By ROBERT LINNEHAN | The Cherry Hill Sun
After a three-and-a-half hour public hearing Thursday in front of hundreds of concerned citizens, Council suggested reducing the school district’s $166.76 million budget by an additional $2.5 million.
Each Council member said it was the duty of Council to maintain the quality of education for Cherry Hill students, but to also heed the call of the voters in the 2010 Board of Education elections who defeated the budget by more than 500 votes.
Council suggested $800,000 be reduced from administration costs, a section of the budget that many members of Council and Mayor Bernie Platt criticized for being bloated.
“But, even as good as those teachers are, they are overshadowed by the cost of the administration in our school district. I got the emails, letters and phone calls complaining about the number of assistant principals, the salaries of the administration, and the amount of non-teacher support staff,” Platt said. “Our superintendent makes almost $100,000 more than the governor of this state.”
See this week’s print edition of The Sun for the full story.