According to the Roselle Park School District (RPSD) website, a meeting has been scheduled for today, January 31st to discuss moving the annual school board election from April to November. This agenda coincides with New Jersey legislation allowing school elections to coincide with general elections.
The meeting will be held at EJF/Aldene School tonight, starting at 6 p.m. On the RPSD website, a second meeting – which is slated as a co-meeting between the Board Of Education (BOE) and the municipal governing body – is scheduled for Thursday, February 2.
According to the New Jersey Department of Education’s Guidance for the New Election Law, BOEs or other municipal governing bodies must pass a resolution to make the change by February 17, 2012 if they want to switch dates starting this year.
In the event the BOE does not decide to move their elections to November, under the new law it is not required that both the BOE and governing body agree on the change of the election date. A resolution to change the date from either government entity will move the election.
If the election moves to November, the BOE will re-organize in the first week of January and the terms of current BOE members who are up for election will be extended until the January re-organization meeting. The deadline for BOE candidates will be the day of the June primary election. Additionally, the school district will not incur base costs for the payment of board workers, voting machine transportation, overtime for county
election personnel, rental of polling places, or other inherent costs of an election including ballot printing since these costs are already covered by either the state or the county as part of the existing November general election. The new law does state that a school board would be responsible for any increased costs incurred only by a county board of election if the school election moves to November, if any.
The same legislation will also remove the voting of a school district budget from the election if it falls within the 2% tax hike cap was passed by the state Legislature earlier this month.