Posted on 04/21/2010 1:55:57 PM PDT by LdSentinal
TEANECK, N.J. (CBS) ― Click to enlarge1 of 1 New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie accuses a local district of sending information back home to ask how parents will vote on school budgets.
After months of heated debate and angry protests, New Jersey residents woke up Wednesday morning to see that a majority of the proposed school budgets were defeated Tuesday night.
In one of those towns – Teaneck – several hundred students held a protest on the high school track.
The New Jersey school budget vote will likely be remembered for Governor Chris Christie's deep involvement in the debate, and residents' reaction to it.
Parents who spoke to CBS 2 say they believe some of their neighbors entered the voting booth without the information needed to cast an informed vote.
"It's not a good thing, because there's a lot of programs now [that will] probably be cut," one Carlstadt resident said.
That's because it's now up to local governments to either revise or accept those rejected budgets. Voters ultimately rejected a little more than half – 59 percent – of the budget proposals for consideration.
One of those budgets was in Teaneck, where high school students protested Wednesdays morning and refused to enter the building.
"I wanted to make sure that everyone sees that we're serious about this," Teaneck junior Gerard Rice said. "I mean, we're not going to let this happen."
The governor cut more than $800 million in state educational aid and framed the budget issue around hard financial times. He also urged residents to knock down any local budget that did not come with an agreement from teachers to freeze their pay.
"I think it's good that it didn't pass," Carlstadt resident Denise Oehmlmann said. "I don't want the children to be hurt."
On Wednesday, Christie said voters are saying "they can no longer afford a government that wishes problems away."
But in Hackensack, the budget passed by almost a 2-to-1 margin. Schools Superintendent Edward Kliszus says the vote was "a great victory," and that it makes a bold statement.
"I believe that parents in Hackensack displaced themselves from the state politics and focused on their children," Dr. Kliszus said.
What happened in Hackensack was not a fluke, though. Though most NJ school budgets were rejected, 55 of Bergen County's 74 proposals passed.
In the coming weeks, local governments across the Garden State will either recommend changes to the rejected budgets, or ignore voters and decide to accept them as is.
Here in Passaic County most of them were defeated....
I don’t have recent stats, but in the late 1990’s the average per intensive special needs pupil was costing NJ about $43k a year.
This has been a long tradition in NJ, and as is always the case with subsidies like this, it has attracted large numbers of households with special needs children to move in to NJ, that alongside the one year wait for pre-existing conditions and no lifetime cap on health insurance benefits has created towns such as Toms River. Which now has possibly the largest cluster of autism spectrum children in a single school district in North America.
The parents of the autism children were demanding that it be explained by environmental variables such as pollution, it turned out several generations of genetically pre-disposed to autism spectrum disorders families have been moving in to the town since the early 1970’s when they opened their special needs program catering to autism spectrum children.
Does this sound a lot like your kids when you inform them that you have to cut expenses to make sound decisions with a recent pay cut, "we can't cut cable, dinners out, personal cell phones for the kiddies," not to mention making them pay their own car ins. if they're going to drive.
Oh no, our elected class are always willing to threaten us with a loss of emergency services should we need to tighten our collective belt but never willing to give up their personal cell phones, credit cards and trips to exotic locales during winter as it's "necessary to function" rather than going to a local convention center to hold "fact-finding seminars."
Time to tell those living on our dollars, that they can just get by with less -- and NOT give up the essentials or we can find others who will do it for them!
Yes. And only a week ago the Gannet newspapers reported that a majority of New Jerseyans disapproved of Christie’s efforts to reign in the teacher’s union. I guess they were polling any New Jerseyan and not voting New Jerseyans.
Who the heck cares what people think who do not vote?
Now there's a damn good idea!
...until they are adults and have to pay for all of this.
“But there will be a backlash at some point as classes get larger and quality suffers.”
There will be a backlash. From the unions. From the parents, no.
What you going to do about it.
How about Vote !!!
Oh' you're not old enough to even vote so STFU
Little Marxist in the making
Teachers refuse to freeze their salaries instead of taking a 4 1/2 % raise, while I consider myself extremely fortunate to have received a 2.1% raise last year.
Half of my raise was taken away by an increase in my Medical contribution-the other half by an increase in my property taxes. Meanwhile, the Union balks at the request of Christie that teachers contribute a measly 1.5% towards their medical.
I had all the knowledge I need to make an educated decision.
This was by the way the first time since 1976 that more than 1/2 of the budgets were voted down. The public is in an ornery mood- so in your own words Mr Obama, if you want a VAT tax- “go for it”, it will be the fight of your life, and the fight of mine. Liberty is both political and economic, and you have taken enough of both-enough is enough!
Fine then, if you feel that way you scumbag "Carlstadt resident", get out your own checkbook and write a big check to the teachers union.
It’s already happened, you little twerp.
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