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Welcome to Laurie Goodman's blog. I use this space to share news and opinions about education and schools in Ridgewood, the state of New Jersey and the nation, in addition to other issues I'm personally interested in. I invite you to share your thoughts, feelings, questions or opinions, too, by posting comments on any blog entry. Please observe basic courtesy -- keep your comments focused on issues, no personal attacks or bullying, please. Contact me directly at: lauriegood@mac.com

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Christie announces state school aid WILL be cut this year

I did not have time to listen live to Governor Christie's speech this AM, but just saw this report on the blog New Jersey Left Behind, whose author was live-blogging during the address:

This year, school aid will be cut by $475 million. 500 districts will be affected. More than 100 districts will lose all their school aid for the year. Districts must make up the difference from their surplus funds. Christie says "these cuts won't touch the classroom." (Hmm. They will next year.)

Well, Ridgewood, that's another $1 million or so hit on our budget for next year. That's what we get for playing by the rules, saving money, and ending with money we would have returned to the taxpayers in next year's budget.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

can Ridgewood just try to spend the surplus before the end of the year?

Laurie said...

Well, in effect, that is what we will be forced to do. The state will not send us the money they promised for this year, so we will have to use that surplus to pay our bills.

Unknown said...

Who voted for this guy...?

Anonymous said...

Lee

...the majority.

Anonymous said...

thanks for nothing, GOP!

Anonymous said...

Okay Lee, let's just keep spending money we don't have. Not a problem you say, we'll just print more money and borrow from the Chinese, right?

Give me a break. How about we look at our bloated budget. Excessive teacher health care contracts, silly give aways to the teachers' union and more highly paid administrators than we need. Tell me Lee, why do we need 2 asst principals and 2 grade admins for each middle school? Or three layers of curriculum admins at Cottage Place? Right there is a cool million. And I haven't even started to get specific.

Voted for Chris Christie and glad he was elected.