Just a reminder that only 9 days remain to the April 20th elections which will take place a week from this coming Tuesday. There is a sense of anxiety in the air about what will happen with school budgets – especially if they fail to get approved.
Budget concerns apply not only to parents who have children in New Jersey school systems, but to all taxpaying citizens who have seen their real estate values plummet, as taxes go up and jobs disappear.
In the Bridgewater-Raritan School District, there have been a number of “E-Blasts” from the Superintendent’s Office. These are e-mails addressed to “key communicators” in both communities. Recently, they have concentrated on explaining various aspects of the 2010/2011 budget.
The last one, dated April 10, 2010, highlights the Academically Independent program (AI). It discusses cost categories such as teachers, transportation, testing, curriculum and instruction. The e-mail concludes with, “Thank you for your support and please remember to vote on April 20th.”
Previous recent E-Blasts discuss other 2010/2011 budget topics and issues such as what further costs may need to be reviewed, should the school budget not pass.
We need to remember this about school budgets: New Jersey is making a 180° turn in its outlook towards revenues and spending. Unless Governor Christie gets rebuffed by the state legislature and the New Jersey Education Association; and, unless his budget gets rejected by June, we had all better look very hard at the impact of school budgets in a far different way than we have in the past.
The old ways of looking at school expenditures and programs in New Jersey may be over for good. Governor Christie is proposing to implement changes which, if they are legislated, will have a transformative impact on the way business has been conducted in the schools of New Jersey. And that may not be such a bad thing.
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