Times, They are a'Changing

There is a major debate ranging all the way from the statehouse in Trenton, into every nook and cranny in New Jersey’s communities about the multi-billion dollar state budget deficit and its impact on the flow of dollars to municipalities and school districts.

Anyone with even the slightest pulse and a smidge of interest in politics knows that at the center of that debate is what to do about it now that the well is dry.

There was a time when the well contained plenty of water, but we lavishly wasted that resource. The water table under that near-empty well can no longer sustain the endless pumping for more.

Substitute the word ‘Trenton’ for ‘well,”’ and ‘tax revenues’ for ‘water table,’ and the analogy comes into better focus.

Denial, a natural first reaction I suppose, seems to be the order of the day. Not everyone wants to recognize that a permanent paradigm shift has taken place and that the old ways of doing business are permanently behind us.

This is evident in the current standoff between Governor Chris Christie and perhaps the most powerful union in the state, the New Jersey Education Association. At the heart of the tug-of-war between these two powerful forces is the governor’s vigorous attempt to coax the NJEA into recognizing that this new financial paradigm is genuine.

The Bridgewater-Raritan School District is in the middle of that struggle. It was only after overwhelming pressure at one public meeting after another that the superintendent and non-bargaining personnel concurred to a wage freeze, and that the Bridgewater-Raritan Education Association agreed to $1.4 million in concessions in return for a like amount of reduced budget cuts.

For what may be the first time, voices of Bridgewater/Raritan parents and others at open public meetings were the prime causal factor in forcing 11th hour negotiations between the BREA and the B-R BOE which ultimately brought about that $1.4M exchange.

Despite everything you may have read and heard there is still a significant amount of money left on the table. The district’s three major bargaining units rejected an earlier call by the Bridgewater-Raritan Board of Education for a wage freeze in the coming year.

That means the 4.35% wage hike for the BREA (and similar increases for principals and supervisors) is still in the school budget.

There remains plenty of work left to do.