Jewish leaders protest Sept. 30 referendum date
Vote on $52M school bond falls on Jewish holiday Rosh Hashana
BY CHRIS GAETANO Staff Writer
M embers of Edison's Jewish community have expressed great dismay over the date of a Sept. 30 bond referendum, with religious leaders noting that the special election would take place on Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year.

"I find this a disgrace, an insult to the Jewish community," said Rabbi Dr. Bernhard Rosenberg, of Edison, during a phone interview on Aug. 7.

The bond referendum, a $52 million measure that voters initially rejected in April, would pay for expansions to three of the township's elementary schools — Woodbrook, Benjamin Franklin and James Madison — and build a whole new school near Thomas Jefferson Middle School. Overall, the construction would add capacity for 1,186 new elementary school students.

Board of Education members have claimed that the proposal is tax neutral, since it's based on bringing special-education students, for whom the district now pays tuition to other schools, back into Edison. The savings from doing this, according to some board members, will offset the cost of annual debt payments on the bond.

Voters rejected the bond measure in April by 3,983 to 3,644 votes. During the board's July 21 meeting, however, members unanimously voted to try to pass it again through a special election that would be held Sept. 30.

Rosenberg said that holding the vote on Sept. 30 undercuts Jewish representation, since Rosh Hashana is classified as a time of rest and thus members of the community would be unable to vote that day. Individuals would still be able to cast their ballots via absentee voting, though Rosenberg does not feel that this is sufficient.

"If I would ask a Christian community to vote on Christmas, let's say, and say, 'Well, you can always send in an absentee ballot,' people would be quite upset, so the same holds true if saying to the Jewish community, 'We're going to have this vote on your holiest of days, and we want you to send in a ballot,' " said Rosenberg.

He also noted that from his own experience, most people don't bother to send in absentee ballots.

Acting Superintendent John Dimuzio said the timing is unfortunate but that not much can really be done about it, since the state Department of Education allows special elections to be held only on very specific dates.

"If I could make it on the 29th or the first, I would. But I can't," said Dimuzio.

Kathryn Forsynth, director of public information with the state Department of Education (DOE), said the district is not in any way bound to the Sept. 30 date, noting that Edison can also hold the election on the second Tuesday in December, the second Tuesday in March or the fourth Tuesday in January.

According to Forsynth, the times that school districts are allowed to hold special elections are not the result of any specific policy within the DOE but are the consequence of legislation passed in 2001 that binds schools to these four days. Prior to the legislation passing, districts could hold elections anytime, and the bill was meant to bring coherence and stability to the process.

Under the legislation that created the April school board elections, there is a provision that allows the DOE commissioner to change the election day in the event that it coincides with the Jewish holiday of Passover. However, the 2001 bill that set dates for special elections lacks such a provision. Thus, said Forsynth, until new legislation presents itself, there isn't much that even the DOE commissioner can do about the Sept. 30 date.

Still, Forsynth stressed that nothing is preventing Edison from holding its bond referendum in December, the next available date after Rosh Hashana.

Dimuzio said the district could, theoretically, also hold the referendum sometime in December but felt that this possibility was not desirable, since the district wanted to get the bond passed and construction started as soon as possible. Holding the election in December, he said, would cause too much of a delay, and so the district was stuck with the Sept. 30 date.

Board member Gene Maeroff, speaking for himself, agreed with Dimuzio's assessment, saying that the state only allows special elections to be held on certain dates and that holding off the vote until December presented an unacceptable delay.

"[December] is over three months later, and everything that has to be done to get this project started is delayed by three months …. There's a space problem in the district, so delaying three months means that [it will be] much longer until it gets finished," said Maeroff.

The board member also pointed out that no one is precluded from voting, saying that people can still vote by absentee ballot. He noted that in Oregon, everyone votes by paper for every election.

"So this is not something drastic, really, and there's really no other option [anyway]," said Maeroff.

This does not satisfy Rabbi Gerald Zelizer, of Congregation Neve Shalom in Metuchen, however. In a letter sent to the acting superintendent, he said that ordinarily, an absentee ballot is sent in only in the case of the voter missing an election for circumstances beyond his or her control.

"Ironically, though, we are only absent because the scheduling of this election on our religious holiday necessitates our being so," said Zelizer. "What a pity that this referendum has been scheduled to conflict with the religious holiday of this large population. Would such a referendum be held on the Christmas holiday?"

Rosenberg further said that the date of the referendum would skew its results, noting that many in Edison's Jewish community send their children to private school and thus are less inclined to support additional borrowing by the district for schools their children do not even attend. During the interview, he wondered aloud whether the referendum's timing was a way to reduce opposition to the measure.

"I, as a Jew, an Orthodox Jew, I send my children to private school, to yeshiva, and my tax bill, 53 percent goes to the Board of Education, about 7.5 thousand [dollars], so I would have to presume that a lot of Orthodox Jews would probably vote against the referendum because they are sick and tired of paying taxes," said Rosenberg.

Maeroff, however, said that keeping quality public schools is in everyone's interest, not just for people whose children attend them. He noted that housing values tend to rise and fall on education quality, for example.

"If this district becomes less attractive because its students and public schools are so overcrowded, all housing values fall whether or not you use the public schools. It's in everyone's economic, not to mention altruistic, interest to be supportive of public schools," said Maeroff.

Rosenberg has promised that he will continue to fight the measure and demand that the election be held on a different date so that the Jewish community will not be excluded.

"I got a whiff of this about a month and a half ago, and I said to the Board of Ed. vice president that if they went ahead with this, that I would declare nuclear war, and that is what I am doing," said Rosenberg.