Gov. Chris Christie, who has urged school districts to check spending and teachers to accept pay freezes, won a major victory as voters in most towns appeared to have rejected school budgets in elections Tuesday.
According to unofficial results, voters turned down 260 of 479 budgets in 19 counties Tuesday night -- a rejection rate of 54 percent. Budgets were on the ballots in a total of 537 districts across the state's 21 counties.
The defeats mean municipal governments who rarely deal with education issues will have to wrestle with the school budgets. The last time voters defeated a majority of school budgets was in 1976 -- the year before the state started collecting income taxes to subsidize running schools.
In the last few years, about three-fourths of the budget proposals have been approved by voters in elections with generally low turnout. The elections were particularly contentious this year because Christie and the state's largest teachers union have been sparring over property taxes and the quality of education -- with each side accusing the other of bullying.
Christie, a first-year Republican known for being blunt, urged voters to reject the budgets in communities where teachers did not agree to salary freezes for the coming year and accused schools that sent home election information with students as using them like "drug mules."
On the social networking site Facebook, a group called New Jersey Teachers United Against Governor Chris Christie's Pay Freeze has nearly 70,000 members. Comments from educators on the group have been emotional and sometimes venomous -- calling Christie obscene names, making fun of his weight and comparing him to Pol Pot, the former genocidal dictator in Cambodia.
The Bergen County Education Association apologized earlier this month after circulating a "prayer'' that suggested the governor should die. Christie, though, did not apologize for his ``drug mule'' line, even though the New Jersey Education Association called on him to do so.
Politics
The animosity ramped up in March when Christie's proposed state budget called for schools to get 11 percent less state-distributed aid. The governor said the cuts were a way to share the sacrifice as he tries to straighten out the state's financial mess.
Most school districts responded by proposing budgets that included both property-tax increases and layoffs of teachers and other staffers. Fees for participating in sports were raised in many communities; after-school programs were cut.
Christie said layoffs could be avoided if teachers agreed to a one-year pay freeze and to start paying 1.5 percent of their salaries toward their health insurance costs. He promised extra state funding to schools where the concessions are made. Still, most balked.
Teachers in only 20 districts agreed to concessions, and budget proposals failed even in some of those communities.
Steve Wollmer, a spokesman for the New Jersey Education Association, said that the vote results should not be taken as support of Christie's position. Rather, he said, it shows voters have rejected his cuts in aid, which shift more of the burden of paying for schools to property tax payers.
"People don't like Gov. Christie's approach," he said.
Mike Drewniak, a spokesman for the governor, said Christie would release a video statement later Wednesday morning.
Now, the budgets go to municipal governing bodies, which can cut the tax bills proposed by the schools. It's likely property taxes will still rise in many districts where budgets were rejected, and that layoffs will be deeper than originally planned. School districts can appeal those cuts to the state -- but such appeals are rare.
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