The School Budget Passed and the existing board members were reelected
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Guest
PostPosted: Wed, Apr 27 2011, 10:49 pm EDT    Post subject: The School Budget Passed and the existing board members were reelected Reply with quote
Board Members

Jennifer K. Cooke 367 Winner
Pramod N. Chivate 292
Kevin G. Fox 328 Winner
M. Evelyn Spann 317 Winner

Budget Question
Yes 333 Passed
No 180
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Guest
PostPosted: Thu, Apr 28 2011, 7:49 am EDT    Post subject: Re: The School Budget Passed and the existing board members were reelected Reply with quote
Congratulations to the incumbent candidates and thank you to Mr. Chivate for stepping up to volunteer.
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Guest
PostPosted: Thu, Apr 28 2011, 10:13 am EDT    Post subject: Re: The School Budget Passed and the existing board members were reelected Reply with quote
I heard it didn't pass in West Windsor.
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Guest
PostPosted: Thu, Apr 28 2011, 11:16 am EDT    Post subject: Re: The School Budget Passed and the existing board members were reelected Reply with quote
Guest wrote:
I heard it didn't pass in West Windsor.


Budgets failed in West Windsor and Monroe. It narrowly passed in Plainsboro but since the school district is shared with WW not sure how that will work. It lost by a huge margin in Monroe. I feel for the people with families who have lived there for a very long time but I have never understood what other people with kids were thinking when they moved into all those new homes built considering how many retirement communities were being built there. It was obvious that would lead to a permanent tax conflict between those with kids and that those without that the families would be on the losing side.
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Guest
PostPosted: Thu, Apr 28 2011, 12:01 pm EDT    Post subject: Re: The School Budget Passed and the existing board members were reelected Reply with quote
Traditionally, West Windsor tends to vote down budgets and Plainsboro tends to pass them. This is a possible source of instability in that district.
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Guest
PostPosted: Thu, Apr 28 2011, 1:18 pm EDT    Post subject: Re: The School Budget Passed and the existing board members were reelected Reply with quote
In pratical terms voting down school budgets is a mostly symbolic act. Look at what happened last year when a majority in the State failed. In a vast majority of cases the subsequent adjustments were small and token. And then the electorate turns around and still votes mostly for the incumbents that largely ignored the "mandate" of the no votes with their tiny reductions. Meanwhile the portion of the budgets that re based on state mandates gets larger and larger with no action on the part of the state to change that. So really the entire school budget voting process is mostly optical and not meaningful.
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Guest
PostPosted: Thu, Apr 28 2011, 3:55 pm EDT    Post subject: Re: The School Budget Passed and the existing board members were reelected Reply with quote
Guest wrote:
In pratical terms voting down school budgets is a mostly symbolic act. Look at what happened last year when a majority in the State failed. In a vast majority of cases the subsequent adjustments were small and token. And then the electorate turns around and still votes mostly for the incumbents that largely ignored the "mandate" of the no votes with their tiny reductions. Meanwhile the portion of the budgets that re based on state mandates gets larger and larger with no action on the part of the state to change that. So really the entire school budget voting process is mostly optical and not meaningful.


I think you are correct, but I question some of your reasoning. I don't think incumbents ignore the mandate. I think people get on these boards and discover there is little discretion on the part of board members. They can't change curriculum much, this is locked in by state mandate and testing. For instance, 1st graders must have foreign language training. Roughly 3/4's of their budget is fixed.

The only way boards can cut spending is to cut staff. They can privatize custodial work, cut extracurriculars and increase staff size. All of these things get major pushback from the community. I think some of the same people who want the budget cut also complain when there are 25 students in there kids class.

Over the past 10 years curriculum has become standardized through state and federal mandates. Local control is slowly becoming extinct.
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Guest
PostPosted: Thu, Apr 28 2011, 4:49 pm EDT    Post subject: Re: The School Budget Passed and the existing board members were reelected Reply with quote
Guest wrote:
Guest wrote:
In practical terms voting down school budgets is a mostly symbolic act. Look at what happened last year when a majority in the State failed. In a vast majority of cases the subsequent adjustments were small and token. And then the electorate turns around and still votes mostly for the incumbents that largely ignored the "mandate" of the no votes with their tiny reductions. Meanwhile the portion of the budgets that re based on state mandates gets larger and larger with no action on the part of the state to change that. So really the entire school budget voting process is mostly optical and not meaningful.


I think you are correct, but I question some of your reasoning. I don't think incumbents ignore the mandate. I think people get on these boards and discover there is little discretion on the part of board members. They can't change curriculum much, this is locked in by state mandate and testing. For instance, 1st graders must have foreign language training. Roughly 3/4's of their budget is fixed.

The only way boards can cut spending is to cut staff. They can privatize custodial work, cut extracurricular and increase staff size. All of these things get major pushback from the community. I think some of the same people who want the budget cut also complain when there are 25 students in there kids class.

Over the past 10 years curriculum has become standardized through state and federal mandates. Local control is slowly becoming extinct.


I wasn't endorsing the mandate, so I don't think we disagree. These board members are in a tough spot. And I agree that people often vote in the abstract for less spending but aren't happy with what that really means. But I do think when people vote down these budgets they are signaling a mandate, however ill-informed, that they want more than token cuts or whatever it takes not to see tax increases despite the declining tax base. So the net result is to not meet the implied voter mandates. You are correct that to do so they would almost certainly have to cut staff and non-core academic programs.

It’s really the same issue that impacts the budget nationally. In general people are for meaningful budget and debt reductions but everyone spends time talking about programs that make up a tiny, tiny percent of the problem and when there is any mention of the kind of thing that would be required to meaningfully move the dial, like changes to social security or Medicare or major tax increases, many of the same people that said they wanted to bring debt down start protesting. This comes from a basic lack of knowledge about what really makes up the lion’ share of our expenditures. The same is true for school budgets.
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Guest
PostPosted: Thu, Apr 28 2011, 7:08 pm EDT    Post subject: Re: The School Budget Passed and the existing board members were reelected Reply with quote
You are right. I think we are in agreement. The difference between local and national budgets are that the national budgets have no mandates (they create the mandates). The local budgets have to obey federal and state mandates which gives them less discretion.
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Guest
PostPosted: Thu, Apr 28 2011, 9:01 pm EDT    Post subject: Re: The School Budget Passed and the existing board members were reelected Reply with quote
Guest wrote:
You are right. I think we are in agreement. The difference between local and national budgets are that the national budgets have no mandates (they create the mandates). The local budgets have to obey federal and state mandates which gives them less discretion.


They have the equivilent of mandates in the $14 trillion in accumulated debt and the major entitlement programs that consume so much of the budgets before they spend a dime on anything else.
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Guest
PostPosted: Thu, Apr 28 2011, 11:49 pm EDT    Post subject: Re: The School Budget Passed and the existing board members were reelected Reply with quote
Guest wrote:
Guest wrote:
You are right. I think we are in agreement. The difference between local and national budgets are that the national budgets have no mandates (they create the mandates). The local budgets have to obey federal and state mandates which gives them less discretion.


They have the equivilent of mandates in the $14 trillion in accumulated debt and the major entitlement programs that consume so much of the budgets before they spend a dime on anything else.


Yes but it is in their power to change the entitlement programs. Local governments don't have that power.
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Guest
PostPosted: Fri, Apr 29 2011, 9:21 am EDT    Post subject: Re: The School Budget Passed and the existing board members were reelected Reply with quote
Guest wrote:
Guest wrote:
Guest wrote:
You are right. I think we are in agreement. The difference between local and national budgets are that the national budgets have no mandates (they create the mandates). The local budgets have to obey federal and state mandates which gives them less discretion.


They have the equivalent of mandates in the $14 trillion in accumulated debt and the major entitlement programs that consume so much of the budgets before they spend a dime on anything else.


Yes but it is in their power to change the entitlement programs. Local governments don't have that power.


We're splitting hairs. That's why I used the work "equivalent" and not the same. They can't just "change" the $14+ trillion in debt service which is huge. And while they could in theory "change" the entitlement programs they cannot do so fundamentally immediately so it would still represent a huge burden in the short term. The point is the net result is similar to the net result of state mandates on local and school budgets, debt service and already committed entitlement programs represent a very large portion of the federal budget. And if you don't agree about the entitlement programs, fine. Just on the basis of the debt alone the point is still the same.
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