Back to School!

The turnout was disappointingly low at Wednesday night’s 8 p.m. information session at the Wade building in Martinsville. Only 8 people showed up for an excellent, informal presentation and discussion about how the Bridgewater-Raritan school budget gets put together and what challenges lie ahead. At a similar meeting earlier in the day, 13 people came.

Board members Jeffrey Brookner and Christine Schneider, together with Superintendent Michael Schilder, and Business Administrator-Board Secretary, Peter Starrs, were present Wednesday night to field questions from the audience.

If you’ve ever sat before a person who really knows his stuff, then you would have benefited from listening to Peter Starrs. Since the school budget process pulls together literally everything in one spot, Starrs probably knows more about resources, transportation costs, general expenditures, income sources, school programs, and tax impact than perhaps any other single person in the Bridgewater-Raritan School District. That’s no criticism of anyone else; it’s just that the person who puts together the numbers usually gets to know what’s where.

Beginning with a well-prepared agenda, Mr. Starrs highlighted the critical timeline for budget preparation between now and next April’s election; the use of account coding; and the rules for state caps, which are now based on revenue, not expenditures. Using a copy of the approximately 70-page BR-BOE approved budget for the current school year (2007-2008) as a guide, he successfully navigated through an overview of all major budget items e.g., salaries, benefits, supplies, the cost of programs, etc., etc.

If you had been there, for example, you would have discovered that 25% of total supervisory salaries goes towards ongoing training – that’s right; check it out: Fund 11, account 11-000-223-102-00-32. Hey! If you want to know, you gotta do the work. You could find out a lot more, too! Just ask questions.

It’s not too late. There will be another identical information session on this topic at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, October 17th, at the High School library on Garretson Road. It’s not a bad idea to get on board with some of this stuff before emotions run high again at the April 15th, 2008, budget and school board elections.

Note: See Kara L. Richardson’s story of October 10, 2007, under Past Week’s News-Main News at http://www.c-n.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?category=NEWS06