How a school budget is built.

Here's a video of the Bernards Township Superintendent of Schools (from the VoteApril27.com website) explaining what goes into their school budget -- which is remarkably similar to Ridgewood's. It's all stuff that our Dr. Fishbein or BOE members have stated at various times, but it's interesting to hear it from another perspective. I did notice her emphasis on a couple of points that I don't know if our community is always aware of. For example, when looking at Special Education costs, it's important to remember that the state law requires that our District (all districts) must provide special education to all youth from age 3 through 21. That's five years longer (or almost 40% longer) than we provide services to our regular education students, and it helps explain the size of the Special Education share of our budget. I wonder how many Ridgewood residents are aware of that.