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Schools

School Budget: Teachers Added, Laptops Provided

Spending plan would raise property taxes $37 on average township home.

The unanimously approved Monday night a $113 million budget for the 2012-13 school year that will increase township property taxes by less than 1 percent, but will restore some staff positions, programs and fund a laptop computer for every teacher.

Hillsborough and Millstone residents will have an opportunity to vote on the budget in the annual school election on April 17. Hillsborough is among just 13 percent of school districts in the state that chose to retain an April budget referendum.

Under the terms of the budget, the school property tax on an average Hillsborough home assessed at $368,700 will increase by $37, Superintendent of Schools Jorden Schiff said. Taxes on a home assessed at $150,000 will increase $15 while taxes on a $700,000 house will increase by $70.

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In Millstone, the tax increase will be larger because of a 5 percent decrease in ratables, the superintendent said. Taxes on an average home in Millstone assessed at $324,474 will increase by $209, with taxes on a $150,000 home increasing by $97 and $451 on a house assessed at $700,000.

“We have to be able to move the school district forward, while being very sensitive to taxes,” Schiff said.

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Among the key parts of the budget, Schiff explained, is a comprehensive revision of the district’s curriculum and the restoration of a world language program in grades K-4. The program, eliminated in previous austere budget years, will teach both Spanish and Mandarin Chinese, the superintendent said.

The budget will also add 5.5 teaching positions in a “targeted” plan to reduce class size in the upper grades. A guidance counselor position focusing on career and college options will be added at the high school.

The district will also enter into a four-year leasing program at an annual cost of $300,00 to $400,000 to provide every teacher with a laptop computer, Schiff said.

One of the primary reasons the district will be able to expand staff and programs, Schiff explained, is an agreement with the Hillsborough Education Association, the teachers union, on the amount that teachers will contribute to their health insurance costs.

Teachers now pay 12 percent of their health insurance premiums and that will rise to 18 percent next year, the superintendent said. The district has also switched to the less expensive state health insurance program.

“It’s a shared sacrifice,” Schiff said.

Because dental insurance premiums are declining 4 percent, the district was also able to add two more teaching positions, the superintendent said.

Skyrocketing health insurance costs was one of the factors that led to the district eliminating 66 positions in the 2010-11 budget, Board Member Greg Gillette said. The agreement with the HEA is one of the reasons why the district has proposed restoring 29.5 of those positions.

“It’s a tremendous contribution,” he said.

Gillette, urging residents to approve the spending plan, said it is “a very responsible budget” with a “tremendous amount of compromise.”

“I can say that $37 will pay for something worthwhile,” Gillette said.

Board Member Marc Rosenberg said that in the proposed budget “money is going into the right places.”

Rosenberg said the leasing of the computers will benefit the teachers.

“It’s about time the professionals in our district are treated like professionals in other industries,” he said.

He said the proposed budget is “the right balance of sacrifice and investment.”

“If we’re going to make our kids more competitive, it’s going to be through education,” Rosenberg said.

Board Member Christopher Pulsifer said the district is “barely keeping up” and “we have to try to catching up in areas we have fallen behind.”

Board President Steven Paget reiterated that the proposal is “a very responsible budget” and “puts things back in a thoughtful way.”

“A lot of the state is far ahead of us in terms of technology,” he said.

Less than a dozen residents spoke at the public hearing on the budget.

Karen Matthews, a township resident, a fifth-grade teacher at and the mother of a third-grader, said she was “very excited” that all teachers will be getting a laptop, but she wondered what to say to residents who may complain about the cost and say it may not be “really necessary.”

Schiff said the district is taking advantage of the historically low interest rate of 1.5 percent in the leasing program. “That’s unheard of,” he said.

In addition, the superintendent said, the laptops allow teachers to be “more mobile” than desktop models by being wireless.

Schiff also said the computers will help teachers prepare students for “21st Century skills.”

Information on the budget can be found on the school district’s website.        

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