Property Tax Reform, Special Legislative Session & School Funding

9-7-06 EMAILNET Special Session & Trenton Update
GSCS QUICK FACTS: GSCS testified before the Joint Committee on Public School Funding Reform this Tuesday, 9-5-06, at the invitation of the Committee. GSCS testimony was well-received, with several legislators commenting favorably on its straightforward presentation, organization and specifics included in the testimony. GSCS thanks those who responded to its call for member input on this, and welcomes additional thought from members on cost-saving measures and more. The Joint Committee on Public School Funding Reform is meeting every Tuesday through October at 1 pm in the Statehouse Annex. For full GSCS testimony from the 9-5-06 hearing, see below…

GSCS continues meeting with key legislators working on the special session committees, including those on the Joint Committee on Consolidation and Shared Services - GSCS is urging those committee members to ensure that the studies in which they are engaged compare apples to apples, and that they also understand that New Jersey’s school data needs to be disaggregated, separating Abbott from Regular Operating District data. Since these two groupings are funded differently, their statistics should not be co-mingled as the resulting numbers would blur what’s really going on locally and not give a clear picture to legislators, thus not result in well-homeworked, informed decisions. See articles below from today, 9-7, on yesterday’s hearing, where the Maryland County system was presented to this committee. GSCS endorses shared services, and voluntary consolidation.

Joint Committee on Consolidation and Shared Services is meeting every Thursday, 1 p.m., through October in the Statehouse Annex.

 

 

9-7-06 News re Jt Comm on Consolidation & Shared Services mtg 9-5
Gannett - Official again calls for county schools ..... Star Ledger - Maryland may show Jersey way to pare school costs
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9-7-06 The Record - Local Governments Poised to save as co-pays rise
Is Trenton sending a mixed message?... On the one hand - er this Record article today - the state is increasing co-pays for state employees, yet on the other hand, the Pension & Health Benefits Review Commission meeting on Sept. 15 is scheduled to discuss Assembly bill 3095, sponsored by Assembly Majority Leader Joe Cryan. A3095 would require ALL school districts to joing the State Health Benefits plan. GSCS opposes this measure that would eliminate competitive market options for local districts, thus costing districts more in terms of literal dollars and, also very important to local district budgets, flexibility in negotiating labor contracts.
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9-6-06 link to view yesterday's hearing at Jt Comm on Pub Schl Funding
GSCS Trustee, Betsy Ginsburg, is the second presenter. Find GSCS testimony for the hearing below on this homepage.

9-6-06 Articles re Jt Comm Hearing yesterday & related school news
Star Ledger - Town tries to measure the price of school pride...Hackettstown, an average district, weighs taxes and funding Gannett - School officials balk at consolidation idea

Asbury Pk Press - Tax plan could target poor schools

Star Ledger - Legislator: Let's erase the 'Abbott district' label

The Record - Tax panel wants change in school funding

Star Ledger - Town tries to measure the price of school pride

Star Ledger-State raises co-pays for teachers, government workers

Don't ignore fat contracts - Asbury Park Press editorial

Trenton Times - Auditor pokes hole in budget Council told it should remove projected $5.7 million in revenue
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9-5-06 GSCS Testimony on cost saving measures in Trenton
Joint Legislative Committee on Public School Funding Reform 1:00 PM Committee Room 11, 4th Floor, State House Annex, Trenton, NJ

Chair: Senator John H. Adler - Chair: Assemblyman Herb Conaway Membership The (Joint committee on Public School Funding Reform)committee will hear invited testimony from representatives of various education organizations on cost cutting measures that could be instituted in public schools. GARDEN STATE COALITION OF SCHOOLS/GSCS
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9-4-06 Weekend news articles of note
9-4-06 Star Ledger - The pressure of teacher pay 9-4-06 ASSOC PRESS (N.J. State)Web site draws impassioned pleas to revamp school funding

9-3-06 ASSOC PRESS - County school systems, property taxation equality to be examined

9-3-06 Sunday STAR LEDGER editorial-Government must get lean

9-1-06 NY TIMES - Multiple Jobs by Public Workers Strain Pension Plan in New Jersey (re Jt Common Pupblic Employee Benefits Reform hearing 8-31-06)
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8-31-06 EMAILNET re Sept 5 Jt Comm on Pub Schl Funding mtg
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8-31-06 p.m. NEED YOUR HELP - Just released - Jt Comm on Pub Schl Funding Reform
Agenda for this Tuesday, 9-5-06: "Joint Legislative Committee on Pub. School Funding Reform Tuesday, September 05, 2006 - 1:00 PM Meeting - Committee Room 11, 4th Floor, State House Annex, Trenton, NJ The committee will hear invited testimony from representatives of various education organizations on cost cutting measures that could be instituted in public schools."

 

Joint Legislative Committee on Public School Funding Reform
1:00 PM
Committee Room 11, 4th Floor, State House Annex, Trenton, NJ

Chair: Senator John H. Adler - Chair: Assemblyman Herb Conaway    Membership

The committee will hear invited testimony from representatives of various education organizations on cost cutting measures that could be instituted in public schools.

 

 

Good afternoon Senator Adler, Assemblyman Conaway and members of the Joint Committee on Public School Funding Reform.  My name is Betsy Ginsburg and I am on the Board of Trustees of the Garden State Coalition/GSCS. I am pleased to be here on behalf of the 350,000 students enrolled in the 110 districts represented by the GSCS. 

Today, at your invitation, we offer suggestions from our members on ways of trimming education costs.  We also look forward to continuing this conversation, as these ideas certainly will give birth to other constructive ideas along the way and will need to be fleshed out as this process continues.

 

BENEFITS

 

• The current State Health Benefits Plan is inflexible and limits local boards’ negotiating ability, resulting in increased costs for local taxpayers Do not restrict districts’ current ability to shop for cheaper plans by requiring all districts to participate in the State Health Benefits Plan.  Doing so would only create a rigid, monolithic system that does not promote competition in the health benefits marketplace.  The nearly 300 districts that are currently experiencing savings by contracting outside of the State plan will see immediate cost increases.

o        Allow for “opt out” provisions for those district employees who have health coverage through a spouse.  Ridgewood, one of many districts that is privately insured through Horizon Blue Cross/Blue Shield, reduced health insurance premium costs by $250,000 a year.  Over the course of the three year contract Ridgewood saved our taxpayers $750,000 in health insurance premiums.

o         Allow districts to provide a variety of health insurance options.  Ridgewood, for example, offers both PPO and Traditional Indemnity plans.  All new hires are provided with PPO coverage and at tenure may switch to traditional coverage.  Over the last three years, Ridgewood officials have seen an increase in the number of staff members choosing to retain PPO coverage after tenure growing. 

o        Provide only one policy per couple, if both a husband and wife are employed by the school district.  Eliminate the requirement that stipulates separate policies for a husband and wife working in the same school district.

 

SPECIAL EDUCATION

 

• Right now there are over 500 private providers delivering mandated special education services via out-of-district programs for disabled children, and only a few DOE auditors assigned to review the books of those providers. It is past time to increase the DOE auditing staff to a level where private providers, who are paid millions of dollars for special education services, are held accountable to the public.

·        Decrease litigation costs by establishing a mediation system for special education

·        Consider expanding the County Superintendents’ offices to provide legal services to school districts for special education cases at a fee less than those currently being charged by private firms and solo practitioners.

 

FACILITIES

 

·        Reduce the paper work and approval process that the State requires for capital projects, particularly for those projects that are district funded.  Under the current system, districts are incurring additional professional service costs for engineers and architects just to comply with state regulations.  Delays in receiving approval from the State always result in higher than expected costs.  Schools have a short window of time (summer) to complete projects; delays by the State can push project schedules off for a full year, adding substantially to expenses

·        Provide incentives to reduce energy costs.  If a district reduces its costs compared with the previous year, the amount of the reduction could be added to the 2% mandated fund balance (surplus) and used for emergencies or to offset property tax increases

o        Encourage the use of cost-efficient alternative energy sources, such as solar energy

·        Encourage the use of qualified in-district personnel to do repairs and maintenance tasks such as painting.  This is often cheaper than using outside contractors

 

SHARED SERVICES

 

• Sharing with municipalities: Many districts do this already, and many more could benefit from sharing services with their municipalities.  One district shares snow removal responsibilities and equipment, another shares a custodian with the town.  “Piggy backing” on projects, such as repaving of school parking lots (when municipal streets are being paved) saves tens of thousands of dollars.

·        Some districts, like the tri-district (Fair Haven, Rumson and Rumson Fair Haven HS) have shared the cost of consultants for staff development and curriculum evaluation.

·         Many districts are already part of consortiums or group buying plans for supplies, energy, etc.  Incentives should be provided to encourage this practice

·         Create grant programs that would finance feasibility studies and implementation costs to encourage a greater level of shared services among school districts.

·         Help districts to better and more efficiently analyze their cost efficiencies through a coordinated service on shared information and how-to guidance at the county level. i.e., Some districts use an alternative phone carrier to Version which has decreased our phone bills; changing internet providers also has reduced cost-savings for districts.

NEGOTIATIONS

·        Revisit the Scope of Negotiations law to eliminate imbalances that magnify the David v. Goliath situation that now exists when local boards must bargain with teachers’ associations backed the unlimited resources of the NJEA. County negotiations should be considered.  Local Boards would save money simply due to time efficiency and reductions in labor lawyer fees.

·        Revisit the “last best offer” law, which costs time and money during labor negotiations

PRIVATIZATION

 

·         Consider using the County Superintendent’s office to explore privatization of services such as food services, maintenance and custodial services, and transportation for school districts. 

·         Analyze the experiences of districts that have privatized various services; if analyses demonstrate savings and are considerate to current employees, provide assistance to districts that elect to pursue privatization within a flexible phase-in period and reward those that do with some kind of reasonable, positive incentives.

 

MANDATE REVIEW

 

·        Implement recommendations from the Mandate Review Commission to eliminate many expensive mandates (See Below Under “Transportation”)

·        Legislation proposing new mandates should always be accompanied by an estimate of what the mandate will cost each year to local communities (including bureaucratic costs) and not just to the state, so that legislators and their constituents know the real cost of these programs and regulations prior to making decisions that can have negative cost impact on local taxpayers.

 

TRANSPORTATION

 

·        Nonpublic school services:  Administration of services to nonpublic school students such as transportation, technology, nursing and nursing services are administered on a district by district basis.  In situations exclusively relating to reimbursement, this often means that a number of different districts will be sending pass through funding to the same school. Explore the possibility of centralizing administration of nonpublic services on a county wide or regional basis. If the county were allowed to provide the same supervision, it would free up local staff to do local district work more efficiently.(See Education Mandate Review Commission Report)

·        Implement the recommendations set forth by the Commission on Business Efficiency Task Force, under the chairmanship of Senator Joe Doria.

 

DATA ANALYSIS & COLLECTION

 

• Do the homework in depth and make informed decisions: make gathering of accurate, up-to-date, transparent, complete school finance and district data a number one priority. Current data is out of date in many instances and incomplete – it is too often not possible to make quality decisions based on what is ‘out there’. Disaggregate Abbott from regular operating district data since districts have been funded differently for years and understanding of how schools are impacted by prior funding decisions is necessary to get a clear picture of the present to make recommendations for the future.

·         Provide timely, sophisticated data and item analysis of state test results so that districts would no longer have to use additional standardized tests to inform instruction.  Right now the data provided by the state comes too late and is insufficient to identify instructional needs of the students.

·         Amend the Administrative Code to consolidate numerous record keeping reports (See Education Mandate Review Commission).

·         Modeling—Identify districts in every DFG that are both high-achieving and cost effective.  Use detailed information about these districts to assist other districts in the same DFG’s to improve performance (both fiscal and academic).

 

FINANCE

 

·        Increase the amount of fund balance (“Surplus”) that districts are permitted to hold.  Decreasing fund balance has forced districts to budget to the maximum in areas such as health insurance and energy where costs may vary significantly from year to year.  In the past a district could always access its fund balance to offset unexpected increases, including those for out of district special education placements that may occur after a budget has been approved.

·        Seek legislative action in the areas that can improve efficiency; base legislation on factual evidence and fiscal notes before moving bills ahead. For example, on-going conversation about regionalization being an effective and efficient avenue to improve cost and delivery of education falls flat when existing tax laws are an immediate disincentive to districts’ seeking to combine; it is also known that the combining of districts will impose higher salaries on the district[s] salary guide that is/are not the highest in the potential regional district