School election anxiety

Monday, April 07, 2008

Board of education members have got to be a bit jittery about the upcoming school budget elections. A number of factors outside their control could disrupt their meticulous strategy for getting voters to accept higher property taxes to fund more education spending.

In a state where residents are obsessed with property taxes, the education industry in past years, nevertheless, consistently managed to get voters to go along with more school spending, even though they knew their wallets would be cleaned out.

In the past 30 years, the budget approval rate has never dipped below 51 percent, and 67 percent is more the norm. This year, indications are that school boards, uncertain of what voters will do, have been more circumspect in drafting budgets. Gov. Jon Corzine's new school funding formula, which has been approved by the Legislature, contains an additional $533 million this year, which helped most districts stay within the required 4 percent lid on increased spending.

But education leaders realize that a number of factors, some intangible, can affect the upcoming elections.

For starters, the voting takes place on April 15. That date alone is enough to cause taxpayers to be a bit more reflective than usual about how much they pay in taxes and whether the money is well spent. Besides, the school budget is the only one on which voters have a say. Their pent- up dissatisfaction with state and local government spend ing may find expression through "no" votes on school budgets.

But there are more omi nous signs. The economy is sliding, the home mortgage crisis is growing and the unemployment rate is climbing. All this is sure to cause some to be skittish about okaying spending increases.

Statistics show that generally when the economy is doing well, voters are much more inclined to approve higher budgets. The data also show that often when voter participation increases, budget approval rates de crease.

So the task for the education lobby is to identify supporters, get them to the polls and hope the rest of the vot ers stay home, as they usually do.

There are other indications that school boards are leery of the public, which last fall rejected what was considered a slam dunk -- a $400 million bond issue for stem cell research.

This year just 28 districts are asking voters to approve spending above the legal 4 percent cap. That's a significant drop. For the past eight years, on average 70 school boards asked voter permis sion to exceed the cap. A new law requires that such questions gain a 60 percent approval rate -- a standard that could be particularly tough to meet in such uncertain times.

One thing is for sure. On April 15, school leaders in 549 districts will be more anxious than ever to see what the vot ers have to say.