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Star Ledger (Thurs. afternoon) ‘N.J. applies for $268M in federal education money’
The Record ‘BOE urged to cut spending’Excerpts: "...All the board members said they understand the concerns of the residents and added that they welcome the comments and criticisms about the budget…Before the meeting, the board distributed a 48-page fact book about the 2010-2011 school district budget…Board president John Quattrochi defended the $27.5 million budget, which was approved by Verona voters in April. Quattrochi said that the total BOE spending and spending on salaries for 2010-2011 did not increase from the previous year. "Our salary line, inclusive of new hires and increases, is flat,he said..."
njspotlight.com 'NJ Schools Seen Keeping More Special-Needs Students In-District'
Star Ledger ‘Gov. Christie pursues reforms on town hall tour’ see Education
Star Ledger ‘N.J. applies for $268M in federal education money’Published: Thursday, September 09, 2010, 12:31 PM Updated: Thursday, September 09,2010,3:5 pm by Jessica Calefati
TRENTON — New Jersey has applied for $268 million in federal education funding and will use its own funding formula — instead of a federal method — to distribute the money for school districts.
Initially billed as money that would save teachers' jobs, districts can use stimulus funds approved last month by Congress for salaries, benefits and related costs for a wide range of employees, according to the U.S. Department of Education.
The application was something of a formality. The money would have come to New Jersey whether Gov. Chris Christie asked for it by today's deadline or not, but applying gave Christie some additional control over distribution and started the process of getting the funds to New Jersey. A Christie administration spokesman could not be reached for comment this morning.
The state had to chose between a federal and state formulas to determine how much each district receives. Both formulas take poverty into account.
The New Jersey Education Association, the state's largest teachers union, had criticized Gov. Chris Christie for not applying sooner.
The governor's office for weeks has said it was waiting for more information from the U.S. Department of Education about how it could distribute the money. Michael Drewniak, a spokesman for the governor, has said the governor wanted to see whether the funding could be used to proportionally roll back some of the cuts in this year's budget.
Christie crafted cuts of nearly $820 million from education spending in a way that no district lost more than 5 percent of its total budget. But that method wiped out all subsidies for some districts — mostly richer and suburban — that rely less heavily on state aid.
“It is our belief that the administration made education cuts in a fair way across the school districts, and that a ... fair way to return the money would be on a pro-rata basis relative to the cuts in each district,” Drewniak had said. Reached for comment Wednesday, Drewniak said the state was considering all of its options on the application.
Some superintendents from across the state said they had been left in the dark about the governor’s plans to seek federal education jobs money. The NJEA said the long wait to apply was "totally unacceptable.”
“This administration is fumbling the football left and right when it comes to getting federal education funding,” NJEA spokesman Steve Wollmer said. “While Race to the Top was a competitive grant and there was no guarantee the state would win, this money is waiting there for us. It’s ours for the taking.”
Congress approved the $10 billion package on Aug. 10, saying it would help offset state budget cuts and keep teachers on the job. Each state is allotted a pre-determined portion based on population size, and the 30-day window for states to seek their share opened Aug. 10. Unlike New Jersey’s complex, thousand-page application for funding through the Race to the Top federal program, a check mark and a signature were all that was required for Christie to claim hundreds of millions from this pot of federal education money.
U.S. Department of Education spokeswoman Sandra Abrevaya said the federal government made this application “extremely easy for states to fill out” in hopes of expediting the approval process and distributing funding to states quickly. Some states that applied soon after the month-long application period began in early August have already received their funding, she said.
Lisa Fleisher contributed to this report.
The Record ‘BOE urged to cut spending’
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Last updated: Thursday September 9, 2010, 1:21 AM
BY NOEL PANGILINAN
Verona-Cedar Grove Times
STAFF WRITER
But unlike town council meetings – where discussion about the town’s budget was intense and impassioned – the BOE meeting on Aug. 31 was subdued.
One by one, six of about 20 Verona taxpayers who attended the meeting aired their grievances before members of the BOE.
The BOE by law gets 54 percent of the town’s property taxes. The rest, or 46 percent, is split between the municipality and the county.
"Nobody wants education to get worse," said Liz Knoop of Sunset Avenue, during the meeting. "But we’re in a bad economic climate. We have to tighten our belts."
Al Deold of Howard Street said he wants the BOE to stop discretionary spending until after the economy improves. "I don’t want to cut programs, but I want to see a flat budget for next year," he said.
The former longtime teacher at Verona told the BOE if it can present a budget that is 5-10 percent lower, "you will have your budget approved."
Bojana Leznicki of Pease Avenue questioned spending money on sports. "People go to school for academics," she said. "There are a lot of areas where you can cut (money)."
Alex Roman of Amy Court asked the board if it would be able to give any tax relief this year. He said any cut in the education budget would be good for Verona school teachers. "Four hundred teachers live in Verona; it will also benefit them."
Susan Montanile of Sunset Avenue said at the meeting that she would be active in seeking ways to help reduce the school budget.
Still despite the complaints, the discussion was predominantly civil and courteous. "You’re a lot nicer to talk to than the town council," Leznicki commented before leaving the podium.
All the board members said they understand the concerns of the residents and added that they welcome the comments and criticisms about the budget.
Before the meeting, the board distributed a 48-page fact book about the 2010-2011 school district budget.
Board president John Quattrochi defended the $27.5 million budget, which was approved by Verona voters in April.
Quattrochi said that the total BOE spending and spending on salaries for 2010-2011 did not increase from the previous year.
"Our salary line, inclusive of new hires and increases, is flat," he said.
According to the BOE, total spending for the current school year is actually .03 percent lower than in 2009-2010. Last year’s budget was $27.51 million.
Quattrochi said even before residents demanded to keep the budget flat, the board has been doing it for years.
Discretionary spending has gone down 30 percent over a 10-year period. The BOE fact book shows that the district’s discretionary spending in 2000-2001 was $1.6 million; for this year, the allocation was $1.1 million.
"Elves didn’t do that," Quattrochi said, referring to the decrease. "The board did."
njspotlight.com 'NJ Schools Seen Keeping More Special-Needs Students In-District' After a history of relying on private institutions, public schools appear to be reversing a trend
New Jersey public schools have long taken the rap for the high rate at which they send students with disabilities to other schools, many of them private.
Two years ago, close to 10 percent of classified students were in such out-of-district placements, by far the highest rate in the country.
But in the last year, it appears that the rate has started to drop, with state recently releasing data showing it below 8 percent in 2009-2010 school year.
The reasons for the drop and whether the trend will stick are up for debate. Some question the accuracy of the numbers as the state changes how it collects data.
But at first look, districts do appear to be bringing more students back into their schools, and that’s good news for a state Department of Education that has pushed districts to provide more inclusive programs for these children.
“We are pleased to see the drop -- it’s pretty significant,” said Barbara Gantwerk, assistant education commissioner for student services.
“We’d like to see the numbers for another year to be sure, but we know that a lot is going on in the state to develop inclusive programs,” she said. “Districts are really trying and before they send students out, they are seeing what they can provide in district.”
Recognizing In-District Benefits
It’s hard to pinpoint the reasons behind it, as districts are compelled by federal and state law to consider the student’s individual needs in setting up placements through their individualized education plans (IEPs).
Gantwerk said districts are recognizing the benefits of settings in which students are schooled among their peers. She and others said another factor is the lower cost of in-district programs, especially when weighing transportation expenses.
“In-district programs are not inexpensive in themselves, but we have always maintained that there are opportunities to be efficient and cost-effective,” Gantwerk said.
Concern Over Environments
Some advocates wonder, however, whether it is purely for fiscal reasons when districts are seeing state aid cuts and budget caps imposed by the Christie administration.
Diana Autin is co-director of Statewide Parent Advocacy Network and part of a three-year-old suit against the state for failing to press districts hard enough in providing what are termed the “least restrictive environments” for students, as required by the law.
“We certainly got a significant number of calls from parents last spring that these children were being pulled back into districts,” she said. “After the first budget cuts, they were even recalling IEPs.”
If districts only want to save money, Autin said her worry is that students were being brought back into what she called “non-existent programs.”
“Are they being brought back into programs that themselves are segregated?” she said. “What’s the point of in-district if they’re totally isolated and stigmatized in the basement or trailers?”
Assessing the Trends
Gerard Thiers, head of the association representing the roughly 170 private schools in the state that serve students with disabilities, said he has seen the trend as well, and his members have started working with districts to provide their services inside the local schools.
“That’s been a trend with all of our members, with most of them facing similar scenarios,” said Thiers, director of the Association of Schools and Agencies for the Handicapped.
Still, even with the trend, he hasn’t seen schools close or witnessed dramatic drops in enrollment.
“It’s kind of a mixed bag right now,” he said. “One school closed last year for enrollment, but that has not been a big issue so far.”
And how much it is happening in individual districts is still unclear; the state data did not include district-by-district numbers.
Marlboro is one district that has actually seen a slight rise, from typically under 40 students in out-of-district placements to 44 this year, said superintendent David Abbott.
At the same time, the district has worked hard to keep students in-district with a new autism program for preschool through middle school, this year enrolling about 100 students.
“More of the out-of-district are behavior issues,” he said. “They take tremendous resources, and we don’t always have the programs to handle them. We don’t have the room, we don’t have the people.”
Star Ledger ‘Gov. Christie pursues reforms on town hall tour’
Published: Wednesday, September 08, 2010, 7:49 PM Updated: Wednesday, September 08, 2010, 8:02 PM
Gov. Chris Christie is in the midst of a town hall tour to unveil a wide range of reforms on everything from ethics to education to the economy. While he hasn’t released all the details yet, here’s a look at the broad ideas the Republican governor is pursuing.
(Re:)EDUCATION
What he’s proposing:
Changes outlined in the state’s Race to the Top application include making it harder for teachers to get tenure, and basing teacher pay on student performance
The history of the issue:
For decades, state officials have been struggling with how to fix a broken education system. Billions have been sent to urban schools, many of which continue to fail their students, breaking the state constitution’s promise of a decent education for all kids.At the same time, the New Jersey Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, has long opposed merit pay and tenure reform.
Why it’s a good idea:
Critics say the tenure system guarantees that bad teachers stay in the classroom until retirement. Lack of merit pay means there is little incentive to do more than mediocre work, if everyone gets paid the same no matter how they perform in the classroom
Why it’s a bad idea:
Tenure protections were first put in place to guard against discriminatory firings of teachers, and to put in play a formal, fair process for dismissing teachers. NJEA president Barbara Keshishian argues that tying teacher pay to testing would penalize teacher if "a kid was up all night playing video games" or "didn’t have breakfast." Teachers also point out not all subjects can be easily measured by standardized tests.
Who will back it:
Charter school associations, some support from school boards, and districts that will be helped through increased funding.
Who will fight it:
The powerful New Jersey Education Association teachers union and its members
What will happen:
This one’s tricky. Christie shocked observers and entrenched interests when he steamrolled over the teachers unions and cut funding for schools while staying afloat in the polls.
