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4-10-12 Education Issues in the News
Paramus Patch - NJ Has Too Many Municipalities, Senator Tells Seniors… “Sen. Bob Gordon outlined on Monday the coming budget debate between legislators and Gov. Chris Christie in a talk to seniors at the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post, but said the state's problems would only be solved by combining some of the state's 500-plus municipalities and school districts…Bergen County has 75 school districts. Gordon said the county could manage with 25.”

The Republic (Columbus Indiana)-Associated Press - - NJ districts opting out of up-or-down budget votes by moving school elections to November

NJ Spotlight - From the Rocky Mountains, Lessons on Teacher Tenure…Colorado’s entry into evaluations a model for New Jersey

Paramus Patch - NJ Has Too Many Municipalities, Senator Tells Seniors… “Bergen County has 75 school districts. Gordon said the county could manage with 25.”

 By Myles Ma  April 9, 2012

Sen. Bob Gordon outlined on Monday the coming budget debate between legislators and Gov. Chris Christie in a talk to seniors at the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post, but said the state's problems would only be solved by combining some of the state's 500-plus municipalities and school districts.

The gap between revenue and spending will only increase without more consolidations like the one that took place in Princeton this year.

"Nothing is really going to happen until we stop trying to deliver 21st century services with a 19th century form of government," Gordon said.

Bergen County has 75 school districts. Gordon said the county could manage with 25.

Consolidation would cut down on the number of public employees and administrators, he said.

Gordon spoke mostly about the governor's budget. He criticized Christie for relying on overly optimistic revenue projections.

"He is projecting a pretty healthy increase in revenues, about 7.3%," Gordon said. "I and many others consider that kind of a rosy picture."

Christie plans to use the projected extra money for a 10% income tax cut. Gordon said such a cut would be more beneficial to the wealthy, since they earn more income.

Gordon and other senate Democrats propose to instead offer an income tax credit equal to 10% of each taxpayers' property tax bill. The credit would be worth up to $1,000.

The senator said he was working to help seniors afford their rent. Gordon said he and Assemblywoman Connie Wagner are developing a bill that would limit rent increases for seniors who have been living in the same building for 10 years.

About 20 seniors attended the talk. They asked Gordon not only about senior issues, but also education, funding the pension system and environmental issues.

New Jersey owes the pensions system $35 billion, and Anthony Campanali, a Paramus resident and member of the #1 Seniors Club, pointed out that Christie is the first governor to pay into the fund in years. Gordon agreed that paying down the debt, which dwarfs the size of the entire state budget, would have to be a priority.

"We are in a huge hole, and it happened in a bipartisan way and we've got to deal with that problem," he said.

The Republic (Columbus Indiana)-Associated Press - - NJ districts opting out of up-or-down budget votes by moving school elections to November

The Republic-Columbus Indiana, NJ

The AsburyPark Press

GEOFF MULVIHILL Associated Press, Updated:April09,2012 - 12:27 pm

 

'NJ Districts Opting out of up-or-down budget votes...'

TRENTON, N.J. — New Jersey's April school elections — quirky, important and often ignored by voters — are fast becoming a relic of the past.

Only 73 districts are holding them on April 17 after a new state law allowed school officials to move the votes on school budgets and board candidates to November's major election day.

The state Education Department said 468 districts have switched election dates since a law allowing them to do so was adopted in January. (Nearly 50 districts don't hold elections because they're under state control or have appointed rather than elected school boards.)

There are two main benefits for the districts for moving: As long as the local school property taxes don't go up by more than 2 percent, districts switching to November don't have to put their budgets to a public vote and risk rejection. And by switching, they can have county election boards pay the full cost of elections.

Before the election switch, New Jersey was the only state where most voters got a direct up-or-down vote on their local school budgets.

Even though the state's highest-in-the-nation property taxes (average household bill: $7,600) are constantly one of the top public issues in the state and schools take up most of that amount, the elections sometimes seemed like well-kept secrets.

For decades, fewer than one in five voters bothered to show up each April to vote on the only big tax item on which they had a direct say. And most years, a wide majority of budgets were adopted.

The formula changed abruptly two years ago.

Encouraged by cost-slashing and teacher-union-bashing Gov. Chris Christie, more than one-fourth of voters went to the polls in 2010 — and they rejected nearly 60 percent of the school budget proposals, sending them to municipal governments for trimming.

By last year, a new property tax cap was in effect — a 2 percent cap with few exceptions instead of the old 4 percent limit, which had many exceptions. An overwhelming majority of budgets — 8 in 10 — were approved by voters.

The tighter limits on spending mean that not much is gained by holding budget votes, said Frank Belluscio, a spokesman for the New Jersey School Boards Association.

"The budget referendum is really not necessary to protect the interest of taxpayers." he said. "It ends up being a frustrating experience."

When voters nix budgets, it's up to municipal government officials to find places to trim. And usually, their cuts are not especially deep.

Lawmakers decided in January to give school boards the option to switch election dates — and take away the direct budget votes. The state Education Department told districts they should decide, for this year, by February. Most districts acted fast — a decision that will also extend the terms of some board members for another six months.

But not every district jumped.

Some are concerned that holding votes in November will make school elections, which are traditionally nonpartisan, seem like another Democrat-Republican issue.

Some have other reasons.

"Our board of education was very concerned that they not deny the voters the opportunity to vote on the school budget," said David Mooij, the superintendent in Neptune Township.

Besides, he said, school officials in the shore community find selling the budget to the public a good way to build support for local schools.

The districts that are keeping elections in April still must abide by the 2 percent tax-hike cap. If they want to spend more, they have to put the additional amount to voters in a second budget question. This month, only three districts — Haddon Heights, Hawthorne and Warren County's Greenwich — have second questions. Additionally, East Rutherford is asking voters to approve a bond issue to pay for construction projects.

 

NJ Spotlight - From the Rocky Mountains, Lessons on Teacher Tenure…Colorado’s entry into evaluations a model for New Jersey

By John Mooney, April 10, 2012 in Education

Colorado is proving an interesting case study for New Jersey’s efforts to reform teacher tenure and evaluation.

The Rocky Mountain state enacted in 2010 a law strikingly similar to what is being debated now in New Jersey’s legislature, one that would grant tenure to teachers after three years of positive evaluations and take it away after two years of negative.

It also uses four different grades for teachers, and like New Jersey, Colorado launched a pilot for districts this year to test an evaluation system. Both have a deadline for a statewide system by 2013-14.

But for all those similarities, Colorado is learning a few of its own lessons along the way -- ones that could prove prescient for New Jersey as it enters the same debates.

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At the very least, the architects of Colorado’s efforts acknowledged in interviews that it’s been a humbling experience.

“It’s definitely hard work,” said Katy Anthes, the Colorado Department of Education’s executive director for teacher effectiveness. “It’s not like any state has figured it out yet.”

State Sen. Michael Johnston, the legislative architect of the law and one who testified before New Jersey’s Senate education committee last year, estimated it could end up a four or five-year process to get it right. Colorado is only now starting to try out using student test scores for judging principals, with teachers still a year away.

“It takes a few years,” said Johnston, a Democrat from Denver. “But to do it right is more important than doing it fast.”

One major distinction from New Jersey has been Colorado’s roll out first of a pilot for the evaluation of principals, with the teachers’ piece coming next year. New Jersey is starting with teachers, and will include a principal pilot next year.

“That is probably my biggest lesson learned,” said Anthes of the decision to start with principals. “It is so essential. The principal sets the whole culture for teacher effectiveness, and the fact we did it first immediately decreased the anxiety for teachers. They felt like more of a team.”

The capacity of districts and the department itself to train educators to the new rules has proved a challenge, too, an issue already starting to rear its head in New Jersey.

In Colorado, a summit of educators from pilot districts last month heard many teachers and principals saying they felt overwhelmed by all the requirements and training. Some doubted it could be ready in a year.

“We certainly wish there were more trainers for the department itself,” Anthes said in an interview yesterday. “I’m hearing other states having 50 or 60 trainers working for them, and we have two with maybe a chance of getting four more. Tennessee has 50 trainers and fewer districts than we do.”

Colorado has also gone a different path on a couple of other points, too.

In the bill now under debate in New Jersey’s Senate, existing teachers would retain their seniority in the case of layoffs and only new teachers would face new rules that limit their seniority rights. In contrast, Colorado provides the same requirements for all teachers, new and old.

“That’s why we consider ours one of the toughest in the country,” Johnston said.

Just the fact that Colorado enacted the law first and is developing the evaluation system second marks a strategic decision different from New Jersey. Johnston and others said it came with its challenges of not knowing the full system they were enacting, but it also gave the state invaluable leverage over districts.

“In Colorado at least, it proved the right order,” said Kathy Christie of the Education Commission of the States, a state policy clearinghouse based in Denver. “The state law being in place puts people’s feet to the fire.”

But with that advantage, Christie said the state has also learned the difficulties rest in the details, a lesson that New Jersey is sure to confront as well.

“The law itself was well crafted, making sure there were a lot of crafts and balances,” she said. “But getting all the nitty gritty details done, its still proving very tough.”

Anther of the Colorado education department said the state is still on track to have a system in place for 2013-14, the statutory deadline, with some leeway to tweak it in the first year. And if it needs more time, she doesn’t rule that out, either.

“If we need to talk to legislators about maybe changing the timelines, we will,” she said.