Opinion: Kids Deserve To Come First, Not Last, Resident Says

To the Editor:

After a year of debate and discussion over full day kindergarten by the Wayne Board of Education, a vote was taken at the last board meeting that launches the district superintendents kindergarten alternative 'wrap around' program.

This program puts the onus on paying for the educational curriculum on the parents and families of young students who are about to enter the school system, to the delight of those who opposed any kindergarten here in Wayne.

The two main arguments against kindergarten by its opponents stem mainly on protecting a current full range of extracurricular programs and athletic playing fields, as well as an aversion to a tax to afford the estimated $2.2 million start up costs of kindergarten.

The second argument has clearly manifested itself in the form of an obvious misguided ugly political vendetta against the consistent three to five very well intentioned minority who have championed the notion that kindergarten is a clearly worthwhile benefit to any child's early development.

While the matter was in fact put before the voters last year it was voted down by a narrow majority amid charges of vote tampering and electioneering inside the polling stations at the tables on the part of poll workers, a matter that generated a formal complaint that to date has not been heard adjudicated or resolved, as the school year clock ticks inexorably on.

Determined to see to it that a fair and honest election would manifest the will of the voters the board has taken it upon itself to put the question of kindergarten before the voters again in the general election when historically more voters tend to turn out, to the open criticism and contempt of the anti kindergarten rabble who simply do not want kindergarten at all, not no how, not no way.

As the anti-tax crusaders have weighed in four square against kindergarten at the same time they have remained smugly silent on the superintendents 'warp around' scheme's revenue enhancement device that levies a $250 a month 'tuition' on children who participate in the lottery for open slots in the supers scheme, because of course these fees are targeted exclusively at some one else.

And in my opinion, there is the rub, there actually is a 2.5 percent tax cap on the books here in New Jersey that has been exceeded when imposed and attached on these particular children's households for early public education.

In Europe there is a revenue generating device called a VAT-TAX (Value Added Tax), usually placed on luxury items such as jewelry yachts and private jets. And so, I view the super's revenue-generating scheme as being liable to be challenged under the tax cap, because if kindergarten is now to be equated as a value added luxury curriculum. Which drives the question, then how does that define the existing extra curricular programs in juxtaposing kindergarten warranting a new luxury revenue stream instead?

And finally in my view, what really went wrong here in Wayne was that when it came to affording all of the children's full educational curriculum what happened here instead was akin to an assured Darwinian outcome, where the prerogatives of the status quo circled the wagons in their own special interests and well being, whether those be preserving and protecting extracurricular programs and the allocation of attendant costs of those programs, or bowing to the anti-tax crusader, or even political opposition and pay back despite kindergarten being a benign and worthwhile accepted national trend, and that rather than join in common purpose to find the way to afford what was best for the children thus affected by an absence of kindergarten, these children's families were targeted as a revenue stream instead, and that reflects poorly on the mind set of the entire township.

But there is still an opportunity for the township to redeem its newly defined curmudgeonly reputation as Wayne last instead of Wayne first, before the state mandates that each and every school district provide full day kindergarten as the state is already anticipated to do in the very near future, and that would be for the voters to take control of the misguided opposition to kindergarten and vote for something instead of being just against it.

The very negative reasons we have heard individuals use to rationalize their negativity and dissatisfaction with things here about that preschool children had nothing whatsoever to do with, and should not be short changed for, like when the Wayne voters voted down safety and security money that the township would have been reimbursed for by the state, had the measure actually been approved by the voters in the dismal low voter turn out that remains a low point in Wayne's civic historical legacy.

Stewart Resmer,

Wayne, N.J.