3-30-07 Education Commissioner presents Governor's Plan for School Aid in FY07 to Assembly Budget Committee
STAR LEDGER ‘Education budget passes first legislative test Assembly committee considers $10.9M plan’   “… Gov. Jon Corzine's latest state budget for public education skated through its first legislative hearing yesterday with barely a scratch, but lawmakers were less kind about how the money is spent once it reaches districts…”

CLICK HERE TO READ FULL ARTICLE AND SEE WHAT PARTISAN WEBSITES POSTED TODAY ON SCHOOL AID ISSUES
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3-27-07 GSCS Testified before Senate Budget & Appropriations Comm. on Gov's School Aid plan for FY08
After the testimony, NJN News interviewed Senators Bernard Kenny (Chairman), Leonard Lance (Minority Leader) and Barbara Buono (persistent advocate for new formula and special education aid), as well as GSCS Executive Director Lynne Strickland. The GSCS point is getting across: A consistent theme noted in the interviews was the importance of having a funding formula put in place ASAP, that will alleviate property tax burdens while addressing the substantial needs of hundreds of school districts that have had to curtail education programs due to flat formula aid over the past 5 years.
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3-26-07 FYI Memo to GSCS Board re Administration's approach to developing new school funding formula
Recently GSCS received an invitation to participate in a conference call with Commissioner of Education Lucille Davy. In addition to GSCS, included in the call were the LEE group and Education Law Center. The purpose of the call was to inform and include education stakeholder leadership of the Governor’s plan to move forward on the development and forthcoming process for a new school funding formula....for details, click here
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3-26-07 Education Week 'Quality Counts 2006' on NJ School Policy
Overview of NJ's policies for school quality, highlight summary page re: Standards and Accountability, Efforts to improve teacher quality, School climate, Resource equity, Overall grade. NJ scores well overall but receives a C- for 'Resource Equity'. Click on More below here for details. Here's the link to the web page at Education Week ....http://www.edweek.org/media/ew/qc/2006/17shr.nj.h25.pdf
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3-25-07 New York Times on NJ Comparative Spending Guide, more on Gov putting off signing A1, Tax Caps & Rebate bill
THE RECORD Corzine opts to delay signing property tax credit legislation -Friday, March 23, 2007// ....... NEW YORK TIMES - ‘Data Show Wide Differences in New Jersey School Spending’ 3-24-07 {Link to the Guide inside}:

'The wide range in spending among the state’s 615 school districts is starkly laid out in the 2007 Comparative Spending Guide, which showed an average per-student increase of 3.1 percent over last year.'

“(There) is a big spread, and equity is something that needs to be addressed in the anticipated new school funding formula,” said Lynne Strickland, executive director of the Garden State Coalition of Schools, which represents 150 suburban school districts..."
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3-22-07 THINGS CHANGE...Governor Corzine delays A1 becoming law
STAR LEDGER, Thursday, March 22, 2007- Corzine holds off on signing property tax-credit bill "...the governor is biding his time. He says he'll wait, likely until next month but perhaps even later, to sign the bill that would give most New Jersey homeowners a credit of up to 20 percent on their property tax bills... And he was vague about his reasons for holding off."

"The regular deadline to sign the bill, (is) 45 days after passage by the Legislature... But Corzine is exploiting an obscure provision in the law that leaves an unsigned bill in limbo when the Legislature isn't meeting. The Senate and Assembly are on a break until May while committees conduct hearings on Corzine's budget proposal..."
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