Voters Approve $91M Ridgewood School Budget

The small amount of eligible voters who turned out Tuesday night more often than not checked the 'yes' box, approving the $91 million 2013-2014 Ridgewood school budget.

According to unofficial results, 1206 'yes' votes were tallied, opposed to the 988 'no' votes, a margin of 55 to 45 percent. Running unopposed, trustees Michele Lenhard (1383 votes) and Jim Morgan (1302 votes) were re-elected to three-year terms.

The average homeowner with property valued at $687,000 will see their school taxes rise $203. 

"I'm happy that the budget passed, especially when it was an uncontested board member election," said Superintendent Dan Fishbein. "And we move on from here."

The $91,287,513 budget contains no layoffs or cuts in programming. It supports the construction of a new library at the high school, new e-text books, increased professional development initiatives at the middle school level, and a wealth of new course offerings at the high school.

School administrators  to reach a 2 percent tax increase, drawing from $200,000 of fund balance, $500,000 in salary breakage and benefiting from a $2 million savings by switching to the state health care plan. Teachers are also paying more into health care costs.

But challenges remain, now and going forward. Enrollment is increasing, and special education figures are skyrocketing.

Board of Education President Sheila Brogan said she thinks residents saw the educational value when they took to the polls on Tuesday.

"If they were listening to our budget presentations, they saw that we really have tried to do a lot to control the growth of our costs," she said. "Our major costs revolve around enrollment issues and curriculum."

Next year, the district won't benefit from many of the one-time financial boons that were so beneficial in 2013-2014.

"It may be a difficult budget in terms of what we see in growth next year," Brogan said. "But we continue to look at ways of doing things differently."