NJ Spotlight - Education Issues Will Help Shape Christie's Second Term -- and Political Future "...the next state budget – education aid makes up one-third of it – could face stiff pressures, especially with commitments to make required state pension contributions. Add in Christie’s continued push for an income-tax cut, and that doesn’t leave much cushion in the budget for schools, Vrancik said. “Funding is going to be really stressed, given the realities of the pension payback,” said Lynne Strickland, director of the Garden State Coalition of Schools, a suburban school group. “There is a serious pressure cap on that.”...Strickland said she hopes school districts will ...get some help in addressing rising special-education costs.
The List: Top 10 Education Highlights of Christie's First Term
NJ Spotlight - Education Issues Will Help Shape Christie's Second Term -- and Political Future
John Mooney | January 6, 2014
After four years of political drama involving school reform and education policy in New Jersey, could Gov. Chris Christie’s second term be even more eventful?
Three major speeches by the governor over the next two months are sure to highlight education.
In the meantime, many observers are already speculating about Christie’s unfinished education-related business as he begins his next term – and possibly embarks on a run for certain higher office.
“Education is always an important political issue, because it involves two things everyone cares about: kids and money,” said Ben Dworkin, director of the Rebovich Institute of New Jersey Politics at Rider University.
“Even in a second term after a first term that saw some significant accomplishments, Chris Christie will still prioritize it,” Dworkin predicted. ”There are still schools that don’t do well, still issues in fully funding the state’s school funding law, and challenges around charter schools and vouchers.
“And, in addition, because he will be running for president, the country will be paying close attention to his education agenda,” Dworkin said.
Even before looking at any new initiatives, there is much involving Christie’s agenda for the last four years that should keep education team, led by state Education Commissioner Chris Cerf, busy during the new term.
In one of the governor’s bigger accomplishments, the state’s new tenure-reform law has been enacted and the new teacher-evaluation systems have been ordered for schools, but even Christie has said proper implementation will be critical.
“They will have to go through all the hiccups and bumps of the new testing and aligning curriculum, and then applying that to teachers,” said Ginger Gold, chief lobbyist for the New Jersey Education Association, the teachers union. “Before he moves onto new ground, his administration will have a lot to do.”
That’s not to say Christie won’t try to generate some new headlines, too, or at least dust off some proposals that were less successful in his first term.
For instance, school vouchers -- either under the proposed Opportunity Scholarship Act or as a budget line-item -- remain one of his unaccomplished priorities.
And a central tenet of Christie’s education platform has been to dismantle the Abbott v. Burke rulings and the school-funding formula, another feat he has yet to pull off in the face of Democratic opposition. But this week, he reportedly withdrew one of his latest nominees for the state Supreme Court, Robert Hanna, raising prospects that he is seeking a compromise to win approval of others initiatives.
Legal Challenges Possible
The Education Law Center, the Newark-based advocacy group that has led the Abbott litigation, is on alert to head him off, and its director, David Sciarra, said this weekend that he stands ready to challenge the administration on other fronts as well.
“The high level of (funding) equity that New Jersey had built over the last four years is eroding,” Sciarra said. “We are still a fair state that funds more for concentrations of poverty, but we are losing ground and it is starting to take its toll.”
Sciarra cited lower-income districts that do not fall under the Abbott rulings and have seen a widening gap between state aid received and what they are entitled to under the funding formula.
Also pertaining to the Abbott rulings, the ELC has been especially critical of the administration’s slow progress on court-ordered school construction.
“We have seen $200 million in overhead costs and not one new school started and finished under this administration,” Sciarra said.
As to whether he might return to court on any of these issues, Sciarra wouldn’t say for sure.
“If there is another four years where we don’t have relief, we very well may see additional or new legal action under the Supreme Court’s precedent,” he said.
These are just some of the key education-related topics on the horizon in the months and years ahead.
School funding for non-Abbott districts is a perennially critical issue, too, as a vast majority of those districts are still catching up from the loss of state aid four years ago.
“So much will be determined by how much money there is,” said Michael Vrancik, lobbyist for the New Jersey School Boards Association.
He and others said the next state budget – education aid makes up one-third of it – could face stiff pressures, especially with commitments to make required state pension contributions. Add in Christie’s continued push for an income-tax cut, and that doesn’t leave much cushion in the budget for schools, Vrancik said.
“Funding is going to be really stressed, given the realities of the pension payback,” said Lynne Strickland, director of the Garden State Coalition of Schools, a suburban school group. “There is a serious pressure cap on that.”
Unresolved Issues, Initiatives
Strickland said she hopes school districts will at least get some help in addressing rising special-education costs. “We are ever hopeful and optimistic, but we are also realistic,” she said.
Leading Democratic legislators have also said one of their priorities will be to enact a new, revamped charter-school law to replace one that is now nearly two decades old.
State Sen. Teresa Ruiz (D-Essex), the Senate education chairwoman who shepherded the new tenure law, has said she will have legislation ready in the coming months, but given the vitriol around charter schools the last four years, the debate is unlikely to be quick and easy.
New student testing next year and the advent of the Common Core State Standards already under way will surely put even more pressure on the state’s schools. The outcome off those two initiatives is unpredictable at this point, but other states’ rocky transitions offer a cautionary tale for New Jersey.
And then there’s the nowhere-near-resolved debate over reforms in the state’s takeover districts, most notably in Newark and Camden.
Newark Superintendent Cami Anderson has just unveiled a new organization plan for the state’s largest school system that has brought loud cries of protest, especially over her plans to close or relocate a half-dozen schools.
Camden has its own new state-appointed superintendent, Paymon Rouhanifard, who is about to present his own strategic plan. It includes the continued expansion of so-called “Renaissance Schools,” a hybrid version of charter schools enacted by Christie two years ago.
How all these issues play out in the context of a presidential election – or initially, for Christie, in Republican primaries – are a key component in predicting what the governor might do, as well as how long he might stay in office.
“Everything is colored by what he might do,” Vrancik said.
Among Republicans, especially those voting in primaries, tough-minded school reform is good politics, Vrancik and others said. Christie’s frequent combat with the NJEA is even better politics, and while his relations with the union have improved of late, Dworkin said he doesn’t expect much of a détente if the governor commits to a presidential run.
“Taking on the public unions, including the teachers unions, will certainly play well with Republicans in a competitive primary,” he said. “Why would he run from it? He gets more votes in doing that, than in currying favor with them.”
NJ Spotlight - The List: Top 10 Education Highlights of Christie's First Term
John Mooney | January 6, 2014
The governor has left his mark on almost every aspect of New Jersey's public school system
Since being elected in 2009, Gov. Chris Christie has made education one of his keystone issues, and in his first term, there’s no doubt there has been a plethora of changes for New Jersey’s public schools.
Not everyone has agreed with his agenda, but few would disagree that changes have come on all fronts, from tenure reform to charter school expansion, from school funding to caps on spending.
As Christie is about to embark on his second term, not to mention a possible run for the White House, it’s a good time to look at what actually happened in K-12 education over the past four years.
By its very nature, this Top 10 list of education highlights involves a number of judgment calls -- not least in the order of the list itself. Entries are roughly in order of significance, which shouldn't obscure the fact that each is significant in and of itself.
1. Pension and health benefits reform, wage freezes, and the NJEA
Christie’s landmark changes in how pensions and health benefits are paid and the sometimes-nasty tensions it fueled with the state’s most powerful union and its members has left an indelible mark on his first term both in building his tough-guy image and in angering his critics. His demand for wage freezes or the rejection of school budgets in his first year only turned up the heat.
Relations with the NJEA are a little better since the early going, but Christie is still prone to blast away at an occasional teacher who gets in his face, and the NJEA has hardly been shy in making its sentiments known, including record spending in the last election.
2. School funding’s downs and ups
Christie has left an equally indelible mark on how schools are funded. Faced with a $1 billion hole after federal stimulus funds were spent by his predecessor, the governor cut that much from school aid in 2010. He has since built it back up and boasts the highest total school aid in New Jersey history, but three-quarters of districts are getting less from the state than they did before Christie took office. And the state’s school finance law remains underfunded by billions.
3. 2 percent cap and November vote
Working with the Legislature, Christie imposed a 2 percent cap on local property tax increases, give or take some exceptions. That has held down tax bills, but also prevented many districts from restoring programs and making up what they lost in state aid in 2010.
Meanwhile, the annual rite of school budget votes has all but vanished in districts, as long as the districts stay within the caps. Budgets no longer need public approval at all, while the annual elections of school board members has been moved to November in more than 500 districts.
4. Tenure reform and teacher evaluation
Maybe the biggest education reform of Christie's first term, although he can hardly take full credit for it, the governor in 2011 signed the first major change in New Jersey’s century-old tenure law, bringing new accountability to how teachers are judged and their fates determined.
It was as much a Democratic initiative, led by state Sen. Teresa Ruiz (D-Essex), and Christie didn’t get everything he wanted in compromises to win NJEA support. But it still wouldn’t have happened without Christie’s backing. And it rewrote the equation for teachers’ job security and how they are evaluated. Still, 18 months later, it remains very much a work in progress, with the new evaluation systems only now in place and many questions as to how well they will work.
5. Newark, Camden, and new aggressiveness in state takeovers
Almost 30 years ago, New Jersey was the first state in the country to take over troubled school districts, and it has been trying feverishly since then to figure out how to relinquish that control. But Christie has only stepped up the state’s oversight in his first term, installing an aggressive reformer in Cami Anderson to be superintendent in Newark and taking over a fourth district in Camden last year.
Both districts are deep in changes, including Newark’s performance-based teachers contract and its continued use of $100 million in funds donated by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, a deal in part brokered by Christie. But Newark also faces deep divisions and unrest over Anderson’s plans.
6. Abbott rulings and the Supreme Court
New Jersey’s reputation for having one of the most activist courts when it comes to school funding was reaffirmed in Christie’s first year, when the state Supreme Court ordered that $500 million be restored from his cuts to the state’s 31 neediest districts.
That only emboldened the governor into more open hostility with the court’s liberal wing, and spurred his attempts to remake it with new appointments. At least so far, he has been blocked by the Democratic legislature.
7. Schundler, then Cerf
Perhaps Christie’s biggest day-to-day impact is in his choice of state education commissioner, and that decision hasn’t been without drama. His first commissioner was former Jersey City mayor and gubernatorial candidate Bret Schundler, but that ended badly when the state screwed up its application for federal Race to the Top funds and Schundler was summarily fired.
His replacement, Chris Cerf, has been even more aggressive -- and controversial -- in pressing for reforms and remaking the state Department of Education, and he has overseen the boldest of the changes in his nearly three years in office.
8. Testing and data
While it began before him, among the initiatives that Cerf has helped lead has been the advent of more sophisticated -- and polarizing -- data systems for tracking students, schools, and soon, teachers. There will only be an increase in data as the state moves to more-frequent testing under the new Common Core PARCC exams in Cerf's second term.
9. Charter school expansion
Christie came in as a crusader for more charter schools, and his first year saw unprecedented growth in that sector. But while the alternative schools have continued to expand, with more than 80 now in place statewide, there has also been new and unprecedented pushback from suburban and, more recently, urban districts. Nonetheless, charter schools increase the options available to students, especially in places like Newark, which is on track to see a third of its students in charters by 2016.
10. Superintendent pay
It only directly affects a small handful of individuals, but it has been argued that Christie’s unilateral caps on school superintendent pay (the upper limit is $175,000 -- the governor’s own salary) have made it difficult to attract experienced, talented supers to the state. The rules have been legally challenged in vain, but face a possible expiration in 2016 if not renewed.
Honorable mention:
· The Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights: Not a Christie initiative and signed quietly, if not reluctantly, by the governor.
· Common Core and PARCC: Adopted by the state board of Education in Christie’s first summer, but part of a movement well underway before his arrival. Nevertheless, he and Cerf have embraced the changes.
· The Schools Development Authority: This may be a story of what hasn’t happened, since Christie all but stalled the school construction program while he revamped the agency.
· School vouchers: Another nonevent, since the governor’s push for the Opportunity Scholarship Act has so far been unsuccessful -- despite seemingly endless debate.