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NJ Spotlight - AID PAYMENTS DUE TO SCHOOLS MAY BEAR BRUNT OF STATE BUDGET CRUNCH…Delay elimination of some payments may be one way Christie administration tries to close $800 million gap
Star Ledger - Christie's education commissioner not sure if big budget gap will prompt cuts to schools
Press of Atlantic City - Panel wrestles with New Jersey school funding...Amid another budget crunch, New Jersey lawmakers are wrestling with a question of fairness: Is it better to give more state aid to school districts with the greatest need, or to use the state’s subsidy to help all schools equally?...
Nj Spotlight - AID PAYMENTS DUE TO SCHOOLS MAY BEAR BRUNT OF STATE BUDGET CRUNCH…Delay elimination of some payments may be one way Christie administration tries to close $800 million gap
JOHN MOONEY | MAY 6, 2014
With the state facing an $800 million shortfall in its fiscal 2014 budget, there are only so many places that the money can be found to close the gap -- and state aid to schools is among the most obvious.
After all, state education aid makes up more than one-third of the overall budget, totaling more than $12.8 billion.
But in a sometimes testy hearing before the Assembly budget committee yesterday, acting Education Commissioner David Hespe offered few clues about whether the answer might simply be delaying school-aid payment until the next fiscal year or eliminating the aid payments outright -- or something in between.
“At this point in time, I cannot say what the impact will be, although we can certainly assume given that school funding, both direct and indirect payments, makes up a third of the budget, we can certainly assume there will be some impact,” Hespe said in response to repeated questioning that opened the hearing.
“I just cannot say what that is,” he said. “The goal would be to limit impact to as little as possible. . . . At this point in time, everything is on the table, and I don’t have the ability to take anything off the table.”
State Assemblyman Gary Schaer (D-Passaic), chairman of the budget committee, prodded Hespe further, sometimes sounding like a lawyer in cross-examination.
“Forgive me, I don’t mean to put you on the spot, and I understand the governor will do what he believes what he needs to do to have the less disastrous effects,” Schaer said.
“The question then becomes, can we ask what cuts can be made to the education department in next few weeks to help us overcome the difficulties which the state is confronting?”
But Hespe wasn’t budging, saying that even if he knew, it wouldn’t be his decision to announce what steps might be taken.
“Out of deference to the governor, those are probably announcements he should be making, not myself at a budget hearing,” he said.
But Hespe agreed that none of the options would be good one: “Given there are only eight weeks left in the fiscal year, there are no cuts that I believe can be made without great difficulty.”
The options are indeed limited at this point, with only a few weeks to the end of the school budget year.
The most obvious would be to postpone the next school-aid payment to July. The state already defers the final two payments of the school year into the next fiscal year, a practice started under former Gov. Jim McGreevey to help solve his own budget crunch. This move would add a third deferred payment. The payment, amounting to about $400 million, is slated to go out May 22.
But even if the state could pull back at this point, the impact may be felt more in cash flow than in real hardship, as most districts have in the past either tapped into surplus to keep paying the bills or entered into short-term borrowing , with the state then helping to defray those borrowing costs.
More significant would be eliminating one of the aid payments altogether, amounting to essentially a 5 percent cut in aid.
Other options might include reductions in specific aid categories, such as special-aid costs or aid for districts experiencing big enrollment growth.
One hot-button topic of late has been the massive growth in schools and students enrolling in the state’s inter-district school-choice program, with the state already putting a cap on the funding for next year.
But, again, Hespe wasn’t saying much yesterday.
“At this point, all we would be engaging in is conjecture, and I don’t think any of us want to be engaging in conjecture at this time,” he said. “The stakes are very, very serious, as we all know, and I can’t see my conjecturing at this time being helpful to anybody.”
Star Ledger - Christie's education commissioner not sure if big budget gap will prompt cuts to schools
By Peggy McGlone/The Star-Ledger The Star-Ledger
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on May 05, 2014 at 2:10 PM, updated May 06, 2014 at 6:39 AM
TRENTON — Acting state Education Commissioner David Hespe today said he doesn't know whether Gov. Chris Christie's administration will cut education funding to help close an $807 million state budget gap, but he assumes "there's going to be some impact."
Under questioning from members of the state Assembly Budget Committee, Hespe said $400 million in state aid to districts is still to be paid, but did not say if all or a portion of that would be withheld.
“I’m not sure what impacts it will have on individual districts or the department of education. We can assume that given the school funding is large portion of budget, certainly there’s going to be some impact,” Hespe said. “Everything is on the table. I don’t have the ability to take anything off the table.”
The Christie administration last week said the shortfall for the current budget, which expires June 30, had swelled to $807 million. Revenues for April were $600 million less than the governor had anticipated.
Committee chairman Gary Schaer (D-Passaic) pressed Hespe on what cuts he would favor “to help us overcome the difficulty” of the large shortfall.
Hespe repeatedly declined to offer specifics.
“There are no cuts that can be made without great difficulty," Hespe said. “Are there places I could recommend being cut? No, I could not.”
The current budget shortfall was the lead topic in a wide-ranging hearing that lasted more than three hours.
Democrats on the committee repeatedly questioned the rationale behind Christie's $12.9 billion education budget for the budget year that begins in July. The spending plan includes a per-pupil increases of almost $37 million to every district in the state.
Assemblyman Joseph Cryan (D-Union) asked why the administration chose to give increases to every district rather than use the School Funding Reform Act guidelines, which bases aid on need.
“I’m confused by the idea of growth. Why invest in a well-performing district?” Cryan asked.
“We wanted to acknowledge that all districts are experiencing cost struggles,” Hespe
said.
Christie’s budget also proposes across-the-board technology upgrades for next year’s new Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, a more difficult test that will be replace standardized exams now given to students each spring in grades three through eight and 11th grade.
Students will take the new test on a computer. Hespe said 70 percent of districts have the technology in place to administer the exams next spring.
Assemblyman Troy Singleton (D-Burlington) questioned why the administration didn’t seek to help the 30 percent that are struggling to comply with the test requirements.
“We didn’t want to provide a disincentive,” Hespe said. “We don’t want to penalize districts that were moving ahead quickly. It was an acknowledgement that all districts at some point, whether in the last couple years or in the next months, did spend dollars on PARCC readiness.”
Lawmakers also questioned Hespe about the four state-run districts and how and when the state will return local control to Newark, Jersey City and Paterson. The state took control of Camden several months ago.
Assemblyman Benjie Wimberly (D-Passaic) complained that the process of returning the districts to local control was too slow and did not seem to have a clear process for school boards to follow. Hespe said state officials would announce decisions about the state districts in the next two weeks.
Press of Atlantic City - Panel wrestles with New Jersey school funding TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — Amid another budget crunch, New Jersey lawmakers are wrestling with a question of fairness: Is it better to give more state aid to school districts with the greatest need, or to use the state’s subsidy to help all schools equally? Members of the Assembly Budget Committee posed questions about the issue to Education Commissioner David Hespe at a hearing Monday. Education costs are a huge part of the state’s budget each year. For the fiscal year that begins July 1, Gov. Chris Christie’s administration is calling for sending just under $8 billion, or nearly one-fourth of the proposed $34.4 billion state budget — to school districts to offset their costs. Add in payments for educators’ pensions and benefits and education costs for preschool through 12th grade total nearly $13 billion, or more than $1 of every $3 the state spends. When it comes to direct support for schools, the state’s spending is heavily tilted toward a group of lower-income districts, most of them in cities. That is largely the result of a series of state Supreme Court rulings that have found the state needs to do more for the children there. It is also a result of the relatively low property tax bases in those places. Most of the school budgets in suburban districts are raised through local property taxes. Assemblyman Jay Webber, a Republican from Morris Plains, said that one town in his Morris County district — North Caldwell — is in line to get $233,000, or less than $350 per student. He compared that to Asbury Park, where the proposed allocation is $55 million, or about $28,000 per student. “I know that the students in Asbury Park are facing some challenges that students in North Caldwell aren’t,” he said. “I’m not sure they’re 79 times greater.” Hespe, an appointee of the Republican governor, said that urban schools get more to pay for teaching English to non-native speakers, more special education programs and health clinics, among other items. Hespe said that technical support from his department and other changes such as new curriculum standards might help struggling districts more than another major infusion of funding. But then Hespe heard nearly the opposite complaint: that the state is not using a formula adopted by the Legislature in 2008 to determine school subsidies. The formula uses many factors, including the poverty in the district. The Education Department said that if the state used the formula, it would mean more than $1 billion more for districts. The biggest increase in direct aid to schools proposed by Christie for the coming year is $27 million that is to be given to each district at the same rate: $20 per student. “Why do you invest in a well-performing district?” asked Assemblyman Joe Cryan, a Democrat from Union Township. © 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed