Like many school districts nationwide, Upper Township School District in Petersburg, N.J., located near Ocean City is saddled with immense budget cuts. This school year, the district saw its operating budget reduced by nearly $1 million, and transportation was one of the program losers. To make ends meet, the school board to relocate school bus stops from neighborhood cul-de-sacs to hubs along busy area highways and to start school later in the day. And parents aren’t too thrilled.
But, according to news reports, many of those same parents voted down a new school budget. So the parents are saying that the school district is using the school bus stop changes as a way to penalize them.
Actually, that’s probably not too far from the truth. The parents are being penalized, and worse yet so are their children. But I wouldn’t say it’s the school district’s fault. As superintendent Vincent Palmierri says:
“We were charged to eliminate almost $1 million without impacting education … It’s hard. I don’t know how you do that without impacting education. We heard the community clearly and very loudly. We had a very defeated budget for a lot of reasons.”
Sometimes it takes an economic downturn to show people reality. I don’t relish tax increases, but I recognize that something has to give when it comes to expecting public services when there is only so much money to go around. Certainly, a case could be made for ensuring that money is spent in the wisest, most efficient manner. But according to this news article, it appears that is exactly what the school district is trying to do amid new state regulations for budget oversight.
You would think the recession would have taught us all a lesson by now that at some point society must be willing to shoulder the burden for increased costs of certain services or accept that those services will be reduced or eliminated.
