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Gov. Jon Corzine's plan for re tooling state aid for more than 200,000 students with autism or other special needs could penalize the very districts with the best programs, advocates said yesterday. Brenda Considine, spokeswoman for the New Jersey Coalition for Special Education Funding Reform, said at a news conference that such concerns are a major reason lawmakers should hold off on approving Corzine's school funding plan until the Legislature and public have time to examine its details and ramifications. (McNichol, Star Ledger)
Special ed advocates fear Corzine school aid formula
They say districts with best programs will be penalized Thursday, December 06, 2007 BY DUNSTAN McNICHOL
Gov. Jon Corzine's plan for re tooling state aid for more than 200,000 students with autism or other special needs could penalize the very districts with the best programs, advocates said yesterday.
Brenda Considine, spokeswoman for the New Jersey Coalition for Special Education Funding Reform, said at a news conference that such concerns are a major reason lawmakers should hold off on approving Corzine's school funding plan until the Legislature and pub lic have time to examine its details and ramifications.
"Major changes to the state's funding formula will affect a generation of New Jersey stu dents," said Considine, whose coalition includes nine child advocacy groups. "Planning for their future will take time."
A summary of the new plan in dicates Corzine's formula would pay every school district a special education supplement of $539 per- student, plus additional funds for programs that cost more than $40,000 for an individual student. Poorer districts would qualify for additional support of up to $1,078 per student, according to a draft of the formula.
Considine said her group is concerned the plan appears to distribute aid on the assumption that special needs students make up 14.7 percent of every district's enrollment, the statewide average. She said basing aid on that average will penalize districts like Mountain Lakes or Brick, which attract higher-than-average numbers of special needs students through high-quality programs.
"Our pressing concern is that it not become a local debate, and an issue where local taxpayers have to decide whether to fund special education or not fund special education," she said.
Advocates for special needs stu dents say they are concerned by elements of the plan that, for the first time, would tie the way the state helps local school boards pay for those students to the wealth of the community receiving the aid.
This year's state budget included about $950 million in special education aid for 202,000 students. Under current state aid rules, communities receive state aid for every special needs student they enroll, regardless of how wealthy to community is.
Legislators, who so far have seen only broad outlines of Cor zine's plan to change the allocation of more than $8 billion in school aid each year, hope to adopt the plan before their current session ends Jan. 8.
They are considering taking tes timony on the proposal one week from today at a special joint meet ing of the Senate Budget and Education committees.
Considine and other lobbyists said lawmakers should delay any vote on the formula until next year, when the new Legislature will be in office.
"We think it will be nearly impossible to get that done in a thoughtful way before the session ends," she said.
Corzine has said his plan will boost overall aid to schools by $450 million, and up to two-thirds of the state's 618 districts will see increases under the new formula.
The proposal includes supplemental funding to ensure that about 220 communities that would lose aid under the formula will receive at least as much next year as they collect currently.
Corzine plans to release a town- by-town breakdown of school aid awards under the new formula next week, meaning lawmakers will have less than a month to consider the legislation that would implement the plan.
Dunstan McNichol may be reached at (609) 989-0341 or dmcnichol@starledger.com.
GANNETT STATE BUREAU 12-6-07 More time urged to study school aid plan
By JONATHAN TAMARI
Special education advocates warned Wednesday that Gov. Jon S. Corzine's administration and lawmakers are not leaving enough time to discuss a new school funding plan that could have lasting impacts on learning and property taxes throughout the state.
The New Jersey Coalition for Special Education Funding Reform had initially hoped to offer their critique of Corzine's plan Wednesday but said it still has too little information to make conclusions, even though lawmakers have set a goal of approving the proposal within the next five weeks. The Department of Education unveiled the principles behind the new formula last week but has not released specific details of how individual school districts will be impacted.
"We'd prefer that the full plan with the numbers and the details be released and that the public be given adequate time to look at the plan," said Brenda Considine, coordinator of the coalition, which includes 10 groups that focus on education and services for the disabled.
With the winter holidays approaching, Considine said it will be "nearly impossible" to have a thoughtful discussion in the time frame laid down by legislative leaders.
The new plan will determine how more than $8 billion in education aid is doled out, but education groups are clamoring to see exactly where that money will go.
"The timelines are regretfully so short that it doesn't bode well for in-depth analysis and time to really review and understand the complexity of what has to go into a school funding formula," said Lynne Strickland, executive director of the Garden State Coalition of Schools, which represents 150 school districts.
DOE spokeswoman Kathryn Forsyth said figures showing the impacts of the education plan are expected next week.
Donna Arons, special assistant to Education Commissioner Lucille Davy, said the department has met for more than a year with interested parties to discuss the thinking behind the formula.
"We're going to do everything we can to answer everybody's questions and provide all the information they need to make a reasoned decision on it," Arons said.
Along with raising concerns about timing, Considine and others worry that the new formula could take aid away from districts with high concentrations of special education students.
In a change from the current system, the new funding plan will factor in community wealth and depend largely on average costs and average special education enrollments when doling out aid. Currently districts receive a set amount of aid based on their specific enrollment and the disabilities of their students.
Considine worried that districts with special education needs that exceed the state average could be left behind.
Arons said the amount of aid based strictly on disability will remain the same overall. In addition, larger portions of extraordinary aid will cover more of the expenses for those districts with needs that exceed the norm.
"They really have to wait to do the numbers," Arons said.
Some 200,000 New Jersey students are classified as special education pupils. The state sends out more than $925 million to support their education.
NY TIMES 12-6-07
After Setbacks, Corzine Looks to Make Up for Lost Time By DAVID W. CHEN
TRENTON, Dec. 5 — Battered by a year of personal and political hardships, Gov. Jon S. Corzine is struggling to catch a second wind.
“I think the next six months are extraordinarily important in being able to bring to fruition a lot of the things we’ve been working on,” Mr. Corzine said in a recent interview. “And on that score I’m optimistic.”
In April, just as Mr. Corzine began to embark on an ambitious agenda, he was severely injured in a traffic accident and then endured months of painful rehabilitation.
Through it all, he faced mounting criticism from Republicans and fellow Democrats and opposition from the public over his proposal to slash the state’s debt by refinancing its toll roads. He also fended off persistent questions about whether his dealings with a former companion, who is also an influential labor leader, had improperly intruded into the public’s business.
He seemed especially deflated last month, longtime friends and allies say, after voters rejected a ballot initiative to borrow $450 million to finance stem cell research, something on which he had invested his time, his influence and $150,000 of his own money.
“I believe that Jon probably is not as confident in his ability to get things done than when he first took office,” said State Senator Raymond J. Lesniak, a Union County Democrat who is a close friend of Mr. Corzine’s. “I think he’s come to the realization that being governor of the state of New Jersey is not the same as being chairman of Goldman Sachs. But I want to add that doesn’t mean he’s any less determined.”
Now, as he approaches the midpoint of his first term and braces for a pivotal stretch, the political establishment here agrees that he has a only few months to fill in his record before re-election considerations are likely to intrude.
As Bill Lavin, a longtime ally who is president of the New Jersey Firemen’s Mutual Benevolent Association, put it, “There’s only one place to go, and that’s up.”
Otherwise, Mr. Corzine has acknowledged, the only other place to go may be out of office.
So the governor has begun to roll out his biggest initiatives. The outlines of a formula for financing public schools that will require $400 million to $500 million in additional state aid emerged last week. And his long-awaited plan to raise billions for debt reduction by squeezing more money from the New Jersey Turnpike and the Garden State Parkway through bonds backed by higher tolls is to be unveiled early next month.
Still, because these and other plans have taken a long time to formulate, he has opened the door to criticism from legislators, lobbyists and allies about what they call his administration’s lack of productivity, forcing him to court the public and the press more aggressively.
“I think he’s felt that he’s been playing catch-up all the time, and now it’s time to start pushing forward and make some headway,” Mr. Lavin said.
These days, Mr. Corzine seems focused, resolute and grim when discussing the state’s fiscal woes. At cabinet meetings and again at a dinner last week at the governor’s mansion with mayors from the state’s largest municipalities, he has been insistent about wanting to know “what’s the right thing to do,” according to half a dozen people in attendance.
At a lunch with reporters and editors of The New York Times two weeks ago, Mr. Corzine was at once blunt about his disappointment over the loss of the stem cell initiative yet determined to take up the difficult fiscal issues before him. With a zeal reminiscent of his successful effort last year to raise the sales tax by a penny to plug a $4.5 billion budget deficit, Mr. Corzine vowed to convene forums in all 21 counties next year to sell the public on his toll road plan.
“Without getting the finances of the state structured properly, I can’t do a lot of things that I want to do,” said Mr. Corzine, the only one in the room who did not eat.
With briefing papers and a legal pad full of handwritten notes arrayed before him, he conceded, “I just got a bucket of cold water poured on my head on stem cell research, because people want to see financial responsibility.”
Still, in a subsequent interview he dismissed the chatter that he was going through a bit of a blue period. “I’m anything but depressed,” he said. “This is one of the happiest periods of my life.”
Indeed, he continues to start every speech by saying that he is glad to be alive after the car crash on the Garden State Parkway, which left him with more than a dozen broken bones and a 10-day stay in the intensive care unit.
Yet whether upbeat or uptight these days, he has sought out longtime friends. On Election Day, for instance, he bucked tradition by eschewing a whirlwind tour of legislative districts with the closest races. Instead, he had a long dinner in Summit, his former hometown, with former Gov. Brendan T. Byrne, and did not leave the restaurant until close to midnight.
On Thanksgiving weekend, he surprised a longtime aide and former driver, Scott L. Kisch, now chief of staff of the state’s Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness, by asking whether he had any free time on Sunday. With Mr. Kisch’s companion, they attended services at All Saints Episcopal Church in Hoboken before going to the Meadowlands to watch the Minnesota Vikings steamroll the Giants.
While Mr. Corzine still enjoys solid approval ratings, recent polls have indicated that residents feel the state is going in the wrong direction. The message seems clear: Although the public still has faith in Mr. Corzine to use his Wall Street expertise to turn the state’s finances around, its patience is finite.
“The clock is ticking here, and his credibility as far as being able to lead on policy is at stake,” said Brigid C. Harrison, a professor of political science at Montclair State University.
Mr. Corzine’s struggles have presumably not been lost on Christopher J. Christie, the United States attorney for New Jersey, known for his anticorruption work and his political ambition. Should Mr. Corzine fall short of expectations, many people in Trenton predict that Mr. Christie would be tempted to challenge him in 2009.
But first Mr. Corzine has to deal with the full plate before him. For instance, he is also awaiting a final report from a commission he appointed on how many and which financially ailing hospitals should be saved. And his administration is finishing a much-delayed energy master plan that could recommend building another nuclear plant and increasing investments in wind and solar power to cut costs to consumers.
To get all of the items on his agenda through the Legislature, Mr. Corzine will need the help of his fellow Democrats, who control both the Senate and the Assembly. But their cooperation is no sure bet, because Mr. Corzine, a private person who spends much of his free time across the Hudson River, has not cultivated the deeper bonds that most previous governors have established with legislators.
“These decisions are a litmus test for Governor Corzine,” said Assemblyman Michael J. Panter, a Democrat from Monmouth County who narrowly lost his re-election bid last month. “If they don’t really do a good job selling their ideas and selling the necessity of those ideas, then I think you’re going to see a lot of legislators in both parties being very obstinate with the governor, because they realize their next election begins in 18 months.”
