Many Camden County school budgets being passed

With official results still being tabulated Wednesday night, a number of Camden County school districts reported passage of their school budgets.

Preliminary figures indicated that districts might fare better than they did last year, when 59 percent of school budgets in the state - and half in Camden County - went down in defeat.

The atmosphere was calmer this year, said Haddon Township superintendent Mark Raivetz, whose district's budget passed by a sizable margin Wednesday after being defeated in 2010.

"Last year was pure emotion on everyone's part," he said.

Budgets also were passed for Cherry Hill, Haddonfield, Voorhees, Collingswood, and Pennsauken, pending an official tabulation by the county election board.

Following Gov. Christie's dramatic cuts in education funding last year, voters turned out in unusually high numbers. The turnout appeared more typical this year.

In Cherry Hill, which has a population of 71,000, 6,000 people went to the polls, about half of last year's total, a district spokesman said.

At the Pennsauken Intermediate School, there was little traffic going in and out of the polling stations around 7 p.m.

Ken Linden, a Camden High School teacher, stood in the parking lot with a campaign sign and said he expected the low turnout.

"School board elections don't attract a large amount of voters," he said. "People aren't as interested."

After last year's stark rebuke by voters, some school boards didn't go near the 2 percent cap on increases to the property tax levy imposed by Christie last year.

Yet in Pennsauken, the budget passed only narrowly.

"With a zero increase there shouldn't have been an issue," said Cheryl Link, a former school board president, who had anticipated a wider margin of victory.

Outside Cherry Hill High School West during the afternoon, some township residents expressed skepticism that the school district was doing everything it could to keep taxes down.

With increased funding from the state, the board was able to increase its budget by 2 percent to $167.3 million at the same time it lowered the property tax levy by $500,000.

Robert Lang, whose 9-year-old daughter attends public school, said he liked the schools but couldn't abide any more tax increases.

"It's enough. They have enough money to work with," he said.

But to many, the annual school elections barely registered. Outside Pennsauken Intermediate School, two mothers stood on the soccer field watching their sons take practice shots in the fading sunlight.

They hadn't voted on the district budget or school board candidates and had no plans to do so, though they said they voted in state and federal elections.

"I don't know who the people are, and I don't know what they do," said Rebecca Watson.