Ahearn: Shake-up on school elections

Sunday, June 1, 2008

By JAMES AHEARN
RECORD COLUMNIST

NEW JERSEY school elections, for board members and budgets, now take place in April. They are the only elections on their appointed day, and the turnout is light, usually less than 20 percent.

This is wasteful, says Assembly Speaker Joseph Roberts, a Democrat. He wants to move school elections to November, to coincide with the general elections, although those elections are partisan and school elections are non-partisan.

A bill for this purpose was approved by the Assembly recently, on a 43-31 vote that crossed party lines. The bill would also put an end to referendums on school budgets that conform to state spending caps.

I think the second change makes sense. What is the point of submitting a budget for possible voter rejection if the board is legally entitled to spend every dollar of it? After all, voters do not get to pass judgment on the budgets of federal, state, county or municipal governments.

As for moving school elections to November, it would seem more logical to combine them with non-partisan municipal elections, which are held in May. Assembly Republicans proposed that change in 2005, and at that time, the Assembly Democratic majority agreed it was a good idea.

So why hasn't the Legislature done it? Why is Speaker Roberts pushing to have school elections combined with partisan battles for offices like president and governor?

The change could politicize local education agendas. Also, it would take a skilled hand to craft a ballot that clearly separates the non-partisan school elections from the political contests, without consigning the school elections to some sort of second-rate status.

One reason combined non-partisan elections never caught on is that they would save comparatively little money. In North Jersey, only seven towns hold non-partisan municipal elections. Whether the combined election was held in May or in April, in most towns it would still be exclusively a school election.

The seven include Lodi, Ridgewood and Teaneck, communities frequently riven by municipal issues. School board members and superintendents in these towns may not have welcomed a change to May, lest those controversies affect education.

As you would expect, school boards and teachers oppose moving school elections to November but support eliminating budget referendums.

A higher turnout might be troublesome for both employers and employees. Both groups would welcome an end to the annual battle for passage of the budget.

Actually, by eliminating the budget vote only for districts where the proposed budget is lower than the state cap, the change would give districts a new incentive to pinch pennies.

Another bill sponsored by Roberts would require that districts with administrative costs close to the maximum must reduce those costs by 10 percent over a three-year period. That bill passed by a 62-15 vote, with substantial bipartisan support.

Richard Codey, president of the Senate, to which both bills were sent, was noncommittal. The Senate will review them carefully, he said.

Unanimous outrage

Two years ago the State Commission of Investigation issued a report on abuses in compensation for administrators of the so-called Abbott districts. These are 31 mostly poor, and poorly performing, districts, including, in North Jersey, Paterson, Passaic city and Garfield.

By order of the state Supreme Court, the state has been giving the Abbotts so much financial support that, without increasing local taxes, they can spend as much per pupil as the most affluent suburbs, or even more. Some of that money has been misspent, the commission found.

Now a spectacularly egregious example has surfaced, in Keansburg, a town on the north shore of Monmouth County, halfway between Sandy Hook and the Garden State Parkway bridge over the Raritan River.

The superintendent, Barbara Trzeszkowski, 60, is planning to retire at the end of June. Under a contract signed by the Keansburg board five years ago, she would retire in style.

On top of the standard retirement pay to which she was entitled, $120,000 a year, she would collect $184,586 for 235 unused sick days and 20 vacation days, plus another $556,290 in severance pay, calculated by multiplying her monthly salary by 38, the number of years she has worked in the district.

The total cash payout would be $740,000. In round numbers, that is three-quarters of a million dollars.

Our governor, Jon Corzine, who is no stranger to big numbers, reacted, as did everybody who heard of this deal, with outrage. There was nothing he could do about the retirement pay or the allowance for sick and vacation days, but he directed the attorney general to seek a court injunction to stop the severance check. Negotiations can be expected, with a settlement smaller than the superintendent was expecting. Also, Corzine has ordered an audit of all other Abbott superintendent contracts.

Good for you, Governor. As he declared, "It is not acceptable that we have that kind of payout package when our children need those dollars invested in the classroom."

James Ahearn is a contributing editor and former managing editor of The Record.