Bills that would expand public school choice and allow school districts to charge for summer school passed the state Senate on Monday and are headed to the Governor’s Office for approval.

The summer school bill, co-sponsored in the Senate by Sen. James Whelan, D-Atlantic, was approved by a vote of 27-8. If signed into law by Gov. Chris Christie, it would take effect immediately and allow school districts to charge students for remedial or enrichment credit-bearing summer school courses. The fee would be based on the school’s cost to operate the program. Currently, districts can only charge students from outside their district or for noncredit programs such as summer camps.

The bill was introduced in response to an increasing number of school districts eliminating summer school to save money. Districts would not have to charge, but sponsors said the bill would give them the option of charging as a way to raise money and save programs that might otherwise be canceled. The bill does charge on a sliding scale, with low-income students attending for free and lower fees being charged for students in the free- and reduced-fee meal program. The bill passed the state Assembly on June 21.

The Interdistrict Public School Choice Bill would allow the state to expand the number of public school districts willing to accept students from other districts. Under a pilot program that expired in 2005, only one district in each county could be approved as a choice district. Participating districts include Folsom in Atlantic County, Lower Township in Cape May County, Stafford Township in Ocean County and Cumberland Regional High School in Cumberland County.

The new bill would allow any interested district to apply to become a choice school, but under the bill’s provisions, no new choice districts would begin taking students until the fall of 2012.

The bill calls for districts to apply to the state Department of Education by April 30 of the year prior to the year in which the program would begin. The education commissioner would notify the district by July 30 if it has been approved. There would be an application period for parents who wanted to send their children to the choice school.

Students must attend the public school in their hometown district for at least one year before they could transfer to a choice school. The one exception would be for siblings of choice students applying for entrance into the preschool or kindergarten program in the choice district. Transportation would be provided by the student’s home district, following state requirements that apply to all students.

Districts can limit the percentage of students who leave to a maximum of 10 percent per grade or 15 percent of total enrollment.

The fiscal impact of the law is still undetermined. The Office of Legislative Services said in its review that under current law, choice districts are likely to see some increase in state aid, while the sending districts may have increased transportation costs. The cost to the state may also increase since the increase in state aid to choice districts is not likely to be offset by decreases to the sending districts because of provisions in the school funding law.

The bill is seen as an alternative to a scholarship bill that would give businesses tax credits for money they contribute to a scholarship fund to allow students in failing public schools to attend private schools. That bill as seen as a back-door voucher and has had trouble getting sufficient support in the cash-strapped Legislature.

Assemblywoman Mila Jasey, D-Essex, a sponsor of the public school choice bill, noted that it gives students choice within the public school system.

“Public school choice programs can improve educational outcomes for students without seeing taxpayer money funneled out of New Jersey’s strong public school system,” she said in a press release.

The Governor’s Office did not respond to a request for comment Monday on whether the bills would be signed.

Press of Atlantic City ‘Gov. Christie campaigns again, this time for New Jersey's budget’ Published 6-29-10

By JULIET FLETCHER, Statehouse Bureau | Posted: Sunday, June 27, 2010 | 3 comments

If Gov. Chris Christie signs a state budget this week, as expected, it will end a three-month strategy that often resembled a political campaign, packed with strict talking-points, fiery clashes with opponents and a closing plea for the public to judge his success.

Republican Christie’s maiden budget is the first since 1994 in which a governor had to appease an opposition-controlled Legislature. And it had to be done this time in bleaker economic circumstances.

But fresh off his defeat of incumbent Democratic Gov. Jon S. Corzine, Christie has impressed some observers with the political skill he has shown, running his budget effort like an election campaign. His efforts aimed at marginalizing opponents while getting the voting public, and not only state lawmakers, to back his plan.

“When I presented the budget in March, they all said, ‘It can’t be done,’” Christie said Wednesday, speaking from a Greenwich Township elementary-school stage to a town-hall meeting crowd of about 300 Gloucester County residents. “‘Can’t be done, won’t be done.’ But we stuck to our principles, we worked hard, and we had support from great people like you.”

He knows ‘how to get something done’

Bob Greco, head of the Cumberland County Republican Party, had watched Christie campaign around the southern region in October and November on his way to clinching the Statehouse. He came to hear what the governor had to say Wednesday, watching him from the back of the school hall, and recognized Christie’s style.

“We’re seeing the same thing again,” Greco said, as Christie fielded questions and comments from the crowd on state finances. “That’s someone who knows how to get something done, be efficient and then come here in person to excite the public about why it matters.”

Christie’s chief of staff, Rich Bagger, in his first briefing Monday night about the tentative budget agreement with the legislative majority Democrats, argued the agreement was a victory for disciplined debate.

“You’ve heard the governor often and clearly set forth that his objectives in the budget were to close the $12 billion shortfall in the fiscal year ’11 budget, to do so without raising taxes, to keep appropriations at a level of about $29.3 billion, and to keep an ending surplus at the level he had proposed.”

He concluded, “The (budget) legislation being introduced today is completely consistent with that framework.”

Budget bills are scheduled to be voted on in the state Senate and Assembly on Monday. The budget deadline is Wednesday.

Setting the terms and players

Christie himself was fond of laying out the terms he wanted for budget discussion.

“I’m willing to make changes within that box,” Christie said numerous times of his budget total. “But I am not willing to expand the box.”

Efforts by Democrats to expand the box enough to offer property-tax rebates to seniors were rebuffed by the governor’s veto on May 20 — giving Christie a public opportunity to restate those principles as part of a photo opportunity.

Unlike in a campaign, Christie said he met with his presumed opponents regularly, scheduling sit-downs with leadership from the Senate and Assembly every legislative session day.

But he has picked opponents and singled them out for criticism.

In one of the memorable lines from his budget address on March 16, Christie accused the teachers union, the New Jersey Education Association, of “political muscle fueled by intimidation tactics, political bullying and smears of public officials who dare to disagree.”

Brigid Harrison, professor of political science at Montclair State University, said from that speech onward, Christie diminished NJEA’s influence.

“He marginalized them,” she said. “He simply didn’t give them a seat at the table.”

In the last face-off between a governor and the NJEA, in 1990, Harrison said, then-Gov. Florio stood up to the union on pensions bargaining, only to see elected representatives who supported him made targets by the union and get voted out in the next election cycle. Education unions proved as powerful as anti-tax and gun-rights lobbies in bringing down his administration.

This year, Harrison said, the union does not seem as disciplined.

“When you look at the defeat of all the school budgets, the union did not show they were able to carry the day,” she said.

Making it personal

But when Christie did engage the NJEA in battle, the exchanges, like campaign back-and-forth, quickly became personal: When the Bergen County union chapter representatives circulated an email in early April jokingly wishing for Christie’s death, the governor seized on the incident.

Slamming the tone the debate had taken, he said, “I think the events of the last 24 hours tell you this is not a problem with teachers, but it is exactly as I put it all along: a problem with the teachers union.”

Ben Dworkin, head of the Rebovich Institute of New Jersey Politics at Rider University, said earlier this month that Christie’s tactic was to build up the personalities of those who were in opposition, and then battle not over line-item cuts but perceived differences in how to run the state.

“He’s made it into a fight with public employee unions rather than a fight about how to fund the schools, and a fight over restraining wasteful local government rather than the state budget,” Dworkin said.

As Harrison put it, “To get what he wanted, the governor could afford to be adversarial.”

In the closing stretch, Christie showed some of his wry stump-style humor: On May 26, he described a 35,000-strong protest by public-union workers in Trenton as a “special-interest, me-first rally.” But last Tuesday, with the budget agreement negotiated with key Democratic leaders, he described the rally as “economic development.”

“Because of public statements I’ve made, I brought 30,000 people to downtown Trenton on a Saturday afternoon,” he joked.

Party differences

As last week progressed, Christie saw some high-profile Republican dissent: Sen. Michael Doherty, R-Warren, Hunterdon, was replaced on the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee on Thursday because he did not support the agreement. And fellow Assemblyman Michael Patrick Carroll, R-Morris, called for more, not less, of Christie’s campaign pledges to form part of the agreement.

“This was a time for drawing battle lines,” Carroll said. “During the campaign, he called pre-school ‘babysitting.’ So why doesn’t he follow through with that and use $600 million in preschool education and give it to property tax relief in the suburbs?”

But Christie has also used deliberate timing to tie the budget process in with his crusade for tax-reform — and to bring public pressure to bear on the outcome.

He began his push for a constitutionally mandated 2.5-percent annual cap on local spending on April 29 in Atlantic City, as his budget discussions were still midstream.

Discussions on the budget and the cap are separate in Trenton terms — but not when Christie speaks about them in public.

Since May, he has held town hall-style events in East Rutherford and Perth Amboy and Wednesday’s event in the Gibbstown section of Greenwich Township, Gloucester County.

And at each one, he argues that the public should now decide by referendum whether local taxes should be constitutionally capped, locking low rates into budgets in the future.

“The only thing that any politician fears … is you,” Christie boomed from the Gibbstown microphone, as the listening residents cheered.

Contact Juliet Fletcher:

609-292-4935

JFletcher@pressofac.com