By WINNIE HUSchool officials across New Jersey said on Wednesday that they would most likely have to lay off hundreds of teachers, increase class sizes, eliminate sports teams and Advanced Placement classes, cut kindergarten hours and take other radical steps to reduce spending after 58 percent of districts’ budgets were rejected by voters on Tuesday, the most in at least 35 years.
Residents went to the polls in record numbers for the normally low-profile school-budget elections, and rejected 316 of the 541 budgets on the ballot. They were angered by higher property taxes that were sought to make up for unusually large state aid reductions proposed by Gov. Christopher J. Christie, along with resentment toward teachers’ unions for not agreeing to wage freezes or concessions.
The message of “enough is enough” resounded across the state, from urban to rural districts, and even in well-to-do suburban communities like Ridgewood, where residents are particularly proud of their schools. It was a drastic change from a year ago, when voters approved nearly three-quarters of the school budgets during the height of the economic downturn.
The election results sent school officials hurrying to prepare contingency plans to present to their town councils, or local municipal boards, which now must review the budgets and decide by May 19 whether to demand more cuts. (School officials can appeal those decisions to the state.) Many students and parents were anxious and unsure about what else they could lose.
At Teaneck High School, hundreds of students walked out of their classrooms Wednesday morning for an hourlong march around the school’s football field to protest the budget’s defeat in a vote of 4,790 to 3,618. The $94.9 million budget had called for a record 10.2 percent increase in school taxes.
Teaneck officials said they would now have to consider cuts that they had hoped to avoid, like increasing some classes to more than 30 students; reducing AP courses; cutting athletic teams; and eliminating several dozen positions more than the 21 that had been planned. “At this point, all bets are off,” said Dave Bicofsky, a spokesman for the district.
Tuesday’s elections capped weeks of political drama between Governor Christie and the state’s largest teachers’ union, the New Jersey Education Association, over his efforts to pressure teachers to renegotiate their contracts. Mr. Christie, who is trying to close an $11 billion deficit, has proposed to cut direct state aid to districts by up to 5 percent of their operating budgets.
Mr. Christie exhorted New Jerseyans to use the budget votes to take a stand against school spending, particularly in districts where unions refused to freeze wages. The results suggest that people listened: Statewide, voter turnout rose to 26.7 percent from 15 percent last year.
“You have schools saying they were efficient but they could not accept a 5 percent cut,” said Jerry Cantrell, president of the New Jersey Taxpayers Association and a former school board president in Randolph. “That just did not ring true to a lot of people. I think the bottom line was economics.”
Stephen K. Wollmer, communications director for the New Jersey Education Association, said that Mr. Christie had made a difficult situation worse. “He whipped the public into a frenzy, and convinced some of them that if they would vote down their budgets and extract a pay freeze from teachers, they could solve all their problems,” Mr. Wollmer said. “It’s just not true.”
Budgets also failed in 6 of the 19 districts where there had been wage freezes or concessions by teachers.
In Ridgewood, where a 4 percent tax increase was narrowly rejected on Tuesday, residents have expressed frustration at recent school board meetings over what they saw as teachers unwilling to make sacrifices like everyone else in a tough economy. The district had proposed an $84.9 million budget. (Voters last rejected the budget in 2003.)
Many school officials said students were the losers in Tuesday’s elections.
“We’ve made our budget as lean as possible, and even beyond that, so any further cuts will have an impact on our students,” said John Crowe, the Woodbridge superintendent.
In West Orange, the district’s budget — $118 million, including a 7.3 percent tax revenue increase — was rejected for the first time in a decade.
Anthony Cavanna, the superintendent, said he had already planned to lay off 84 employees, including 39 teachers, reduce bus service, cut back on music and art instruction, offer fewer vocational education courses, and trim extracurricular activities. Now he is considering heavier steps, like cutting kindergarten to a half day, ending Spanish classes and guidance counselors in the elementary schools, reducing library and nursing staffs, and dropping middle school and freshman sports teams.
“These would be devastating cuts,” Mr. Cavanna said.
CLICK HERE TO SEE HISTORIC 10 YEAR VOTING RECORD ON NJ BOARD OF EDUCATION BUDGETS BY COUNTY
