Moving date of election will be political cocktail

Terry Spilken has served on the Marlboro K-8 School District Board of Education for many years. He is a person who has earned respect through his actions as a board member and someone whose opinions on issues relating to school districts should be considered.

He said something at a recent meeting that I strongly agree with and I think people in positions of power in Trenton should consider what Spilken had to say.

Right now, a bill is under consideration, and if it passes the Assembly and the Senate and is signed into law by the governor, it will have two effects on how school districts in New Jersey operate.

First, the annual school election would be moved from its traditional date in April to the date of the general election in November. This means that on the day you vote for president, governor, members of the state Legislature, county freeholders and/or members of local governing bodies, you would also vote for members of your local school board.

It is evident to Spilken and it should be evident to anyone else with a modicum of intelligence that taking a nonpartisan election for members of a school board and moving it from April to November will politicize the process.

Speaking at a recent meeting of the Marlboro school board, Spilken made that very point. I agree with him as I agree with anyone else who realizes this would be a disturbing change.

The goal of those who are supporting the legislation say their goal is to increase voter participation in school board elections. They say that moving the school election from April to the general election day in November will see more people voting for school board members.

No kidding. But that's because more people vote in the November election than in the April school election and not because they would care one more iota about who serves on a school board. More uninformed voters in November is not what I call an improvement.

Switch the school board vote from April to November and you will see candidates for the local governing body running in tandem with people who are seeking seats on the local school board. You will see slates of four, five and six people who seek to control both public bodies. You will hear school board candidates mimicking political hopefuls. You will overload voters who can't keep most candidates straight now.

This is a dumb plan, and it should be rejected by the state Senate and Assembly, or if it ever gets to his desk, by the governor.

The second thing the pending state legislation would do would take away the public's right to vote on a local school budget if the budget that is being proposed by the board for the coming school year is at or under a spending limit that has been established by the state.

On this point I would probably lean toward keeping the school budget as an item to be voted on by the public. I have no doubt that given a spending limit by the state with no vote by members of the public being necessary, most school boards would shoot for that maximum allowable spending amount every year.

Residents, however, might like to see their local school administrators work a little harder to keep as much of a rein on spending as possible, and the only way residents can do that is with the threat of rejecting the budget at the voting booth and mandating more reductions in spending.

But there are at least two sides to every story, and I would be happy to publish comments from someone who strongly believes there should not be a public vote on the school budget and who could convince me that school boards would not always shoot for the maximum allowable expenditure.

Mark Rosman is the managing editor of the News Transcript. He may be reached at gmntnews@gmnews.com.