WEST MILFORD The Board of Education met on Tuesday night, the eve of Governor Corzine’s inaugural budget address, and planned to wait with baited breath on the recently elected state leader’s proposals for education spending. While Corzine’s budget was expected to include a series of cuts in an attempt to reduce the state’s overspending, the board’s Business Administrator Stephen Cea remained cautiously optimistic. Cea said, “The state has a very difficult budget problem but say they are committed not to having one-year gimmicks to try to solve anything. The governor was clear that aid for school districts will remain the same.” Cea also commented that the board had budgeted for the same amount of state aid received last year. The board has already approved a $60.8 million preliminary budget which is an increase of 2.6 percent on last year’s actual budget. Since this approval, however, the board has been working to find ways to trim the final figures and has already identified several items reducing the overall increase. The projected cost to taxpayers to meet this proposed budget was originally averaged at $184; however, with additional cuts made by the board, the burden on taxpayers may change before the public budget hearing next week. Over and above the budgeted figures, the board will also ask for voter approval for $430,000 to fund assorted extras, including a computer technician, a second nurse at the high school, new cafeteria tables, new high school lockers and a planetarium projector and software. The governor’s announcement on state aid, however, will not restore any items which have been earmarked to be cut, Cea said. “If we get more state aid, which is highly unlikely, it will not bring back programs. If we get more state aid we will lower the tax levy and if we get less state aid we will need to raise the tax levy.” In Corzine’s budget address on Wednesday afternoon, he said, “School aid for most districts will be flat except for growth in pension contributions, a modest increase for Abbott preschools, support for special education in heavily impacted districts and state-supported after school programs. Corzine added, “I appreciate that flat-funding in an inflating environment is a real cut. Reality and necessity must be the mother of invention. Just as the state must find spending reductions, other units of government must as well.” The Board of Education will hold a public hearing on their budget next Wednesday night, March 28, at Westbrook School starting at 8 p.m. The public vote to approve the final school budget will take place on April 19, the same day as elections to the school board. The state intends to pass its final budget by June 30. In other business The ongoing debate between some parents of second graders at Paradise Knolls School and the Board of Education shows no sign of dwindling. Parents again pleaded for the school board to hire more help for the two teachers who currently school the 49 second graders. One of those parents, MaryAnn Walsh, brought with her a photograph of the second graders and asked the board to look at it. Walsh said, “I wanted you to be able to put faces to the children you’ve heard so much about.” The parental complaints include frequent discipline problems in the classroom and children struggling with basic educational skills because of overcrowded classrooms. The sudden resignation of veteran teacher Daniel Mathews from the second grade also concerned parents. The board hired Kelly Reno in her first teaching appointment in late January of this year to replace Mathews. Parents have been going before the board at every meeting to request another teacher and make a third class of second graders. Superintendent of Schools Glenn Kamp responded to the parents’ complaints, as he has done before, by rejecting the idea of hiring an extra teacher with the money saved, because Matthews was at the top of the teacher scale and Reno is at the bottom. “We continue to hear that we are saving so much money, but this money is used throughout our budget. We have dealt very effectively with the discipline issue in that class and to improve reading and arts skills, we have also introduced a second reading period.” Parents left the meeting unmoved by Kamp’s words and are likely to continue calling for smaller a class size for their children.