The New Jersey School Boards Association annual convention is normally a staid event: long days wandering through the vendors’ exhibits and picking up free pens and rulers, plowing through sessions like “Between Board Micromanagement and Board in the Dark: Navigating the Balance of Power” and “Lessons Learned in Conquering Mold: A Proactive Approach for School Districts,” bantering with colleagues about turf fields and assessment models.

This year’s convention was a bit different. While the usual wandering, plowing, and bantering occurred, the zeitgeist seems to have shifted from staid to steamed. Chock it up to a combination of State budget shortfalls, new expensive mandates, the threat of consolidation of school districts, and, mostly, to the Niagara of regulations gushing forth from Lucille Davy and the Department of Education.

The annual panel, NJSBA State Legislative Update, usually attracts only the more militant school board members and lobbyists. Originally scheduled in one of the lecture halls, the panel was moved to the largest ballroom when word came that Governor Jon Corzine would make an appearance.

About 2000 people listened attentively through a question and answer session manned by Assemblymen Joseph Cryan and David W. Wolfe, and State Senator Jim Whelan (more on that later).

Corzine came in mid-way to a few muted catcalls but mostly respectful applause and did his usual pro-education stump speech: the State has increased education spending by 23% since his election, 55% of property taxes go to schools (remember, this audience loves this), and the last thing he’ll cut will be education funding. School district consolidation is simply “macro-economic change,” a systematic effort at economies of scale and efficiencies.” And he backtracked on the timeline for mandated full-day preschool programs. “I know there’s some consternation at the timing of this initiative,” he said sympathetically. The timing will be “reviewed, but certainly not the commitment.”

Time for a few questions. A Board member asked how it was mathematically possible to stay within the State-mandated 4% annual school budget increase when, in fact, just about all NJEA-negotiated annual salary increases ranged from 4.5% to over 5%. Laughs and groans from the audience. Corzine muttered about shared services, breakage (hiring new teachers at lower salaries than retiring teachers), and consolidation.

Corzine is apparently well aware of the scorn reserved for Lucille Davy, Commissioner of Education and Aquarian of Regulation. The Press of Atlantic City reported today that after his speech he and Davy were shanghaied by a group of “livid” school board members fuming about both the flood of new accountability regulations and the push for consolidation.

“Do you think I want to be reviewing regulations about buying water and lunch?” she asked. “But taxpayers are saying they can’t afford to live here anymore. Legislators don’t get up in the morning and think what can we do to wreak havoc on schools. They are hearing this from taxpayers.

Later at a meeting of the Garden State Coalition, she defended the DOE:

“It’s not my fault,” she said. “It’s your colleagues who have taken advantage of the system. When there is a retirement package that makes people embarrassed, then it becomes a public issue.”