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concerned
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 Posted: Fri, May 18 2007, 9:07 am EDT Post subject: Merge with East Windsor? |
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| I heard with the new law passed, it is likely Cranbury may merge with East Windsor school. If it is true, the house price will definitely crash, any thought? |
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J
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| Posted: Fri, May 18 2007, 9:55 am EDT Post subject: Re: Merge with East Windsor? |
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| concerned wrote: | | I heard with the new law passed, it is likely Cranbury may merge with East Windsor school. If it is true, the house price will definitely crash, any thought? |
Yes, but you heard this where exactly? Rumors without a basis are easily spread...
The law that was passed is nowhere close to just allowing this. It allows for the appointment of a county school supervisior (hasn't happened yet), who may in turn call for a (very long) study (hasn't happened) of school districts efficiencies, then end of which may or may not be a recommendation for consolidation of services that the townships must vote on. Best case, it is a couple years away, and the odds are extremely low it would happen. Plus, even if directionally it was going to, there is absolutely no reason to believe it would be with East Windsor versus South Brunswich or even Plainsboro (since its current connection with West Windsor crosss county lines anyway)...
Also, the entire premise is based on the prospect that the studioes demonstrate that the schools could be more cost effectively run together and that isn't likely to happen in the case of Cranbury. As it stands, Cranbury receives among the lowest percentage of state funding of any public schools in the State -- in fact, Cranbury taxpayers contribute more to the State education funds than we receive back, so we are so effecient that we actually are subsidizing other school systems in the State. Therefore, even if they tried to merge the Cranbury school, there would be lawsuits that challenge the legal validity since the facts would contradict the legla basis for doing so... |
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Guest
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| Posted: Fri, May 18 2007, 3:08 pm EDT Post subject: Re: Merge with East Windsor? |
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| Common sense tells me that a law that makes good thing bad is a bad law that will be fiercely opposed by people. |
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J
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| Posted: Fri, May 18 2007, 10:51 pm EDT Post subject: Re: Merge with East Windsor? |
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| Guest wrote: | | Common sense tells me that a law that makes good thing bad is a bad law that will be fiercely opposed by people. |
First of all, I agree it is a bad law. It was typical NJ politics. There was a political imperitive that there be some symbolic law or laws passed to show the politicians we're serious about property tax relief. They did a lot of studies and considered a lot of things, including some that would have really affected property taxes, like taking on the unions (government workers, hospitals, schools, etc.) over health benefits and pensions, etc, or privatizing the NJ Turnpike. But there ovbious strong interest group opposition to these things so naturally good policy was not as important as special interest influence to the politicians. But they still had to find SOMETHING. So they latched onto this bill based on inherently illogical and false premises, because it only negatively affects small towns with small populations while helping the unions and larger districts at our expense. It was a perfect political solution. Their premise is larger school districts will be more economically efficient because they can have proportionately fewer administrators. But the facts are exactly the opposite. The larger districts have more layers of administration and require disproportionate state funds (in other words, we already are subsidizing them). The politicians knew these facts but conveniently ignored them.
All that said, keep in mind this law wasn't passed speciically with Cranbury in mind. Sprinkled around the state are less successful examples of small school districts. They are more likely to be impacted than us. |
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