Always darkest...

I went to the Bergen County School Boards Assoc meeting last night and heard Mr. Michael Vrancik, the NJ School Boards' Assoc Director of Governmental Relations, talk about "Current Issues -- What's Next for School Boards." It was not pretty.

Main messages:

Changing school elections...
Just this week, the Senate Education Committee suddenly placed Bill S1861 (Assembly Bill A15) on its agenda for this Monday 12/8. This bill "Provides for the election of school board members at November general election and eliminates vote on school budgets except for separate proposals to spend above cap which will also occur at general election."

Mr. Vrancik believes the motivation behind rushing to get this into the last 2008 meeting of the Education Committee is to give the Governor more time now to defer making decisions on the state budget. He may even decide to wait until after April when state income tax revenues are known. The Governor probably wants to wait as long as possible to make any commitments to school funding, in order to see how bad things get with the state's economy. He was not sure what this would mean for districts and our budget cycles.

The state will claim that moving the election to November and eliminating budget elections will save $5 million and pat themselves on the back (next year's an election year, remember), but that's a pretty tiny percentage of the state budget.

State of the state economy...
Mr. Vrancik also talked about NJ's fiscal situation. He said the current "best case scenario" is that the state's budget shortfall next year (FY2010) will be $5 billion. He said, "It is almost impossible to imagine that there will not be state cuts to education funding." He predicted flat funding would be the "best case." He also explained how state cuts in things like the Homestead Rebate will adversely affect schools -- those hardest hit by the elimination of the rebates will be seniors, who tend to use that rebate to pay their property tax. Without that help, they will feel even more resentful of property taxes and be more likely to vote against school budgets. (Of course, they won't be voting on budgets if A15 passes! Silver lining? JK)

The school board members present were encouraged folks to contact legislators (supposedly 1/8 of the entire legislature is from Bergen County) to reiterate opposition to moving the School Board elections to November.

All in all it was a thoroughly depressing evening.