Remember where this is coming from...Philly Inquirer!
I live in the county mentioned. I WENT to the meeting where over 3000 parents and teachers met these so-called legislators. The "experiment" they talk about was nothing but a power grab by the state with a bait and switch show. Not ONCE did the state senators say how they were going to save money...what they wanted to do was set up a county-wide district...dissolve all local elected school boards by making them "advisory," politically appoint a 4 member board for the whole county (Corzine of course would be in on that), fire the superintendents (who would then simply bump on down the line of administration and still be paid the same)and the list goes on. They could not even explain the mechanism to be used for lowering taxes because it WOULD'T! Does anyone here think that this new politically appointed superintendent wouldn't hire loads of people? With no vote to fire the school board OR the superintendent, the voters would have no say at all!!!
A democrat in North Jersey put this thing together, it never got press and was going to push it through the same way ALL of New Jersey politics is done...on the sly. They had NO plan for savings....they're just trying to get a quick fix for high property taxes and our senator was trying to accomodate Corzine by throwing up our county as the guinea pig! The plan would mandate TEN YEARS of experimenting before requiring it to work!!!
We ARE the stupid state....BUT not in this case. This was another way to shaft southern New Jersey (probably the most conservative area---and that's not much-- in the state)
ping
Correction please!
Southern New Jersey is not the conservative part. They haven't elected a conservative congresscritter in years. The most conservative part is the northwest: Sussex and Hunterdon and Somerset and Morris counties.
These areas also have opposed the plan which would do away with home rule for local schoolboards.