GREENWICH TWP. More than 100 hundred teachers braved the 90-degree heat Wednesday morning to wait on the lawn outside Greenwich Township Elementary School, with hopes of greeting Gov. Chris Christie and sending him a message that his cuts were hurting education.

Carrying hand-made signs and umbrellas with protest sayings on them to block the mid-morning sun, teachers from all over Gloucester County waited patiently for Christie's arrival at a town hall meeting where he planned to explain his 2.5 percent tax cap proposal to the public.

"We're here to make our voice heard so that the governor continues to get the message that his polices, this cap are hurting our public schools," said Susan Clark, president of the Gloucester County Education Association. "A 2.5 percent hard cap without any kind of ability to make changes on it is going to cause layoffs of our employees. It's going to increase class size. It's too arbitrary."

Marie Blistan, secretary for the New Jersey Education Association and a teacher taking a leave of absence from Washington Township High School to fill the union post, said she came to support her fellow teachers, and drive home their message that they oppose the hard cap.

"We are extremely concerned about any number that's going to be used for a cap because it's an arbitrary number," Blistan said. "It takes into no account the fixed costs like the utilities, the high insurance costs, the costs of special education which can be exorbitant and I know that firsthand because I'm a special education teacher."

Anne Wooton, a special education teacher in Greenwich Township, waved a sign over her head and shouted at a few kids her students as they walked down the sidewalk across from the school.

"I'm doing this for you!" she told them.

Wooton, who has been a teacher for 22 years, said she believes the cuts Christie has already made to state aid for public schools are damaging the quality of the children's education.

"I'm here because too many programs have already been cut," Wooton said. "If these programs are hurt, there are students who need to go to school year round and without these programs, these kids are not going to be productive citizens and who knows what they can turn to?"

Wooton said the governor should look to other areas to reduce the state's expenses, not through education funding.

"It shouldn't affect the New Jersey public schools," Wooton said. "This is our future and I'm angry. That's why I'm here, that's why I went to Trenton. I think that I need to be here and stand up for these kids and their rights."

Patty New has only been teaching at Greenwich Township for eight years and she said she's worried about how continuous cuts to state funding for education will affect the kids.

"My friends are losing their jobs and important people like cafeteria (workers) who serve the children food are getting cut or privatized and eventually, in the end, it does take away from the children," New said.

Theresa McGinnis and Theresa Pramo work for the Gloucester County Special Services School District McGinnis as an assistant and Pramo as a social worker.

McGinnis said the governor is "picking on the wrong people."

"He's not showing children respect for their teachers," she said. "He's hurting teachers and children, and in this day and age, we need education because we have so many deep problems and we need smart people to solve them."

Pramo said after working hard to establish a new salary contract, she's worried that the cap will undo years of negotiations and also force the district to cut back on "vital" positions like hers.

"We're the least paid in the state while our administration is the highest paid," Pramo said. "Now he wants to turn around and possibly hurt us again by capping our raises that we work very hard for."

"We're very vested with these jobs," she added. "We're not going anywhere but we certainly don't want to see (the students) fall through the cracks."