling the strains of budgets that do not acknowledge the realities out there.  Once again, the teachers got their 4%, and the local union leader in Hamilton arrogantly scoffed at Governor Christie’s proposal for restraint.

Clearly, the repudiation of school budgets across the state, especially in working class areas, reflect sympathy with the governor in his war with the NJEA.  Even the Democratic politicians are relegated to taking potshots at Christie, but they have few alternatives except soak the rich.  The difficulty they must admit is that all the gimmicks Trenton lawmakers have used over the decades are no longer available.  The time for reckoning has come.

I was surprised how in my town, the quality of people running for the board was frankly so low.  Even one candidate acknowledged it; he was the angry bearded man who said he thought block scheduling was about construction of buildings.  Another candidate was an old teacher who insisted on taking us down memory lane.  Other candidates did not understand either No Child Left Behind or Obama’s changes.  One candidate could barely talk, and another insisted that he knew more than the trained counselor about whether his kid was autistic.  Imagine being a superintendent and dealing with those guys!

One of the problems is that to save money, one must really re-think from the bottom up the whole array of services we offer.  Let me propose some heretical notions: 

Do we really need high school athletics?  Let them be run by community clubs.

Do we really need to bus older kids?  Let their parents be responsible for getting them there and then home.

Do we need to fund special education at the very high levels we do?

Isn’t it time to end the Abbott and class based alternatives to funding, and simply set a level that is acceptable for a thorough and efficient education?

Why do so many of our kids not meet national standards, let alone international standards?  And let us stop saying that New Jersey schools are the best in the republic.  They are not.  Massachusetts schools are, so let us adopt their content standards.

Let us offer parents charter schools and voucher alternatives, but let us be honest with parents and tell them the research does NOT show they are any better than public schools.

Give teachers merit pay that is significant (not $300 or so) and establish some accountability to get rid of those teachers who cannot teach.

It is time for all of us to start selling education and the American dream, and we can best start by holding families, kids, and teachers accountable.

Michael P. Riccards is Executive Director of the Hall Institute of Public Policy - New Jersey.
Listen to a podcast on NJ School Board Elections