Legislature Should Resist Fast-Tracking School Funding Formula
Posted December 21, 2007

With just a few weeks left before the New Jersey legislature’s self-imposed deadline to enact school funding reform, Governor Jon Corzine this week released his $7.8 billion proposal, entitled “A Formula for Success: All Children, All Communities.”

The 106-page proposal, which increases overall state education spending by $532.8 million, overhauls the court-established spending formula instituted by the state Supreme Court’s ruling in the case of Abbott v. Burke.  This ruling, as the Star Ledger reports, “has steered more than half of the state’s nearly $8 billion in school aid to a select group of 31 urban districts.”

As the New York Times explains, the new proposal “would funnel more money to poor and disadvantaged children who live outside the state’s so-called Abbott districts…. The new approach would also apportion money to schools based on student demographics, like income, language ability and special academic needs.” 

Two weeks ago we commented on the taxpayer cost of the proposed funding formula. While this certainly remains a critical issue, we are also distressed by several other factors surrounding the governor’s proposal.

While the governor’s plan would give every school district in the state at least a 2% increase in funding, with some districts receiving as much as a 20% increase, the money does not come without strings attached.  The Ledger reports, for example, that some of the increases include “requirements [that] the money go directly to property tax relief … although … [state officials] provided little detail of how that would work.”  What’s more, according to another Ledger article, a “provision, spelled out for the first time in the newly published legislation, would require property tax hikes in some communities that are not spending as much as the state formula shows they should be on their schools.” 
What ever happened to the “state mandate, state pay” law that does not allow the state to impose funding mandates on municipalities unless the state provides the funding, not the municipality or the local property owners who pay the lion’s share of school costs?

In addition to the property tax ambiguity, the governor’s push to rush the proposal through the legislature has many people concerned.  Although the bill isn’t expected to be formally filed until January 3, the governor is hoping the legislature will approve the measure by January 7, which marks the end of the lame-duck session.  The New York Times reports that Education Commissioner Lucille E. Davy “is even scheduled to testify before the Assembly’s budget and education committees next Thursday [December 27] – despite the fact that many legislators and Mr. Corzine himself will be away on vacation.” 

According to Assemblyman David W. Wolfe (R-Ocean/Monmouth), a member of the Education Committee, “If this was a governor delivering his budget message … we’d have maybe two and a half or three months to dissect it, but this is basically take it or leave it.” 

Democratic Assemblyman and Chairman of the Education Committee Craig Stanley (D-Essex) also commented on the governor’s timetable, stating, “Even under the best circumstances it’s not an easy process, even if you have the greatest school funding formula in the world…. So I don’t anticipate a quick process.  I would imagine it would go to the end.” 

Nevertheless, the “end” in this case is still only four days after the bill is officially filed.

For his part, State Senate President Richard Codey (D-Essex) indicated that he anticipated that the bill would garner the support of the Democratic majority.  “My sense of it within the caucus is it will clearly get majority support,” Codey stated.  “I think we should move on with it and get on to other important issues like finance restructuring.”

“Move on with it?”  Few things are as important as the manner in which we educate our children, and this issue is hardly one that should be rushed through to passage, regardless of the need to reform education spending.

As the Herald News noted, “Clearly … such a major, indeed, historic restructuring requires more than a few weeks for legislators to digest, much less to vote on with confidence.”

We couldn’t agree more.  In fact, these same legislators could be put in a position of having to vote on this issue with just a few days’ turnaround.  We find that unconscionable!

This is far too weighty an issue to rush.  We urge the legislature as a whole – and the members of the Education and Budget Committees in particular – to resist the pressure to vote for a bill they have not been given the opportunity fully to examine.

The children of New Jersey deserve better.  

(Please click here to contact your legislator and speak out on this important issue!)

   

 

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