N.J. Districts Breathe Easy After Budget Votes

The date was April 15, not one that would have been New Jersey school officials' top choice for holding their first budget elections under the state's much-debated new funding law.

"Everybody initially thought it was a plot," said John J. Battles, the superintendent of the Randolph school district in Morris County. "Having it on tax day was considered to be a very, very bad omen."

But despite its inauspicious timing, last week's election turned out better than many Garden State educators feared. Voters approved 76 percent of the roughly 550 budgets on the ballot statewide, well above last year's two-thirds passing rate and the...