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4-17-12 Education Issues in the News
NJ Spotlight - NJ Anti-bullying Money: Will There Be Enough to Go Around?...Schools to share $1M to pay for implementing New Jersey’s tough new law

The Record - Acting NJ education chief pitches funding formula in Fort Lee

NJ Spotlight - NJ Anti-bullying Money: Will There Be Enough to Go Around?...Schools to share $1M to pay for implementing New Jersey’s tough new law

By John Mooney, April 17, 2012 in Education|Post a Comment

The Christie administration will give New Jersey school districts until mid-May to seek their share of $1 million in new funding to pay for the rising costs of implementing the state’s anti-bullying law.

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But in its five-page application provided to districts yesterday, it also acknowledged it may not be enough to go around and cover all costs.

“An application will be funded to the extent that it is approvable and funds are available,” the application reads. “If the total number of approvable applications exceeds the available funds, district awards will be pro-rated and adjusted accordingly.”

Such a demand is likely. School officials and their advocates estimate the statewide costs this year have well exceeded $1 million to pay for the additional staffing and training required in the new Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights. The applications are due May 11.

“It will be interesting to see how far this money will go,” said John Donahue, executive director of the New Jersey Association of School Business Officials, whose members will be the ones applying for the money.

“If you think about it, if even just half of the districts apply, that’s just $3,000 per district,” he said.

And that’s just this year. No additional state money is proposed for next year under Gov. Christie’s fiscal 2013 budget. His budget does set aside nearly $160,000 to pay for two training experts inside the state Department of Education to assist districts.

The cost of the landmark law and New Jersey’s ability to pay those costs has drawn statewide attention. The state’s Council on Local Mandates ruled in January that the law enacted last year was unconstitutional as an unfunded state mandate. It was ruling on a complaint filed by the Allamuchy school district in Warren County, which contended the law had cost an estimated $30,000 in stipends and training.

That led to the legislature in a quick vote to amend the law last month and provide $1 million to districts for this year’s costs. The amendment also created a new commission to track the implementation of the law. Christie, who signed it on March 26, helped broker the amendment.

Considered one of the toughest in the country, the law requires districts to assign specific staff in every school to serve as the point person to investigate bullying complaints. It lays out timelines and procedures for how and when those matters are resolved. It also requires all teachers and staff to be trained in prevention strategies both in and outside the classroom.

That all costs money, local districts contend, and a recent survey by Donahue’s organization and the state’s School Boards Association found responding districts spending as much as $40,000 more for added stipends, programs and training.

A little more than 200 districts, about a third of the total, responded and their costs alone exceeded $2 million, the association said. The survey questions and responses broke down as follows:

·         Has the Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights created additional, unanticipated costs for your school district? Yes – 88%; No – 12%

·         Has it created additional [unbudgeted] costs for supplies, materials and/or software? Yes – 74%; No – 26%

·         Costs of additional supplies, materials and software: Total [among respondents]: $444,319; Average: $4,534; Range: $100 to $70,574

·         Has it created additional costs for professional development? Yes – 91%;No – 9%

·         Cost of professional development: Total: $451,292; Average: $3,958.70; Range: $250 to $25,000.

·         Has it created additional cost for “bullying prevention programs or approaches, and other initiatives” for students, volunteers, parents, law enforcement, community members and staff: Yes – 60%; No – 40%

·         Cost of additional programs: Total: $223,029; Average: $3,431.21; Range: $64 to $70,000

·         Did your school district incur additional, unanticipated personnel costs [including, but not limited to salary and benefits] as the result of the Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights? Yes – 30%; No – 70%

·         Additional staffing: Total: $1,084,065; Average: $25,211; Range: $750 to $225,000.

After taking its vote in January, the state Council on Local Mandates has yet to issue its final written ruling on the previous version of the law. The ruling does not take effect until the written opinion is released, typically within 60 days of the council’s vote.

That report is expected in the next couple of weeks, and the council’s chairman said it would acknowledge the new law while not making a judgment on it.

“The ruling will speak to the law at that time as being an unfunded mandate, period,” said John Sweeney, a former Superior Court judge from Burlington County who chairs the panel.

“If someone wants to challenge the new law, they have the right to do that,” he said. “That is not before us in this ruling.”

The Record - Acting NJ education chief pitches funding formula in Fort Lee

BY MONSY ALVARADO STAFF WRITER

FORT LEE — Acting state Education Commissioner Chris Cerf visited School 2 Monday with New Jersey’s complex schools funding formula and Governor Christie’s proposed reforms at the top of the agenda .

Sitting in the school’s library near dinosaur books and holding a cup of coffee, Cerf reviewed the details of the proposal announced in February that calls for a record $7.8 billion in so-called formula aid for K-12. But it also makes cuts in extra aid sent to poorer urban districts to support at risk children. Governor Christie has been critical of the School Funding Reformed Act for handing out large sums of money to failing school districts.

During the visit that lasted more than an hour, Cerf reminded officials how “generous” the state is in education funding, spending an average of nearly $18,000 per child in most districts, and $23,000 in former “Abbott” districts.

“We have been almost obsessively focused on how much money, instead of how well it’s spent,” he said.

Cerf met with Schools Interim Superintendent Steven Engravalle, Interim Assistant Schools Superintendent Sharon Amato, School 2 Principal Marianela Martin, and Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich before touring the K-6 school.

The governor, who slashed public school funding when he first took office, has proposed increasing state aid to public schools by 9 percent next year over the current year, with small districts seeing increases over 30 percent.

Cerf said Monday that among the proposed changes is to make cuts of 50 percent to the “adjustment aid,” — money provided to districts to help with any state aid cuts.

“We are trying to migrate towards a more rational and fair program,” he said.

Currently, the state funding formula is based substantially on the number of at-risk children in a district. In New Jersey, at-risk is measured by the number of students eligible for federal free lunch dollars, but Cerf contends that those numbers are inaccurate and may not be the best way to base state aid.

A task force formed by the governor will study how to better distribute aid, but Cerf said one way would be to fund districts based on the number of children who are behind academically.

He conceded there are problems with that option.

“The challenge there is you don’t want to create reverse incentives to reward schools ... but if you can beat that problem, there might be some way to do it,” he said.

He added that Christie has also proposed a $50 million innovation fund for districts with especially creative programs.

The governor also wants to change the way enrollment is counted. Students are now counted on Oct 15. The governor wants to base funding on average daily attendance, which he says will give schools incentives to improve attendance.

That change is supported by Engravalle; this month, the governor appointed him to the task force that will look at how school aid is distributed.

Engravalle said Fort Lee’s enrollment fluctuates each year, sometimes growing by more than 80 students from Oct. 15 to the end of the school year. He said students from other countries often register for a few months while their parents are in the area for business or if they’re visiting relatives.

Cerf said he visited the Fort Lee school district because of its “reputation for fiscal responsibility”, and its academic successes. School No. 3 in the district was named a Blue Ribbon School last year. That national honor is given to public and private schools that are either high performing or have greatly improved student achievement.

Fort Lee schools will receive $1,946,449 in state aid under the Governor’s proposed budget for next school year, an increase of $428,847, or 28 percent.

Engravalle and Amato said that when the district received less state aid, it forced officials to review their programs and see which ones worked, and which ones didn’t.

“I think it helped us get better, because we had to sit down and prioritize,” Amato said. For example, the district chose to start a special education class for preschoolers to avoid paying other districts to educate their students.

Cerf visited two second-grade classrooms, where he fielded questions from youngsters who were learning about centimeters, inches, and yards.

“I like to get in the field and see things that are going right,” he said. “All day long I’m bombarded with things that are going wrong, so it’s a nice change.”

Cerf visited East Windsor Regional School last month, and is scheduled to stop in at the Old Bridge School district later this month.

Email: alvarado@northjersey.com