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Gov. Chris Christie's budget: Deep cuts to N.J. schools are unavoidable without income tax surtax on the wealthy By Star-Ledger Editorial Board/The Star-Led...
'Gov. Chris Christie's budget: Deep cuts to N.J. schools are unavoidable without income tax surtax on the wealthy'
"...In the face of rising costs and signed labor contracts, he asks the state’s schools to abruptly reduce spending by 5 percent in one year.
That’s going to cause havoc. It will force substantial layoffs of teachers and other personnel, who make up roughly 80 percent of the costs in most districts. It will translate into larger class sizes and stingier offerings. It will inevitably damage student performance..."
Gov. Chris Christie's budget: Deep cuts to N.J. schools are unavoidable without income tax surtax on the wealthy
By Star-Ledger Editorial Board/The Star-Led...
March 19, 2010, 5:54AM
Alexander Dorce reads during the after-school program at Linden School #4. Gov. Chris Christie's budget cuts threaten after-school programs for about 11,000 kids.Now the trade-off is clear: In the name of small government, Gov. Chris Christie is moving to deliver a powerful punch to the jaw of New Jersey’s public school system.
His insistence on lower taxes for the state’s wealthiest families is forcing deep cuts that will do real damage. In the face of rising costs and signed labor contracts, he asks the state’s schools to abruptly reduce spending by 5 percent in one year.
That’s going to cause havoc. It will force substantial layoffs of teachers and other personnel, who make up roughly 80 percent of the costs in most districts. It will translate into larger class sizes and stingier offerings. It will inevitably damage student performance. And it will diminish the allure of teaching as a profession, planting the seeds for long-term decay of educational quality.
Christie says this is unavoidable, given the need to close a large budget gap. But that’s just not true. The math here is undeniable.
These education cuts amount to $820 million. Christie’s refusal to extend the surtax on families earning more than $400,000 will cost the state treasury $900 million, by the treasurer’s latest estimate. In other words, extending the surtax would allow him to cancel these school cuts.
Christie is on the right path in shrinking New Jersey’s government at all levels. But he is doing so recklessly, in part because he clings so tightly to that tax cut.
Democrats need to fight him on this, and then figure out how best to use that $900 million. A good piece of it should go to the public schools. In the meantime, the Legislature needs to hold hearings to assess the full impact of these proposed cuts. New Jersey will not like what it hears.
To his credit, Christie has proposed giving schools important new tools to contain costs. The big gun would be a new law limiting increases in total labor costs to 2.5 percent a year. Negotiators could not exceed that unless local voters approved of higher property taxes in a referendum.
Most districts have existing contracts that can be reopened only with consent from the teachers union. If they are forced to make these deep cuts before those reforms kick in, the quality of education is bound to suffer.
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It is a relief, at least, that Christie is trying to spread this burden around the state evenly. Had he cut aid to each district by the same percentage amount, poorer districts that depend most heavily on the state would have had to make much deeper cuts.
That would have erased the undeniable progress that many of the state’s urban districts have made under the Supreme Court’s protection. As it stands now, reading and math scores at the elementary school levels are rising in poor districts, and New Jersey is closing the racial achievement gap faster than any other state. For all the problems in these districts, that achievement should make us proud.
Under this plan, the aim is to force all districts to cut total spending by 5 percent. For a suburban district that gets only 5 percent of its budget from state funds, that can mean a complete loss of state aid.
That took political courage. Because many of these districts are in Republican areas of the state. This is about the only sacrifice that Christie is asking of the state’s wealthier residents.
Yes, he drew this plan up with an eye on the state Supreme Court, which would probably not allow more draconian cuts. Even this plan is likely to face a legal challenge, given that it violates the court’s earlier directive to maintain funding for these districts.
Still, while these cuts are way too deep, the governor at least ensured that all kids in the state will face roughly the same level of cutbacks.
