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7-11-10 Education Issues in the News
Star Ledger Sunday editorial ‘Tax cap makes cutting special education costs an urgent task’
Njspotlight.com - ‘Legislators Consider Cap Exemption for Special Ed Costs’ and, ‘Test Says Three-Quarters of New Jersey School Districts Are Top Performers’

Star Ledger ‘Fragmented N.J. Democrats struggle to find leadership, unity with elections approaching’

‘Test Says Three-Quarters of New Jersey School Districts Are Top Performers’

Star Ledger Sunday editorial ‘Tax cap makes cutting special education costs an urgent task’
Published: Sunday, July 11, 2010, 5:56 AM

Star-Ledger Editorial Board

When one autistic child moves into your neighborhood, suddenly, an extra $100,000 a year may have to be squeezed out of the school budget.

Districts aren’t permitted to cut special services just because they’re expensive. That would be discriminatory. So in tough fiscal times, the money often comes out of general programs that serve many more students.

Some legislators, including Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver, want to carve an exemption into the property tax cap for unexpected special education costs that exceed $40,000.

But it won’t happen. Gov. Chris Christie has refused to make that change, and has veto power to back that up. So the focus should be on containing costs. And legislative hearings must be held to figure out how.

Reform is clearly needed. New Jersey has the fourth-highest rate in the nation of classifying students as disabled, which may be an unintended result of how funding is distributed. When guidance counselors or tutors get cut, sometimes the only place to find support for struggling kids is in “special ed.”

New Jersey also sends three times the national average of special-needs children to pricey, out-of-district schools. Our overreliance on these schools, mostly private, dates back to when New Jersey was ahead of the curve in offering special education services, but developed them in segregated settings.

More of these students should now be returned to their districts. Not only is this cheaper, but it would also place them in a more mainstream environment.

Take the district of Paramus, which provides its own services to students who are autistic or have multiple handicaps. Two families, each with two autistic children, recently moved in. But then their paths diverged. One family’s children were already enrolled in an out-of-district school, for which Paramus now pays $100,000 per child for busing and tuition. For the second family, the district will pay less than half that amount when the children enroll in an established, in-district program providing similar services.

That’s where our state should be headed. The burden of proof must be placed back on parents, if they’re the ones challenging a placement, to demonstrate their children require services that can’t be provided in-district.

And districts, especially smaller ones, need enough incentives to override the start-up costs and hassle of developing their own programs and partnerships. In the meantime, the state should take further steps to regulate tuition at private schools, which depend on public school students for their enrollment.

Out-of-district programs are time-tested and well-known, but in the long run, it’s the in-district programs that are worth our investment. And with the new tax cap, the need to reform is urgent.

                                                                                         

 

 

Njspotlight.com ‘Legislators Consider Cap Exemption for Special Ed Costs’

School leaders, citing ‘extraordinary costs,’ call the issue critical as Assembly prepares for Monday vote on 2 percent property tax cap

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By John Mooney, July 9 in Education |Post a Comment

The high cost of special education has become the latest point of contention in New Jersey’s drama-filled path toward a new property tax cap.

On one hand, most agree it’s an increasing burden on districts across the state. But do extreme cases need to be excluded from the cap altogether when relatively few districts have sought such waivers as it is?

The Assembly is expected to approve a new 2 percent cap on Monday, when they hold a special session to vote exclusively on the agreement reached between Gov. Chris Christie and Senate Democrats last weekend. The Senate approved the measure by a 36-3 vote yesterday.

But in both chambers, lawmakers have increasingly heard calls that extraordinary special education costs for children with significant disabilities should be among the possible exemptions from the cap.

The bill approved by the Senate includes only health care, pension and debt service costs on the list of exemptions. The cap could also be exceeded with majority approval of the voters.

'A Huge Issue'

With the Assembly poised to vote on the deal, Speaker Sheila Oliver this week reiterated that special education remains a critical piece that should be considered for exemptions -- if not in the cap bill itself, then in a separate bill.

“Special ed is a huge issue for many of the communities, and there is no exception in the current bill to address special ed costs,” Oliver said. “Special ed costs can bankrupt a community.”

In a state with the highest known autism rate in the country, for example, Oliver noted that many districts face costs as high as $100,000 per child when transportation and other services are included.

“And no consideration is given for that under the current proposal on the table,” she said.

Payments to 500 Districts in 2009

Much of the attention is on these so-called extraordinary costs for children with significant disabilities, many of them attending separate public or private schools at the local districts’ cost.

The state now pays some of the costs exceeding $40,000, last year paying out $139.9 million to about 500 districts, according to state data. The largest payouts went to a mix of districts, large and small, urban and suburban. They include Lakewood ($2.7 million), Bernards Township ($2.4 million), Fair Lawn ($2.4 million), Woodbridge ($2.3 million), Edison ($2.2 million), South Orange/Maplewood ($2.2 million) and Newark ($2 million).

Under the current 4 percent cap, districts can seek waivers for increases in those costs that the state does not cover. But so far, Senate leaders appear to be balking at adding special education to the legislative bill, because few districts have sought those waivers.

“Last year, there were 11 requests, out of 600 districts, and only seven approved,” said state Sen. Teresa Ruiz (D-Essex), chairwoman of the Senate’s education committee.

“In light of that, it sheds a different perspective,” she said. “If you think about the dynamic of 600 districts statewide, that’s a small number.”

Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester) said they weren’t much higher the year before, either, but he added it would be something that his members could keep a close eye on in case the statute needs amending.

He was the lead Democrat in negotiating with Christie to make the cap statutory and not by constitutional amendment, as the governor initially proposed.

“These aren’t big numbers, but surely they are big issues,” he said. “If it becomes a problem, the beauty of the statutory cap is we can put it back in."

Sweeney yesterday created a task force that he said would further review any budget issues that need to be addressed under the new cap, and he said special education would surely be one of them.

“If we had done Christie’s cap, people should be very worried, but with the cap we did, we can go forward and address it, if we need to,” he said.

Consider Costs Now

Still, school leaders said the special education costs need to be considered now as the cap is finalized. They conceded that waiver requests weren't numerous, but that doesn’t lessen their impact on individual communities.

“For the individual districts affected, it’s critical,” said Frank Belluscio, a spokesman for the New Jersey School Boards Association, which has called specifically for a special education exception.

“And if you look at it philosophically, it’s a prime example of a cost out of a district’s control,” he said. “They have no choice but to provide services at level.”

 

 

Star Ledger  ‘Fragmented N.J. Democrats struggle to find leadership, unity with elections approaching’

Published: Sunday, July 11, 2010, 11:20 AM     Updated: Sunday, July 11, 2010, 11:26 AM

Tom Moran

TRENTON — The phone rang just after 9 p.m. last Friday at the East Orange home of Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver.

It was Senate President Steve Sweeney, her counterpart, and he was telling her that the boys in Trenton had struck a closed-door deal on property taxes. Without her.

"Excuse me?" Oliver said. "What are you talking about?"

So began the most exasperating episode in Oliver’s rookie year as speaker.

She had been plucked from obscurity seven months ago, as part of another closed-door deal that reshuffled the Democratic Party leadership. Now she was learning the hard way that her exalted job title does not by itself wield power.

In that short phone call, Sweeney told her about the biggest bipartisan deal in years, one in which the governor made substantial concessions for the first time, one that set a 2 percent cap on property tax growth. And Oliver was not part of it.

She had been invited into these talks several times, but she didn’t want to cut a deal. She wanted to talk to her colleagues and to hold hearings all summer to get it right.

"I’m more interested in being a lawmaker than being a deal-maker," she says.

A refreshing idea, really. Striking deals on huge policies without holding hearings first is a crazy way to do business. It’s one reason this state is such a mess.

But that’s the custom in Trenton. If these guys sniff a chance to score political points, they charge at it like hungry dogs, figuring the policy wonks can clean up the mess later.

And the politics here are easy: Anyone who gets in the way of lower property taxes will soon be roadkill.

It took a few days, but Oliver eventually got that. So she swallowed her pride and signed onto the deal.

She tried first to wring a few more concessions from the governor, sending two deputies to negotiate. But it was too late, the deal was done. She had misplayed her hand, leaving the Assembly with no influence over the final terms.

"We are not pleased it happened in this manner," Oliver says. "But we can’t be obstructionists."

Mark this episode as the latest evidence that Democrats in New Jersey are in a chaotic retreat of epic proportions. The party that sat on the throne for the last decade has been knocked to the gutter by the wrecking ball that is Gov. Chris Christie.

"It’s been difficult for Democrats to regroup," says Oliver. "We have to develop a strategic plan."

"We’re playing all defense," Sweeney says.

In the fight over message, Democrats are the high school team and Christie is the NFL.

The governor’s crew sends out slick e-mail messages every day, with video, the latest praise in print or TV, and fact sheets underscoring the need to shrink government. The governor works a steady schedule of events to pound that theme.

Democrats keep fumbling. They fought Christie over tax cuts for the wealthy, but then squandered the moral points by promising to devote all the revenue to seniors. It was transparently poll-driven and did nothing for the thousands of middle-class and working-poor families who are hurt by this budget.

They passed reforms, drafted in 2006, that cut pension and medical benefits. But the governor got the credit.

"People have to know that Democrats are working on these things," Sweeney says.

Meanwhile, Jon Corzine has left and taken his money with him. And several vaunted Democratic machines — including Bergen and Hudson — are now crippled by criminal investigations and convictions.

All this has Democrats wondering whether they might lose control of the Legislature next year. That would take only three seats in the Senate and seven in the Assembly.

"The majority we hold now is fragile," Oliver says. "We could lose control. We talk about that. It’s definitely a serious issue for us."

Sweeney, an ironworker from the party’s more conservative wing in South Jersey, shares that concern and is constantly pushing the party to confront the unions and cooperate with Christie where possible.

He made the deal on property taxes, he said, because he worried Democrats would take a more lenient position, especially if unions were given time to organize.

"We were on the wrong side of it all way and I knew that," Sweeney said.

For now, it’s hard to see who will guide the party through these days in the desert. Sweeney and Oliver have the highest offices, but this episode shows that they are not a team.

Their offices sit across the hall from one another on the second floor of the Capitol, but they may as well be across town. This latest kerfuffle didn’t help.

"I can’t prevent him from doing this again," says a resigned Oliver. "I just have to keep my eyes open."

 

 

‘Test Says Three-Quarters of New Jersey School Districts Are Top Performers’

Stellar results on the state’s Quality Single Accountability Continuum raise concerns over what’s being evaluated: compliance or education

By John Mooney, July 8 in Education |Post a Comment | 1 Comment

As New Jersey rethinks how it monitors public schools, three quarters of the 200-plus districts it evaluated last year came in with stellar marks, winning the state’s tag as a “high-performing district.”

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Brigantine in Atlantic City won a perfect score. Allendale in Bergen County was pretty close.

Yet one notable exception was Millburn, the Essex County district that enjoys the reputation as one of New Jersey’s suburban superstars.

In the state’s review, Millburn didn’t do so well in meeting the state’s requirements, posting scores that might be expected of districts deep under the state’s watch. Under personnel, for instance, it met less than half of the state’s demands. The district is appealing some of the findings, while seeking to address the others, a spokeswoman said.

A Work in Progress

The monitoring system – called the Quality Single Accountability Continuum (QSAC) – is itself a work in progress, finishing its third year and its first full cycle through every district in the state.

The process is a veritable checklist of compliance requirements, with districts earning scores in five key areas: governance, instruction, operations, finance, and personnel. Districts that post 80 percent or higher on all five win the highest marks. Those at 50 percent or less win the state’s close attention.

The questions span everything from student achievement and budgetary compliance to personnel policies and ethics procedures. Districts start the process through self-evaluation, with the state then verifying the responses.

And after a first year where some of the state’s most troubled districts fared poorly, the third year proved a banner year for dozens of districts. Overall, 73 percent of the districts--157 out of 215--posted 80 percent or better in all five areas.

Learning to Comply

“I have no question at all that they have learned what they have to do to pass QSAC,” said Willa Spicer, assistant education commissioner. “Three quarters of it is compliance, and what it’s done is brought people into compliance.”

When asked if three quarters of districts are indeed high performing, she said: “Three quarters of our schools are in compliance.”

Education Commissioner Bret Schundler has been critical of the QSAC process as being overly burdensome for districts, and he said so again yesterday in evaluating the latest results.

“Whatever we are measuring, it is being performed,” he said.

But he said he would weigh going into longer cycles for high-performing districts, maybe extending it back for some districts to the previously mandated seven years.

“I think we are looking to go to longer cycle for schools that are very high performing,” he said. “I think the systems are always important, and when we already know a district well and they know what to do well, it may not take as long to monitor. But I don’t think you go away from this, but maybe a longer cycle.”

A Stellar Performance

As for Millburn, spokeswoman Nancy Dries said the district is still in the process of addressing the low QSAC scores for a district that otherwise is on nearly every Top 10 list in the state.

Better than 95 percent of its students pass the state’s high school exit exam, a third of them with advanced standing. Its SAT scores are also among the best in the state.

Yet, the state’s review found the district lacking in some of its policies around teacher evaluations. Even some of the scores for instruction and program were low, in part due to what was apparently missing information in the district’s self-evaluation.

Dries said the district has been in transition, with a new superintendent coming on board this month, and steps are being taken to address the compliance concerns.

“But there may have been some things that fell through the cracks over the years,” she said.