Taxpayers can't afford pre-school

I found the article “Board ‘leery’ about state-mandated pre-school funding” troubling. How many of these “toddlers from economically-disadvantaged households” will be “between the ages of 5 and 18 years?” I am left to wonder, how many of the members of the Sussex- Wantage Regional Board of Education, or their hired administrators and teachers, have ever even read the Constitution of the State of New Jersey? Article VIII, Section IV, paragraph 1 reads: “The Legislature shall provide for the maintenance and support of a thorough and efficient system of free public schools for the instruction of all the children in the State between the ages of 5 and 18 years.” The governor, the members of the Legislature, etc. have all, possibly even the members of the Board of Education, taken an oath to “support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of New Jersey.” Therefore, it would appear that the State of New Jersey has no constitutional authority to spend even one penny on a pre-school program, unless the children attending it are “between the ages of five and eighteen years.” What ever happened to the fact that in the United States we are supposedly governed by the rule of law? The members of the Sussex- Wantage Regional Board of Education might want to check into this before they unconstitutionally force us into having to pay many hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional taxes. We can’t afford it! William H. Gettler Wantage Township