Budget and Transparency - An 'Open' Conversation

With each passing year another budget cycle culminates in a public hearing on the annual budget and the necessary funding approval to authorize spending for our most valuable resources: our students! 

NJSBA Webcast on Budget
Laws and Regulations in 2009

Although the process is governed by budgetary laws and regulations requiring dissemination of budget materials, public advertisement, postings of the district's 'User Friendly Budget' and regulated by the election calendar published by the State of New Jersey; often individuals or groups espouse lack of transparency as a cry for more detailed information.  In truth, district's operate in a climate of heightened openness and awareness of the need to produce budgetary information that is reliable and easy to understand by community residents. 

Pictured here from left to right are participants Louis J. Pepe, business administrator for Summit Public Schools; Michael Kaelber, director of Legal and Policy Services for NJSBA; and Neil K. Cramer, Sussex County Executive County School Business Administrator and state coordinator, Executive County School Business Administrators.

Groups such as New Jersey School Boards Association continue to promote workshops, webcasts and blog information to assist board members in their role of budgetary oversight.

While it is important to engage the community and provide effective dialog on the budget process from development to content and ultimately the tax impact, the responsibility rests with the Board of Education to review and approve the final budget based on the needs of the students and ensure that the budget conforms to the goals of the district.  When comments anchored to 'transparency' are made, they linger against a backdrop of assumed community partnership and question the expectation of, 'working together'.

Each time a challenge to that authority is espoused by individual or as a group it calls into question the trust and confidence of the Board and Administration and serves to weaken or diminish the positive relationship that each group strives to build.  Perhaps the most astonishing fact is the economic climate compared to the fiscal performance of many districts over the past five years which does not warrant such scrutiny.

For decades, New Jersey voters in most districts voted on their school district’s proposed budget and on school board candidates each April.However, legislation enacted in early 2012 eliminated – for districts that moved board member elections to November – the requirement that a school board submit its proposed budget to a public vote as long as the budget remained at or below the state’s 2 percent tax levy cap. The overwhelming majority of boards have chosen this option, and so few districts now submit their budget to a public vote. However it is still important to adequately explain the school board’s and the superintendent’s rationale for choices made in the school budget. The required public budget hearing is an ideal time to do this. Boards which still have an April vote on their budget also hold spring budget hearings.  source - NJSBA School Leader, January/February 2013 - Volume 43.4