The April 15 school elections and budget votes shows that taxpayers are getting tired of the same old education leadership style and fiscal policies that have helped to create the property tax problems.

We have harped on this for more then a year now and will continue until educators listen — and that is the voters want change.

In several school districts incumbents were defeated and in two districts the budgets were rejected. Surprisingly the districts that had the budget rejected were two of the more fiscally responsible ones: Cresskill and Northvale.

Now those budgets will have to be cut as per state law. And when it comes time to make those decisions, educators must act accordingly and the councils that will recommend an amount to be cut must keep the voters request in mind.

Council members should not try to preserve school funding at or close to the current levels. That is not what voters want. If they did, the budgets in Northvale and Cresskill would have been approved.

Yes, this means tough decisions will have to be made, but the voters are telling these two school districts that they want tough decisions made because it is becoming increasingly difficult to support public education.

We are not advocating that Cresskill and Northvale start cutting education programs that should be the final option, but it shouldn’t be ruled out either.

There is no easy answer for this problem these two schools are now facing. But making small cuts that yield hardly no savings to the taxpayers would only say that the districts and the council don’t really care what voters think.