CHERRY HILL — Though it wasn't easy to swallow, the Board of Education last night was close to giving approval to a tentative school budget for 2002-03.
Put before the members was a $124.3 million plan, about $10 million more than last year's budget.
If voters approve the budget on April 16, the tax rate to support the schools will jump 13 cents to $2.20 per $100 of assessed value. The owner of a home assessed at $140,000 would pay about $182 more a year.
Rapidly rising insurance premiums and special-education and transportation costs, coupled with flat state aid, make cuts in some other areas necessary, officials said.
Scheduled to be cut is a districtwide rite of passage, a sixth-grade trip to Mount Misery, an environmental center in the Pinelands.
Each high school would lose four teaching positions, and Cherry Hill High School West would lose an assistant principal.
Money for supplies would decrease by 3 percent, and six courtesy bus routes would be lost.
$1.4 million in cutbacks
In all, cuts on the central administration, elementary, middle, and high school levels would total $1.4 million.
Over and over, school officials expressed frustration. Board members questioned a host of budget decisions, including cuts in library funding, teaching materials, and the allocation of teachers who help first and second graders learn to read.
"I don't know what to tell you to cut. But, boy, it saddens me to see cuts in library books," board member Donna Cohen said.
Superintendent Morton Sherman said he understood her frustration.
"You are now seeing the sort of issues we're dealing with when looking at balance," he said. "Mrs. Cohen, I don't know where else to cut, either."
District officials said the Mount Misery cut had been made possible by a growing emphasis on environmental education throughout the curriculum.
Mount Misery is a valuable program, but in a tough budget year it has to be sacrificed, said Nick Lorenzetti, an assistant superintendent.
Support for Mount Misery
A crowd of blue-shirted Mount Misery supporters fidgeted while administrators made speeches, but they were emphatic when it was their turn to speak about what they termed "a really cool" program.
"Mount Misery is a great learning experience. I've been waiting for six years to go, ever since I was in kindergarten," said Jeremy Savo, a Woodcrest School fifth grader who presented Sherman with a letter signed by 32 classmates.
The cost of the Mount Misery program for the current school year is about $126,000.
Lorenzetti indicated that the door was not totally closed on Mount Misery. He said principals, administrators and parents would meet again and make a final recommendation to Sherman.
Board members, too, urged that the spending plan and Mount Misery be reconsidered.
"Please look for this money, I am pleading with you," board member Jeanette Lummis said. "I don't want to see this budget go up, but I don't want to see a program that benefits every child in this district cut."
Though Sherman lamented the divisiveness that the budgeting process often creates in the community, he said he hoped consensus could be reached.
"We are a well-run, significant public business which answers regularly and publicly to the community," Sherman wrote in a budget statement.
Contact Kristen Graham at 856-779-3927 or kgraham@phillynews.com.
