Myth:  All the Chatham School Board has done is move the school elections from April to November, right?

Fact:  No, that’s the least of it. They’ve also abolished our traditional right to vote on the $60 million annual school budget that consumes 2/3 of our property tax dollars and determines the education of our children.

Myth:  They can’t do that without our permission!

Fact:  Yes, they can. A New Jersey law passed in 2012 allows any school board to abolish the right to vote on the school budget simply by resolving to postpone the annual school elections from April to November.

Myth:  But our Chatham School Board wouldn’t do that!

Fact: That’s precisely what they did do on October 5: abolish our right to vote on the annual school budget. The Board  wasn’t keen on the idea back in 2012 when they first got that power, but they sure warmed up to it last April 2015, after 35% of Chatham voters turned out to defeat the Board’s $25 million Arts Center referendum by 2 to 1. On August 31, concerned citizens presented more than 300 petitions beseeching the Board to let voters weigh in on whether or not to relinquish the right to vote on the budget, but the Board rejected the idea out of hand. On October 5, six members of the Board voted to abolish our right to vote, two opposed (Gilfillan and Cronin), and one absent .

Myth: That’s no big deal because there’s a 2% cap on the school budget, so we still get to vote if the school budget goes up more than 2%, right?

Fact:  No, far from it. That so-called 2% “cap” has  many exceptions – including health and pension benefits, construction and debt service, enrollment increases and emergencies, to name a few. The exceptions are elastic and the BOE has the power to bank increases for 3 years. In effect, that so-called 2% “cap” is actually a floor virtually insuring that the school budget will never increase less than 2% on average. Now that we’ve lost our right to vote on the budget, there’s no telling how big the school budgets might increase, and there will be nothing we can do to protect ourselves and our property values.

Myth: It’s only money.

Fact: No, what’s at stake here is a lot more than money. At  stake here is virtually our last measure of local control of our schools and the education of our own children. The reason is that the school budget determines things like how much science versus sex ed and how much art versus soccer and which math curriculum teachers will use. Having the power to vote down a bad budget enables parents to make sure the Board gets the right mix . Now that parents have lost control of the budget, they are virtually powerless to influence the education of their own children.

Myth: So what? We can still influence the Board by expressing our views at public Board meetings.

Fact: While you may continue to speak at board meetings, now that you’ve lost your power to vote down the budget, your ability to actually influence school policy and curriculum is virtually nil unless perhaps you are a leader of one of the groups close to the Board. From now on, about the only way you’re going to be able to get the Board’s attention is by voting down another one of their big spending projects.

Myth: Moving the school election to November will bring a bigger turnout.

Fact: Sounds logical but it seems the move to November doesn’t actually mean more voters in school elections. In fact, it seems that holding school elections in November tends to reduce voter participation, and involve partisan politics in the schools, as former Ramsey, NJ school board president Richard Muti has shown here  and here.

Myth: But it ‘s good that we lost the right to vote, because we’ll gain some protection against the pension costs that Trenton is planning to drop on the school districts, as Board President Jill Weber explained at the September 15 meeting. (Skip to approx. 33 minutes.)

Fact: Ms Weber was mistaken. She knows of no such protection and it doesn’t exist as far as we can tell.

Myth: Our Board of Education is simply trying to protect us from a catastrophe, caused by voter rejection of the operating budget!

Fact: Sacrificing our right to vote can’t protect us from anything. On the contrary, it leaves us powerless to protect ourselves. The only thing the Board achieved by taking away your right to vote is to rule out the possibility – however far fetched – that you might vote down one of their budgets. They essentially admitted that at the September 15th meeting.

Myth: But if voters were to reject the school budget, the Board says it would have to lay off 40 teachers! It would be a catastrophe!

Fact:  Sounds scary, but with enthusiastic public school families in almost half of all Chatham households, and durable VOTE YES signs in many lawns, it is extremely unlikely that our district would ever vote down any school budget.  Even in the extremely unlikely event that we were to do so, our elected representatives on the Borough Council and Township Committee would convene to resolve the matter by a process  that has been thoroughly explained by Township Mayor Sullivan here: https://www.tapinto.net/towns/chatham/categories/letters-to-the-editor/articles/municipalities-role-in-the-school-budget-process  There would be no catastrophe unless both panels of elected representatives could agree to sacrifice our schools, our property values, and their own. How likely is that?

Myth: If simply we trust our Board of Education, there’s nothing to worry about.

Fact: This isn’t about trust. It’s about our future.  Having lost our right to vote on school budgets, we’re stuck with that fate by law for at least four years – long after the current Board terms have expired. At that point, it may be impossible to reverse course, as the citizens of Lacey Township, NJ  are learning the hard way. Having lost our voting rights on Oct. 5, chances are that we will never regain them.

Myth: But Chatham has always been special. Our long tradition of excellence won’t change simply because the board chooses to disenfranchise parents.

Fact:  One big reason Chatham was special – and our schools great – is that we all cared about education. Until Oct. 5 we were one of a handful of NJ school districts that still enjoyed some measure of local control, including the right to vote on the school budget. Now that the Board has abolished our right to vote, destroying the tradition of community involvement that has always made our schools great, Chatham may not be quite so special anymore, and neither will be our schools.