North Jersey Media has a piece this week looking at the abysmally low turnout in last month’s Newark school board election — a total of 3% of all voters bothered to come to the polls — and wondering if the cost to state taxpayers to hold the election off-cycle (somewhere between $10K-$30K) is worth it.

Answer: Newark and other districts hold elections in April precisely because it guarantees low turnout. The cost to Newark taxpayers is irrelevant to leaders because they effectively get to choose who is on the Newark Board of Education.

I’m old enough to remember when all school board candidate and budget elections were held in April. Then in 2012, under the Christie Administration, the Legislature passed a law saying that school boards could move these elections to November, when turnout is higher. As an incentive, if the current school board kept its proposed budget within the 2% tax rate increase, the budget wouldn’t be on the ballot, just the candidates.

The bill had been percolating for years but there was fierce opposition from the NJ Education Association and local politicos, who reveled in sequestering these elections to a time when, really, only folks most likely to adhere to the preferences of special interests were paying attention. If we move them to November, insisted NJEA, “school budgets would get swept up in partisan elections.”

At first only a few dozen school boards signed on. Then, when the sky didn’t fall, districts decided they loved not having to market their budgets to the public, as long as they kept the lid on costs. Currently only Newark, Cliffside Park, Fairview, Lodi, Garfield, Irvington, Newark, North Bergen, Weehawken, West New York, New Brunswick, Passaic, Totowa and Westfield hold elections in April. For everyone else, November is election time, just like God intended.

And in Newark in particular, maintaining these off-kilter elections cements the Mayor’s ability to choose his own school board. As reported by the NJ Globe, “a slate of Newark school board candidates backed by Mayor Ras Baraka captured all four seats up today, with a lease for a new elementary school developed by one of the mayor’s donors having little impact on the race.” Newark even spent about $1 million to urge other school-centric youngsters (16 and 17 year-olds) to vote. Thirty-six actually did, fewer than last year. Why bother when the mayor’s slate has swept for the last decade?

The original bill was about more than reducing the control of special interests in school board elections. It was also about controlling school costs, currently a big topic for, well, anyone who pays property taxes and anyone who pays attention to the fiscal insolvency of many NJ school districts.

I wrote more than a decade ago,

“But this is not just an April-November story. It’s a fiscal one. The more important part of the legislation requires districts that move to keep budget increases within state-mandated caps, currently 2 percent. This means that school budgets can’t increase by more than a smidgeon. Which means that payrolls can’t increase by more a tad. Which means that school boards will have a hard row to hoe if they sign employee contracts that top much more than 2 percent.

And that’s the point. If we control spending at all levels of government — municipal, county, state, school district — then we control property taxes, Christie’s fondest wish. Now if he could figure out how to manage the other levels of government spending there would be real cause for celebration.”

That control over spending lasted only a short time. Now we’re back to figuring out how to sustain budget-busting school costs. That will take more than moving the dates of school board elections.