Gov. Corzine's School Funding Plan

January 2009

Su	Mo	Tu	We	Th	Fr	Sa
				1	2	3
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30	31
		Birthdays
Jan 23 - Scottacus Feb 2 - Robocub(41)
		Events
Jan 23 - LOEW’S-DOWN BLUES CONCERT Jan 25 - SOUP SWAP 2009
		Holidays
Feb 2 - Groundhog Day

[MCA]

JJ:


How much will new formula raise school taxes?
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
By PAUL KOEPP
JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

The state Supreme Court left Hudson County's Abbott school districts holding their breath yesterday when it set up hearings on a new funding formula that would choke off some of their state aid.

The court appointed Superior Court Judge Peter E. Doyne of Bergen County to hold hearings to examine whether the state can throw out the decades-old system of heavily funding 31 urban districts, including five in Hudson County: Jersey City, Hoboken, Union City, Harrison and West New York.

Jersey City would be the hardest hit. State aid accounts for $418 million of the district's $529 million operating budget in the 2008-09 school year. That is $8 million more aid than last year, but according to David Sciarra of the Education Law Center in Newark, the increases will stop there.

Sciarra, who is representing the Abbott districts, said Jersey City, West New York and Hoboken would not receive any further hikes in state under the new formula. Union City and Harrison would see 3 percent increases, he said.

"This formula ignored the standards set up by the Supreme Court for children in Abbott districts," Sciarra said, adding that schools may have to cut jobs and programs.

The Jersey City City Council adopted a resolution last week opposing the school formula, saying it would cause a budget shortfall of $25 million in the 2009-10 school year and $43 million the following year.

These hikes could send local school taxes soaring by 70 percent, said city Business Administrator Brian O'Reilly.

Based on its ratables, the city's "local fair share" for its public schools should be $196 million, according to state officials - more than twice the current school tax levy of $86.2 million.

Jersey City Superintendent of Schools Charles T. Epps Jr. said he isn't sure if the City Council's projections are correct and is adopting a wait-and-see approach to the new funding scheme.

"If it has an effect on academics, I'll have to really look at that," Epps said.

[MCA]

School funding plan signed into law; now moves to state Supreme Court
Monday, January 14, 2008
By DUNSTAN McNICHOL
NEWHOUSE NEWS SERVICE

Gov. Jon Corzine signed his $7.8 billion school funding plan into law yesterday, capping a whirlwind drive that saw the complicated proposal enacted a month after it was first unveiled.

Today the plan moves to the state Supreme Court, where justices are scheduled to consider whether it meets the constitutional requirement that it guarantee enough state support for every child to receive a "thorough and efficient" public school education.

"We have great confidence that we have laid down a fair-and-equitable aid formula for all our schools and all our children across the state," Corzine said.

Yesterday, during a 30-minute signing ceremony at Drumthwacket, the governor's mansion in Princeton, neither Corzine nor the lawmakers who approved the plan last week expressed any doubt about the formula's fairness.

"This formula will go a long way to ensuring that children, wherever they may live, will get the education they deserve to expect," said Sen. Barbara Buono (D-Middlesex), sponsor of the measure in the Senate.

Corzine's plan, which boosts school aid by $532 million, is the first attempt in a decade to rewrite the ground rules that determine how New Jersey distributes almost $8 billion in school aid each year.

Three previous formulas have been determined unconstitutional, largely because the state Supreme Court determined the state aid plan relied too heavily on property taxes to finance schools in poor communities whose residents were incapable of raising the money required.

The latest set of rulings, in a case labeled Abbott v. Burke, resulted in a series of court orders that have forced the state to steer billions of dollars in special aid to 31 needy communities.

[MCA]

School funding bill OK'd over Jersey City protests
Tuesday, January 08, 2008
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
AND JOURNAL STAFF

TRENTON - A plan to overhaul the way New Jersey's state government subsidizes local schools was adopted late yesterday, after stalling in the Senate for hours.

The Senate approved the measure 23-8, some five hours after debate began on the Senate floor. The measure originally stalled one vote shy of passing, but was later approved after $20 million in special education funding was promised.

The bill had to be approved in both houses before the legislative session ends at noon today, or it would have had to be reintroduced in the new session.

The Assembly passed the bill 41-36.

Hundreds of residents of Jersey City, Asbury Park and other New Jersey cities arrived at the Statehouse yesterday for their last chance to derail the plan, which they say could hurt schools in their cities.

The original Senate vote was 20-19 in favor of the bill. But it takes 21 votes to pass a bill in the Senate. If one more vote had not been found, it would have been a major setback for Gov. Jon S. Corzine, who put forth the plan.

Ahead of yesterday's vote, senators from both parties bashed the Corzine proposal.

Under the proposal from Corzine, aid would be tied in part to the number of low-income students in each district. As a result, a structure set up in response to a series of state Supreme Court mandates that used one formula for 31 poor districts and another for the rest of the state's 618 school systems would be essentially scrapped.

"He can put in some reforms," said Telissa Dowling, a Jersey City parent who came to Trenton to protest the governor's plan. "He doesn't need to cut the money."

Suburban districts with big jumps in enrollment or a large number of low-income students could see annual aid increases as big as 20 percent. The relief is welcome in many of those places because most of those schools have seen their state aid barely budge this decade.

But most of the 31 urban districts would see aid hikes of 2 percent this year, then have state support held flat after that.

Advocates for the urban districts, including Sen. Wayne Bryant, a Democrat who represents Camden and some of its suburbs, say that even with a 2 percent increase, some of those poor districts are likely to have to cut programs because the districts' costs - including contracts with teachers - are rising faster than that.

In the Assembly, Hudson legislators Brian Stack, D-Union City, Silverio Vega, D-West New York, Vincent Prieto, D-Secaucus, and Joan Quigley, D-Jersey City, voted in favor of the funding formula.

Jersey City Democratic Assemblymen Lou Manzo and Charles Epps Jr., who is also the city's superintendent of schools, voted against the governor's plan.

"It breaks my heart to vote for it," Quigley said before the vote. "But I have six towns that I represent and five towns benefit, as does the Hudson County Vocational School."

The one town that doesn't benefit, of course, is Jersey City, where Mayor Jerramiah Healy had waged a vigorous campaign against passage of the new formula.

"The governor said we will find another way to help Jersey City, and I have to take that on faith," said Quigley, who also represents East Newark, Harrison, Kearny, North Bergen and Secaucus in Hudson County, and Fairview in Bergen County.

Quigley said she learned yesterday Jersey City would be eligible for $1 million in additional preschool aid.

In the state Senate, Nicholas Sacco, D-North Bergen, and Bernard Kenny, D-Hoboken, voted for the funding plan while Sandra Bolden Cunningham, D-Jersey City, voted against it.

Bolden Cunningham also represents Bayonne, which would receive a 20 percent boost under the plan.

"I think the formula works for Bayonne. Unfortunately, for Jersey City it would require we raise taxes," Bolden Cunningham said. "I understand from the (schools) superintendent (Charles T. Epps Jr.) he is going to have to lay off people."

Asked if she felt any obligation to support the measure given her recent appointment as the Senate's majority whip, Bolden Cunningham pointed out she begins that post today, and in any event, her "main concern is always going to be Bayonne and Jersey City."

© 2008  The Jersey Journal

[Bobblehead]

Star Ledger article:

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2008/01/ag_milgram_says_corzines_schoo.html

Any time a politician has an attorney coming out to say such a law would be "constitutional," you know the shit is really going to fly if it gets passed. 

[Bobblehead]

The simplified picture for JC, Newark, Camden, etc., is that the funding to the so-called Abbott Districts, which was to help those districts educate their high-poverty student populations, is being replaced with aid that instead follows each child. So, instead of an entire district getting, say, 45% more in aid, it will get 45% more for each child that is from a low-income home. This also means that schools in affluent districts might also recieve more money for each of the, say, dozen children from low-income families.

Healy, Cunningham, Booker, et al. are right--the JC school system will receive less money, and might have to make up for school budget gaps by increasing property taxes, or by cutting budgets. Is there fat to cut from the JC school system? Can it be cut without compromising the quality of education? Stay tuned. . . .

[MCA]

I've been trying to educate myself about this topic but have been unsuccessful so far. Can it really be as simple as our local pols would have us believe?


Healy, Cunningham, rally against school funding plan
by The Associated Press
Thursday January 03, 2008, 11:34 AM

Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healy joined state Sen. Sandra Cunningham, D-Jersey City, and other black legislators, along with Newark Mayor Cory Booker, this morning to rally against Gov. Jon Corzine's school funding plan.

Attorney General Anne Milgram today deemed the plan constitutional and, in a letter to Corzine's chief counsel, said it is consistent with constitutional requirements that all New Jersey school children receive a "thorough and efficient'' education.

But Healy, Booker and black legislators -- all Democrats like Corzine -- expressed opposition, worrying the plan could lead to deep program cuts in struggling inner-city schools. "The fact is, we're getting burned by this,'' Healy said. The opposition called into question whether Corzine and Democratic leaders could get the plan approved before the legislative session ends on Tuesday.

The debate comes with Assembly and Senate budget committees expected to hold hearings today on the plan designed to send more state aid to suburban and rural schools with growing enrollments and many low-income students. "This is a formula that follows the basic principle that children with greater needs deserve greater resources,'' state Education Commissioner Lucille Davy has said. But Healy described the plan as "taking from the poor to help the poor."

Under the plan, the 31 poverty-stricken districts that have received extra financial help under a state Supreme Court ruling wouldn't see the same hefty aid increases they've typically received, but other districts -- locales like North Brunswick and Pennsauken -- would get 20 percent more from the state for next school year. Every district would get a state aid increase of at least 2 percent for next year, and no school would see its allocation decrease for at least three years.

The plan comes after most school districts saw scant state aid increases this decade, forcing them to rely more on property taxes that are America's highest at $6,330 per homeowner, twice the national average. Corzine has said the plan "gives all of our children in all of our communities the opportunity to succeed.''"

Cunningham said the plan could cost Jersey City schools $110 million over three years. "These proposed cuts will cause substantial layoffs and will force an increase in property taxes,'' Cunningham said.

[NJ.com: Hudson County Now]

NJ.com: Hudson County Now
Breaking news out of Hudson County from the Jersey Journal newsroom.

• Grants available to help companies survive, Hudson County business owners are told
  
• Jersey City Medical Center to host "Give Kids a Smile" day next month
  
• Authorities: Union City slasher still on the loose
  
• Light Rail extensions called smart $$$ use
  
• Accounts differ over body of newborn thrown out with trash
  
• Two-alarm blaze in Kearny
  
• Driver arrested after struggle
  
• Kitten case court date postponed
  
• Mulling in slaying near Light Rail Station
  
• Two Jersey City women face cocaine charges
  
• Light Rail extension work will cause portion of Avenue E to be closed
  
• New York's syrupy smell returns
  

[What should Steve Lipski do?]

What should Steve Lipski do?
Resign from the city council
	16 (41%)
Get better friends
	3 (7%)
Just keep truckin' on
	6 (15%)
Appear on Dan Falcon's next t-shirt
	5 (12%)
Spend more time in Bradley Beach
	0 (0%)
Tell 'em it's raining
	3 (7%)
Run for mayor
	6 (15%)
Total Voters: 37

squirrel eating corn Posted by super_furry