Eliza Schleifstein is a longtime resident and taxpayer of Randolph, NJ. She is the mother of two daughters who both attended Randolph Township Schools from kindergarten through graduation. She writes and comments on local education, with a focus on school district transparency and spending.

Every summer, it happens.

Property tax bills arrive. Homeowners gasp. Social media erupts. People blame the mayor, town council or Trenton.  In most New Jersey towns, they’re blaming the wrong people.

The single biggest driver of your property tax bill isn’t your municipal government. It’s your local Board of Education.  Yet every spring, school budgets worth tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars are approved before mostly empty meeting rooms. Public questions are often measured in minutes. Budget discussions are frequently brief. Many votes are unanimous.

If homeowners spent as little time reviewing their family’s budget as some school boards spend questioning district budgets, they’d be in financial trouble.

Good schools deserve strong financial support.  But taxpayers deserve something just as important: independent oversight, rigorous questioning and accountability for every dollar they are asked to provide.  Before you accept the next tax increase as inevitable, here are the questions every taxpayer should be asking.

1. Follow the Money – Not the Excuses

School districts often explain tax increases by citing rising healthcare costs, pension obligations, transportation expenses and special education.  Those costs are real, especially the healthcare costs.  But they are not the entire budget.

The more important question is: What spending decisions were actually discretionary?

Every district makes choices.  Some prioritize classrooms. Others prioritize expanding administration, consultants, technology initiatives, athletic facilities, or capital projects. Those are choices by your local Board of Education and not mandates.  When taxes increase, taxpayers deserve to know exactly which increases were unavoidable, and which resulted from local decisions.

2. Compare Your District to Its Peers

Every year New Jersey publishes the Taxpayers’ Guide to Education Spending, comparing districts with similar enrollment and demographics.  I look at that every year to compare my town, Randolph, to similar sized, demographic and budget amount districts.

Pay attention to administrative costs per pupil, classroom instruction, student support services, central administration and operations and maintenance

If your district consistently spends more on administration than comparable districts, ask why. If classroom spending lags while bureaucracy grows, ask why.  Budgets reveal priorities.

3. Enrollment Down. Staff Up? Ask Why.

In my town, like many others across suburban New Jersey, enrollment has declined.  Yet some districts have simultaneously added administrators, expanded supervisory positions, increased central-office staffing and increased administrative compensation

Sometimes those decisions are justified.  Sometimes they aren’t.  Board members should be able to explain every additional position, and why taxpayers should fund it.

Districts including Toms River, Edison and Middletown have all experienced public debate over staffing levels and administrative spending.  In Randolph, residents have similarly questioned whether spending priorities have kept pace with enrollment trends and whether administrative growth has received sufficient scrutiny before budgets were approved.

4. Don’t Stop at the Superintendent’s Salary

Superintendent salaries often make headlines.  But they represent only part of executive compensation. Taxpayers should also review:  

• Assistant superintendent salaries
• Business administrator compensation
• Merit bonuses
• Longevity pay
• Sick leave payouts
• Separation agreements

Compare those figures with similar neighboring districts.  Public employees deserve competitive pay.  Taxpayers deserve confidence they’re paying market rates and not premium prices without measurable results.

5. Follow the Capital Reserve Money

This is one of the most overlooked, and potentially most significant, parts of every school budget.

Capital Reserve exists so districts can save for expensive but necessary projects like:

• Roof replacements
• HVAC systems
• Boilers
• Windows
• Security improvements
• Structural repairs

Those are exactly the kinds of long-term investments taxpayers expect.  But taxpayers should also ask whether reserve dollars are increasingly funding projects that are desirable rather than essential.  Examples include:

• Athletic scoreboards
• Monument signs
• Flagpoles
• Technology buildings
• Recreation facilities
• Administrative renovations
• Cosmetic improvements

Randolph provides a useful example of why residents should pay attention. In recent years, the district approved or proposed projects including approximately $275,000 in athletic scoreboards, a roughly $2.75 million technology building and a $25,000 flagpole while continuing to maintain millions of dollars in Capital Reserve. District officials have defended those projects as worthwhile investments. Taxpayers are equally entitled to ask whether those dollars would have been better directed toward aging roofs, boilers, HVAC systems, classroom infrastructure, or simply reducing future tax increases.

The issue isn’t whether these projects are legal. The question is whether they reflect the community’s highest priorities.  

Similar debates have occurred in Bridgewater-Raritan, Montgomery and Toms River, where residents have questioned capital spending priorities and long-range facilities planning.

6. Read the Long-Range Facilities Plan

Every district has one.  Almost nobody reads it.  That’s a mistake.

Long-Range Facilities Plans reveal where districts hope to spend millions of taxpayer dollars years before projects begin.

Randolph’s plan, for example, includes concepts such as a $30 million future recreation facility after we just spent $12 million on a Field House. Whether residents support those projects or not, they deserve to know about them before contracts are signed—not after construction begins.

If your district is planning major projects five years from now, taxpayers should know today.

7. Understand Special Education Costs

Special education is among the fastest-growing expenditures facing every school district.  Out-of-district placements can exceed $100,000 per student annually.  These costs are often legally required.

But taxpayers should still ask:

• Why are placements increasing?
• Can more students be served in district?
• What long-term strategy exists to control costs without reducing services?

Good oversight asks difficult questions while recognizing legal obligations.  Both can be true.

8. Fixed Costs Aren’t a Blank Check

Salaries. Healthcare. Pensions. Utilities. Transportation. Districts correctly point out that many of these expenses are beyond local control. But that should never become a blanket explanation for every tax increase.

Ask one simple question: How much of this year’s tax increase resulted from unavoidable costs and how much resulted from choices made by the Board of Education?

Taxpayers deserve that answer.

9. Understand “Banked Cap”

Many homeowners believe school taxes cannot increase by more than 2%. That isn’t true.

Districts that don’t fully use their taxing authority in one year can “bank” unused capacity and later raise taxes above the normal cap with county approval.  If your tax bill suddenly jumps well beyond 2%, ask:

• How much banked cap was used?
• Why now?
• How much taxing authority remains available?

Today’s unused capacity can become tomorrow’s tax increase.

10. Read Every Contract

School board agendas are treasure maps. They reveal spending on:

• Attorneys
• Consultants
• Engineers
• Architects
• Technology vendors
• Transportation
• Curriculum
• Professional services

Many professional service contracts do not require competitive bidding.  Recurring contracts with the same firms, or rapidly increasing legal and consulting expenses, deserve careful review.

In Randolph, we haven’t put out a request for proposals for our lawfirm or architect in more than a decade.  How do we know if we are getting the best service at the best price?  We don’t.

Other districts, including South Orange-Maplewood, Mt. Olive, Newark and Paterson, have likewise faced public scrutiny over procurement, consulting contracts and legal expenses.

11. Watch Your Board Members—Not Just Your Tax Bill 

The biggest issue isn’t what’s in the budget.  It’s who challenges it.  Pay attention to who asks difficult financial questions.

Who requests documentation. Who questions major expenditures. Who votes no. And who simply votes yes- every single time.

Oversight is not obstruction.  Questioning is not disloyalty.  Rubber-stamping is not governance.

In Randolph, one Board member who has more financial experience than the entire Board combined has repeatedly sought additional financial information, questioned spending priorities and requested supporting documentation before votes. Residents can decide whether they agree with his conclusions, but asking difficult questions is exactly what taxpayers elect board members to do. At the same time, district budgets have routinely received overwhelming or unanimous approval despite significant tax increases, growing reserve balances and public concerns over spending priorities.

Some of New Jersey’s largest school finance controversies, including those involving Lakewood, Jersey City and Paterson, received sustained public attention because elected officials, auditors or determined residents refused to stop asking difficult questions.

12. Read the Audit, Not Just the Budget

Every district receives an independent financial audit.  Few taxpayers ever read it.  They should.  Audits often reveal:

• Internal control weaknesses
• Purchasing recommendations
• Reserve balances
• Debt obligations
• Auditor findings
• Management responses

Budgets tell you what districts plan to spend.  Audits tell you how they actually managed your money.  Read both.

13. Show Up Before the Vote

Once the budget is approved, your options become limited.  The time to influence spending is before the vote. Attend budget workshops, finance committee meetings (if they are open, my town’s Facilities Finance and Transportation Committee meetings aren’t), public hearings and board meetings

Demand complete answers.  Remember who works for whom.  School administrators answer to the Board.  The Board answers to taxpayers.

The Bottom Line

Excellent schools and fiscal responsibility are not competing values.  Communities deserve both.  Every property tax dollar represents money earned by someone who worked for it. That means every contract… Every Capital Reserve transfer… Every consultant… Every administrative hire… Every construction project… Every budget vote…deserves scrutiny.

The next time your property tax bill lands in your mailbox, don’t just ask why it went up. Ask whether your Board of Education challenged the spending before asking you to pay more. 

And when election season arrives, don’t vote for the candidate with the slickest mailer or the nicest slogan.  Vote for the one willing to ask uncomfortable questions – because taxpayers don’t need cheerleaders.

They need watchdogs.