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To: Board of Trustees, 3-26-07
Fr : Lynne Strickland
Re: Department of Education/Administration approach to new school funding formula for 2008-09.
Last Wednesday afternoon I received an invitation to participate in a conference call from Lucille Davy. In addition to GSCS, included in the call were the LEE group and Education Law Center. The purpose of the call was to inform and include education stakeholder leadership of the Governor’s plan to move forward on the development and forthcoming process for a new school funding formula.
ADMINISTRATION PLAN TO DEVELOPSCHOOL FUNDING FORMULA:
1. The DOE will put out a Request for Proposal (RFP) to hire a consultant to oversee the process.
2. It is probable that the DOE will partner with a NJ higher education institution to conduct a design and research study that will review and report on both successful districts and low performing schools, spanning different types of districts/DFGs, to find out what is and is not working performance-wise and why.
3. The need for additional, appropriate data gathering was noted.
4. The DOE will use the base study already released as a ‘starting point’. The Department plans to modify, add to, remove unworkable aspects of and improve upon the base study, particularly using the 3 panel experts report recommendations from this January as the springboard.
5. Certain issues that emerged during input on the cost study initially were noted to that will need to be addressed: special education as a wealth-equalized or categorical aid; extraordinary special education aid ($40K+ costs) funding; minimum aid – state share; required local effort; other major cost drivers, such as benefits.
6. These factors were emphasized, but additional issues/processes should not be ruled out.
PROTOCOL & EXPECTATIONS:
A series of regular discussions and information sessions will be conducted with stakeholders and legislators on a regular and reasonably frequent basis [every 3-4 weeks] parallel to this process of developing a formula. All those in this conference call are requested to participate in this process. The initial session – perhaps in mid-April – will bring everyone up to date as to ‘where we are at this stage’ and how we might move forward.
Relevant data and agenda is to be sent to stakeholders prior to these sessions.
The Administration will release its recommendations for a new school funding formula this November 2007.Legislation will be presented to the legislature with the intent being to pass a bill for the new school funding formula by the end of December 2007, so that state aid for FY2008-2009 will reflect the new formula.
