Resident Rick Short discusses the upcoming referendum in this opinion piece.
Note: This is a letter to the editor submitted by Cherry Hill resident Rick Short.
Are you wondering when you will have real input on school security, a hot issue in Cherry Hill this year? You will have two important chances at the ballot box this year.
- The Nov. 6 general election will feature a well-designed statewide school security bond measure: Look for on the back of your vote-by-mail ballots. Please vote ‘Yes’ on that measure.
- A Cherry Hill-only school bond vote will take place Dec. 11. Those bonds waste $15 million on the redesign of 16 school main offices with security vestibules, which have NOT been shown to significantly stop or slow armed intruders because blast protection films are missing in the vestibule designs. Also all 19 schools classroom doors are missing blast protection films too.
Despite appeals to the Board of Education from Cherry Hill Parents for Safer School, the Dec. 11 bonds are also missing much-needed and cost-effective physical security equipment such as classroom panic alarms, automatically-locking doors, and sex register background-checking systems for all 19 schools. Instead we will have the prettiest school main entrances in New Jersey.
Please don’t let these two security bond votes go to waste. Vote “Yes’ on Nov. 6. Vote ‘No’ on Dec. 11 to prevent the “$15 million Pork Project Face Lift for 16 Main Offices” from moving forward.
Rick Short
