NJ Education Report

Question: How are local school boards reacting to the reams of regulations recently issued by the DOE?

Answer: Pass the alka-seltzer.

The first part of these regulations, which comprise 85 crisp pages of arcana, attempts to implement the statutes handed down from the State Legislature last Spring. Local school boards are busy rubber stamping countless mandated policies, everything from barring glossy paper and retirement gifts for teachers to standardizing work titles and vehicle inventory control records.

At a school board meeting last week in the Mercer County district of East Windsor, board members and administrators went through the farce of approving items that they had been ordered to approve. The Times of Trenton reports that

members got upset with two new state-mandated policies that require them to set an estimated budget for all legal and professional services for the year, and a third that prohibits school districts from “expending public funds for honoring an employee or group of employees.” The same policy provides strict regulations of expenses for meals and refreshments.

Board members queried the Superintendent of East Windsor Regional, Ronald Bolandi, on their options, with one member calling the mandates “stupid.” Bolandi agreed with that assessment, said he had complained to the county superintendent to no avail, and told the members if they voted “no” then the district would fail QSAC, the new state monitoring system. The board sucked it up and voted “yes,” requesting that the “yes” votes be amended to include the phrase “under protest.”

It’s not the idea of requiring estimated budgets that have boards in a tizzy; they do that anyway (uh, require estimated budgets; tizzies are a matter of local preference. Boards generally would like, however, to have the ability to purchase little plaques to recognize 40 years of a teacher’s service, though that’s another matter). The heart of this mini-revolt is that which is anathema to school board members, mayors, Council members, and other proponents of home rule: the chipping away of local school governance. If Lucille Davy at the DOE issues regulations that dictate every facet of administration, school boards are rendered gratuitous.

Conspiracy theories abound. Corzine is secretly determined to use his lackey, Lucille Davy, to legislate away local power so that the State is really running standardized school districts. The new post of “Executive County Superintendent,” who has line-item veto over every school district budget in his respective county, approves all high-level administrative posts, and can order consolidation of individual districts, is really intended to replace our castrated superintendents and business administrators as the true power broker.

On the other hand, do we really need 615 school districts? Probably not. There may, however, be some middle ground between the inefficiencies and redundancies of home rule and the covert legislating away of all local control.