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This sets the stage for the fast-track lame duck bill floor vote in both houses this Monday, January 3, the last session day of the 'old' legislature. Click on More here to read related articles.
School funding clears hurdles
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A proposal to overhaul New Jersey's school funding formula is headed to the full Senate and Assembly for floor votes Monday, after the plan was approved Thursday by legislative committees.
Also on Thursday, Governor Corzine's office released a letter from state Attorney General Anne Milgram that said she believes the proposed funding formula is constitutional. If ratified by the Legislature and signed by Governor Corzine, the plan still would need the approval of the state Supreme Court under the Abbott rulings that called on the state to provide extra resources to the state's poorest districts.
Supporters of the bill characterized the proposal as a fair and equitable way to distribute $7.8 billion in state aid to schools.
"What we've done here is ensure that wherever the child lives, there are adequate resources for the child through a combination of state aid and local fair share," state Education Commissioner Lucille Davy told the Senate budget committee, which held its hearing Thursday morning. "We're not looking at geographic boundaries, but treating each community in a similar, equitable way."
Some critics objected to specific provisions. Republican senators proposed several amendments, including one that would not take into account a district's wealth in distributing special-education funding.
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PLAN HIGHLIGHTS |
Other critics of the bill argued it was too important to be rushed through during the lame-duck session. Corzine unveiled specific numbers for each district on Dec. 12. Thursday was the first time any Senate committee had discussed the issue with specifics of the 106-page bill to consider.
Corzine has been pushing its adoption by the end of the legislative session, at noon on Jan. 8. Otherwise, the bill would have to be introduced during the next legislative session.
Sen. Shirley Turner, D-Mercer, a member of the budget committee, who also serves as chairwoman of the Senate's education committee, abstained from voting, saying too many questions remained unanswered.
"My concern is this formula is going to continue to drive property taxes through the roof and it is not going to help the students in this state in terms of receiving a world-class education," Turner said.
Even some of the lawmakers who voted in favor of moving the bill along seemed conflicted.
"I think we're doing the right thing," said Sen. Paul Sarlo, D-Hackensack, "I just wish we had a little bit more time to make sure all the details are fleshed out." Sarlo added that he had felt frustrated at times trying to get answers to the questions he and his constituents still have about how the formula would work.
The proposed funding establishes a dollar figure that represents how much the state believes districts should spend on each student to meet the state's educational standards. The figure is adjusted for students who are poor, are learning English as a second language or require special education, and for districts with a high concentration of needy students. State aid would be based on those figures and the community's wealth and demographics.
The plan would also require about 120 districts -- yet to be named -- to offer tax relief to taxpayers. Those are communities the state says are spending more than necessary on education but are entitled to additional state aid because of demographic changes.
Each district would receive increases of 2 percent to 20 percent in state aid for the first year the formula is in effect. After the first three years, districts could lose state funding if enrollments decreased by more than 5 percent.
Sen. Sandra Bolden Cunningham, D-Hudson, was among those who feared their districts would suffer under the proposal.
"I applaud Governor Corzine for his efforts to ensure that all children are given a quality education whether they live in urban or suburban communities," Cunningham said. "However, after careful review of the governor's 106-page plan, I am extremely concerned with the impact the proposed funding formula will have on taxpayers in Abbott communities. While the plan provides a minimum 2 percent increase in state aid to all school districts, Jersey City schools could lose as much as $110 million within the first three years. These proposed cuts will cause substantial layoffs and will force an increase in property taxes."
Several lawmakers on the two committees crossed party lines, with some Republicans voting in favor of releasing the bill for a full vote and some Democrats voting against or abstaining.
E-mail: lu@northjersey.com
January 4, 2008
Corzine school formula moves foreward
By JONATHAN TAMARI
GANNETT STATE BUREAU
Gov. Jon S. Corzine's school funding formula took its first steps toward approval Thursday but faces an uncertain future, as Democrats from Newark and Jersey City lined up against the proposal, which they said could hurt urban schools and force property tax hikes in those communities.
With some urban lawmakers taking aim at the proposal, Democratic leaders hope suburban Republicans will support the bill to give it the necessary votes to win final legislative approval Monday. Some areas with GOP representation can expect significant infusions of state aid. Democrats doubt they will turn that money away.
Corzine's plan includes $532 million in aid increases, largely for middle-class school districts that have gone years with stagnant state aid, despite growing enrollments and increasing numbers of needy students.
But the leaders of New Jersey's two largest cities and lawmakers representing those areas said the new formula doesn't deliver enough money to urban areas that depend on state aid to support their schools. Cities, many of which would receive 2 percent aid increases at first and flat funding in later years, could have to cut back on education spending or increase local taxes to meet rising costs, Newark Mayor Cory Booker and Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healy warned.
"It's taking from the poor to help the poor," Healy said.
Black lawmakers warned that Corzine's plan could begin dismantling the "Abbott v. Burke" state Supreme Court rulings that have mandated enhanced state support for 31 historically poor, urban areas, including Newark and Jersey City.
"To walk back from Abbott is to walk away from African-Americans and Latinos," said James Harris, president of the New Jersey State Conference of NAACPs.
Several opponents, including Sen. Ronald Rice, D-Essex, the chairman of New Jersey's Legislative Black Caucus, urged party leaders to slow down movement on a complex bill that was formally introduced just before Christmas and was still being amended Thursday.
Despite the opposition, Senate President Richard J. Codey, D-Essex, whose district includes part of Newark, said Thursday he expects to move the $7.8 billion plan through his house Monday.
"I think it will be close, but I think the governor, in the end, will prevail," Codey said after a meeting with Senate Democrats.
The proposal was approved by the Senate and Assembly budget committees Thursday, putting it on the brink of legislative approval. Asked if getting the necessary votes Monday would require a significant lobbying effort, Codey's eyes went wide.
"Ohhhh yeah," Codey said.
Corzine and supporters of his proposal argue the plan will help the 49 percent of poor New Jersey students who live outside the Abbott districts, where aid has been scarce. Education Commissioner Lucille Davy said the new formula ends a divided funding system that favored Abbott schools at the expense of others and ensures every community pays its "fair share" for education expenses. No districts would lose money unless their enrollment decreases.
Sen. Barbara Buono, D-Middlesex, a sponsor of the funding plan, said many Abbott school districts had gone years without property tax increases because they relied on state aid, and some have seen economic gains that mean they can raise money, through taxes, for their own schools. In some cases, the state pays 80 percent or more of school costs in those communities.
"This formula is logical, it's fair. I may not like everything about it, but there's no such thing as a perfect bill," Buono said, adding that Corzine could have allayed many of the suspicions about the plan by rolling it out sooner.
A delay on the bill could put state aid increases at risk. Davy said schools would have to see final approval of the plan by mid-February in order to incorporate the new amounts into 2008-2009 school budgets.
As the debate went on, Attorney General Anne Milgram offered an official opinion that Corzine's proposal would meet constitutional requirements to provide a "thorough and efficient" system of education. The state Supreme Court, which helped create the Abbott districts with rulings that said the state had not provided enough support for schools, will almost certainly have to review any new funding formula.
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A quick, crazy way of passing legislation
Friday, January 04, 2008
Sen. Shirley Turner sat in her chair for two long hours, waiting for her moment to spoil the party.
Her fellow Democrats on the budget committee were in a frenzy to approve the governor's school funding formula, barely pausing to read 14 amendments added at the last minute.
Turner, as chairman of the education committee, seemed to think this was just plain crazy. Finally, the red light on her microphone snapped on.
"I am dismayed," she said. "We seem to be rushing this through, even with so many unanswered questions."
If you wanted to see your state Legislature at its very worst, yesterday was perfect. Democrats were entirely uninterested in thoughtful discussion. The governor wanted this done quickly, and that was that.
So Turner's questions were never really answered. And that's a shame. Because she's undoubtedly right when she says that this plan could do real harm to the state's poorest districts, leading to layoffs in schools that are showing remarkable progress.
"All our initiatives to improve student achievement are going to be lost," says Nathan Parker, the superintendent in Orange, one of the best performing poor districts. "We'd lose math coaches, reading coaches, guidance counselors -- as well as our reasonable class sizes."
The pity is that this plan has a great idea at its core. It says that poor kids should get extra help, even when they live in middle-class suburbs. Everyone agrees that change is long overdue.
The problem is poor kids in the suburbs would get more help at the expensive of poor kids in the cities. And the Legislature is apparently too busy to explore the impact of that.
"This takes from the poor to give to the poor," says Jersey City Mayor Jeremiah Healy. "That doesn't make sense."
Yesterday, attorney David Sciarra looked like a man watching his beloved son climb the steps of the gallows. He is head of the Education Law Center, the group that filed the Abbott lawsuits that won huge infusions of aid to the poor urban districts.
"All that goes away now," Sciarra said.
Sciarra was working the hallways in the capitol yesterday, in a hopeless attempt to swat down the myth that the Abbott system is an expensive failure.
In fact, reading and math scores in the poor cities are rising faster than scores in the suburbs. National test scores released this fall showed that New Jersey is closing the racial achievement gap among fourth-graders faster than any other state. That is a gigantic achievement.
Yes, some of the money is wasted. Asbury Park is spending more than $21,000 per student, and its kids still can't read.
"Cut some of that money on a steady glide path, and I have no problem," Sciarra said.
And that is why the Legislature's rush to approve this plan is so crazy. If they took some time to drill into the details, they could probably find reasonable ways to cut spending in the Abbotts, starting in the central offices. If they called witnesses like Parker, they might gain some insight on how to manage it carefully.
Amazingly, though, neither the Assembly nor the Senate education committees held their own hearings on this bill. No time.
So we have a plan that slowly squeezes most Abbott districts, endangering the hard-fought gains we've made. It caps increases in most Abbott districts at 2 percent next year, then freezes it for the foreseeable future. Given inflation, that will force layoffs.
After winning committee approvals yesterday, the bill is headed for a final vote on Monday. For the governor, this could be a big political win.
The question, still not answered, is what damage will be left in its wake.
Tom Moran may be reached at tmoran@starledger.com or (973) 392-1823.
New formula for school aid moves ahead
Foes: Poor get shortchanged
Friday, January 04, 2008
BY DUNSTAN McNICHOL
Star-Ledger Staff
Despite passionate objections from urban leaders, Gov. Jon Corzine's plan to overhaul the way New Jersey hands out $7.8 billion in state school aid is poised for final approval on Monday, as committees in both the Senate and Assembly approved the plan yesterday.
"There's still more work to be done, but we are moving forward," Assemblyman Louis Greenwald (D-Camden), chairman of the Assembly Budget Committee, said as members of that panel endorsed the plan by a 9-3 vote shortly after 9 p.m.
Earlier, a divided Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee mustered the minimum eight votes it needed to release the plan for a full Senate vote on Monday, the final day of the legislative session.
At the four-hour Assembly committee hearing, tempers flared as critics complained the lawmakers were passing a flawed formula that will hurt cities and prompt onerous litigation.
"It's wrong. It's divisive. And this will come back to haunt this Legislature because it's racially divisive and educationally unsound," said James Harris, chairman of the New Jersey NAACP.
Rosie Grant, program director of the Paterson Education Foundation, but a resident of Piscataway, said she had no appetite for a formula that will bring her hometown a boost in state aid while holding Paterson's funding almost level.
"If my tax relief is coming on the backs of the children in Paterson and other poorer communities I would rather not have it," she said.
Greenwald dismissed those who said lawmakers were acting too hastily in endorsing a bill they did not fully understand.
"If we are wrong, we will have to correct it," he said. "But if we do nothing, it will be a recipe for disaster."
Corzine's plan, the first retooling of the school funding formula in a decade, would boost state aid by $532 million next year, offering every community at least 2 percent more than they currently receive and giving many of them increases of up to 20 percent.
The administration unveiled a breakdown of how towns would fare under the new plan in mid-December, but it wasn't until days before Christmas that the full 100-plus pages of legislation to enact the proposal were published.
Yesterday, that plan was republished with a series of amendments and Greenwald suggested more changes are in store.
Changes added to the plan yesterday would limit the local property tax hikes Jersey City and other urban communities would be required to impose under the bill.
Other amendments would allow the state education commissioner to approve additional state funding for any district that had dramatic changes in enrollment or demographics this year, and boost aid for communities with special programs that have attracted high numbers of students with autism or other special education needs.
But the proposal sparked a sharp debate over whether it will pass muster with the state Supreme Court, which has issued rulings in the long-running Abbott vs. Burke lawsuit that have required billions of dollars in special state aid for 31 communities deemed incapable of supporting their schools with local taxes.
Early yesterday, Corzine released a letter in which State Attorney General Anne Milgram said the proposal meets the state constitution's mandate to offer every school-age student a thorough and efficient public education.
In the letter, Milgram said the new funding formula sets appropriate standards for students and includes enough funding to "provide the opportunity for all public school students, regardless of their disadvantages, to achieve those standards."
The letter stands in marked contrast to an opinion offered by retired Supreme Court Justice Gary Stein, a member of the court during many of the Abbott vs. Burke rulings.
Stein said the proposed funding formula would turn back the clock on three decades of school funding. Approval of the bill "could well be one of the most costly and counter-productive votes ever cast by the state's Legislature," Stein wrote in a Jan. 2 letter to lawmakers. "A vote in favor of the bill is, in reality, an invitation to a series of lawsuits that will embroil the state and the advocates for the groups that oppose the bill in contentious litigation that will last for many years."
A third legal opinion, from the nonpartisan Office of Legislative Services, concluded the new formula "could" pass constitutional muster, but was not certain. "An alternative line of analysis is also possible," the OLS review concluded.
Democrats and Republicans on the Assembly Budget Committee repeatedly sparred with witnesses who challenged the formula, claiming state taxpayers are already tapped out on school funding and the state cannot spend more on public schools.
"There's $11 billion for education," said Assemblyman Joseph Cryan (D-Union). "At the end of the day, $11 billion should be enough."
Last night's committee hearing was the last scheduled public debate on the complex funding formula. While it is now cleared for final votes on Monday, its fate remains uncertain.
Members of the Legislative Black Caucus, which includes lawmakers who represent Newark and Jersey City, announced they would oppose any effort to adopt the new funding formula next week.
"We do need time to go through this," said Sen. Sandra Cunningham (D-Hudson).
"We're just concerned with an impact that could be savage in our urban districts," said Newark Mayor Cory Booker, who met privately with Corzine, Education Commissioner Lucille Davy and other top administration officials for about 90 minutes yesterday morning. After the meeting, Booker said he was encouraged Corzine was open to minimizing the effects the new plan would have on school operations and tax rates in districts like Newark.
Dunstan McNichol covers state government issues. He can be reached at dmcnichol@starledger.com or (609) 989-0341.
