Yes, and

I’m voting yes / yes. I’m voting yes / yes because I believe that voting no on either or both measures will demand drastic and irrational cuts from our district. 

Some variant of a no vote could initiate immediate cuts of $9.4m to more than $10m. The district cut 108 staff members in January and succeeded in cutting $2.8m. How many staff members do we need to cut to get to $10m?

Staff members aren’t the only way to achieve cuts. We can also defund all freshman and junior varsity teams, eliminate two world languages programs at the high school, terminate all field trips and funded clubs. 

While we’re at it, let’s permanently close one school and increase class sizes to thirty in our middle schools and high school. The national average is 21 in high school and 22 in Middle School. The average class size in a New Jersey high school is 19.1, and the Mississippi miracle has 17.9 in their high schools. What could go wrong?

I’m voting yes / yes because I’m afraid that some variant of “no” will disrupt our children’s education just like COVID did. We’ll have learning loss because of packed classes and overworked teachers. The lack of clubs and sports will remove meaningful on-ramps for social development and community formation. And in all that chaos, discipline will suffer, and disciplinary incidents will increase.

But just because I’m voting yes / yes doesn’t mean I don’t think we can make better decisions about how our district spends tax payer money. I believe we have a big opportunity to increase transportation efficiency and improve our contracts with vendors. I like the idea of removing dedicated chrome books from elementary schools and restoring these to cart-access. The research supports it. We do need a dedicated preschool, and the state funding system would help get a building off of our books. Some of these may not be popular, but they are necessary.

There are ways to save money, and we need to pursue them – even if it’s yes / yes. It’s only reasonable.