Our View

Constitutional convention
may not be final solution

A new school year always brings new opportunities. Students start with a clean slate, with a fistful of A’s within their reach. Teachers face new challenges to capture the imagination of even the most recalcitrant students.

Many area teachers and students will return to new surroundings when they go back to school.

The Shrewsbury school district is completing a new addition to its borough school with an expanded and renovated gym and three new kindergarten classrooms.

Renovations to the existing school include the creation of a new media/library center from the old cafetorium, and two new classrooms out of the old library.

Construction recently got under way on additions and renovations at Little Silver’s two schools, and won’t be complete until the next school year in 2004.

Lots of construction is going on at the schools in Long Branch, while Ocean Township is creating a unique school within a school for the fifth-graders to cater to their special educational needs. West Long Branch is just starting down the path toward construction with a proposed bond issue going before the voters on Sept. 30.

In Monmouth Beach and Shrewsbury, all-day kindergarten classes are being introduced for the first time.

There are new principals, new teachers, new books — and lots of bills.

Taxpayers have been grumbling about rising taxes for some time, but nowhere as loudly as in Little Silver, where some property owners were shocked to see an increase of thousands of dollars after a revaluation.

There has been an effort at the state level to convene a constitutional convention to address the issue of property taxes and school financing.

Sen. John O. Bennett III, the co-president of the state Senate and the borough attorney in Little Silver, cautioned irate taxpayers to be careful of what they wish for. His warning is worth noting: If the financing of public schools is changed, that almost certainly means a switch to reliance on income taxes, which will not be to the advantage of suburban communities in this area. The suburban communities, he said, would bear a greater share of the burden for school costs because they would have to make up for the smaller yield from urban areas where many residents have lower incomes.

While the search for a solution should not stop, we are well advised to be wary of the promise of finding the answer in a constitutional convention without controls.