After reading the article on Freehold Regional High School District Superintendent of Schools Charles Sampson’s comments following the now twice defeated referendum, I was not surprised to hear about “reducing programs for our students” (who are supposed to be the main priority of education) to get “significant work” that was proposed done.
That brought up a few questions. What is being defined as “significant work” that the voters defeated twice? Who is now making that determination? What part of the proposals are now being deemed more important than others?
The voters already have stated twice that they thought what was being proposed was too much. This on top of the new contract containing a very nice jump in salary for Mr. Sampson, as well as more for the supervisors of extracurricular activities in the form of a new contract recently agreed to by the Board of Education, and who knows how much more to be done this year as well as upcoming years.
However, as I write this, we are all awaiting for a hopeful veto by Gov. Phil Murphy on the legislation mistakenly passed in Trenton to remove the 2% cap for those districts now receiving less funding from the state.
This while all manner of additional and unsustainable spending by these very same legislators has been implemented. And the legislation that allows districts to go above that cap does not give back the say by the voters in the budget that was part of that initial 2% cap legislation. That is totally wrong and I, for one, hope Murphy keeps his promise of a veto.
In a district such as the FRHSD, where residents support their local K-8, as well as the regional school district, residents are looking to get clobbered twice in some townships.
And with property taxes already at outrageous levels – part of the reason many school referendums in this state have failed – raising the cap now, with that $10,000 limit on our federal taxes currently in place, is just absolutely wrong.
I would much rather see spending cuts from Trenton and monies better distributed, especially to restore education funding, rather than even higher property taxes on the already beleaguered taxpayers.
Barry Hochberg
Marlboro
