CRANBURY: School Board to ask public for help on budget

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CRANBURY — The Board of Education will hold a public meeting in January to discuss a possible $500,000 revenue shortfall in the district.

”The school district has done all of the trimming it can do,” said Austin Schraudenbach, vice president of the board.

Jan. 11, the board will open the discussion up to the public to hear their ideas.

Usually, there is a public hearing on the budget in March prior to the school election in April, but the Board of Education is holding a meeting two months earlier to receive input from the public earlier.

The budget shrank 8 percent last year with a 4 percent state-imposed cap, and the board predicts it will shrink the same amount again this year with the new state-imposed cap of 2 percent.
”Now we’re cutting into muscle and bone,” said Lynn Schwartz, board president. “We have to do all we can to maintain the integrity of our district. Because of mandates, we have to approach adequacy, and our children are going to suffer.”

The district also is facing a 14 percent increase in health-care costs for the district’s employees.

http://www.centraljersey.com/articles/2010/11/19/cranbury_press/news/doc4ce5752edfeb4527996302.txt

[Guest 2]

This is going to hurt. The school has cut a lot in the last several years -- and frankly I always have believed that we spent our $$ well and effectively prior to that. Now we have to cut more!

We are now going to have to make hard choices like:

increasing class sizes
cutting programs (music?, IA?)
Pay to Play (how much per sport/activity?)

Frankly -- pay to play will only net us around 30K a year - we just don't have that many kids -

cutting some music (can't cut ALL -- the state (and common sense) require some) will only save what? 100K -- and I think that is estimating high)

Cutting staff and increasing class size is next -- and even that will be difficult -- the classrooms in our building were built to accommodate only 25 kids per class -- not the larger 30 per class and we would have to get special permission from the state to put more kids in a too small room. Not pretty --

Thanks Governor Christie -- now we have to diminish the programming we offer our students -- even though we might be willing to pay for it -- simply because of this arbitrary cap.

Face it -- good stuff (education included) costs money!

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Would solar panels on the school roof save money?

Electric must cost and arm and a leg and with the mandate in NJ (correct me if I am wrong) that the State will eventually produce 20% of its energy from solar.....would that be a place to save a few $$$ ?

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[No Hack Attacks]

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What is the increase that the teachers will be receiving next year? Is there any room for negotiation and savings?

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What if we don't replace Mr. Haney? Wouldn't we save about $200k in salary and benefits?

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Thanks for the info. I was wondering if there's an opportunity to combine positions/ promote from within as the Township just did with Ms. Marabello.

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Lets have a bake sale!!!!!!!!!!!

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Can we sell naming rights to the school?
Instead of the Cranbury School, maybe, we can get paid to name it The Exxon-Mobil School-Cranbury?

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