The April Cranbury School newsletter

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"SCHOOL BUDGET

On Wednesday, April 27, 2011, Cranbury residents will be asked to approve a total tax levy of $14,941,270.00
exclusive of debt service. The total cost of the budget will be $.9809 cents per $100 of assessed value.
This year, four candidates are competing for three Board of Education positions: Jennifer Cooke, Pramod
Chivate, Kevin Fox and Evelyn Spann. During the second week of April, each family will receive a District
Budget Newsletter through the mail. If you think that you may be away on April 27th and will be unable to
vote, Mail-In Ballot applications are available on the home page of our Web site, www.cranburyschool.org."

SCIENCE EXPO

Our annual Science/Technology Expo will occur on April 27, 2011. We look forward to viewing the wonderful
science projects and experiments that the students display. Presently, the science teachers are recruiting
judges for the sixth, seventh, and eighth grade projects. If you have a scientific background and are
interested in critiquing students’ science projects, please see the Science Expo information that appears
inside this newsletter.

CANDIDATES NIGHT

On Wednesday, April 13, 2011, the PTO will host its annual Board of Education Candidate Night at 7:30 p.m.
in the Large Group Room of Cranbury School. This is a wonderful opportunity for the community to meet and
hear the opinions of the perspective candidates on topics related to education prior to the Budget/School
Election vote on Wednesday, April 27, 2011. All are invited and welcome to attend."
...

http://www.cranburyschool.org/documents/April2011Newsletter.pdf

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The old science expo and budget vote on the same night ploy again.

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Where is the outrage over a 4 cent increase? The town goes up 2 cents and we bash the mayor and everyone. The school goes up 4 cents and I hear crickets.

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Both the school and township budgets are decreasing and the tax rate increases are to offset lose in tax values not because either group went on spending sprees. The issue that "raged" over the Township budget on this site was never really about whether they are overspending but that there were other the methods to cover the budget without the tax increase given the probability of State funds and the available surplus, and the fact that they were choosing to use some of the money to retire debt early. I’m not sure there are comparable issues at the school. Is the school carrying a large surplus they could tap? Are they using money to electively retire debt?

That said, yes the school generally gets more of a pass than the school, despite the school being a larger budget, because a very strong percentage of the electorate live here for the schools. A lot of people would virtually shut down Township services before they touched core school programs. And a lot of people consider their school taxes a cheaper alternative to private school tuition. That is the reality of living in Cranbury.

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Total operating budget is decreasing to $16.6M from $17M. Total expenditure, including debt service and special grants, is decreasing to $17.7M from $18.1M.

This is from the same document you probably were looking at.

http://portal.cranburyschool.org/boe/Budget%20Info/User%20Friendly%20Budget.HTM

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It's right there in the document available at the link above. There is no one answer. There are numerous miscellaneous revenue sources that are different. The biggest one seems to be that last year they were able to take over $700,000 from a tuition reserve and this year that will only be $33,000.

It's also worth noting that while the budget is going down the cost-per-pupil is going up because enrollment is down a greater percentage than the budget reduction.