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GANNETT STATE BUREAU ‘Abbott advocates want to keep things the same’
STAR LEDGER - 'Abbott cities attack state school aid plans
Needy communities say 'callous' formula will limit kids' education'
GANNETT STATE BUREAU
‘Abbott advocates want to keep things the same’
By Tom Baldwin • GANNETT STATE BUREAU • May 1, 2008
TRENTON — Advocates for students in under-achieving school districts told the state Supreme Court Wednesday efforts by the state to alter its spending of extra dollars on these poorer schools is unconstitutional.
Also on the educational front Wednesday, the state Department of Education issued a series of proposed regulations aimed at standardizing and making transparent the ways school boards spend money.
In the state's high court, the Education Law Center filed a brief challenging the constitutionality of New Jersey's School Funding Reform Act of 2008, saying the measure that became law Jan. 13 is unfair to the underprivileged.
The issue affects virtually all New Jerseyans because New Jersey's annual spending on public education includes nearly $8 billion from state coffers and more than $12 billion from local property taxes.
Since the late 1990s, the state has obeyed a court order to spend more on 31 underachieving schools, the so-called "Abbott districts," based on the name of the original litigant.
Some lawmakers say middle-income parents have come to argue they are now paying to provide the under-achievers with educations that are superior and not available in their own, better-performing districts.
Education Law Center executive director David Sciarra disputed that. "There is no evidence that the funding that the urban children are receiving in any way has reduced funding for children elsewhere," Sciarra said.
From those perspectives came the school funding reform enacted in January, which Gov. Jon S. Corzine said will provide all children, regardless of whether they live in Abbott districts, needed educational resources. Abbott designations disappear, and enhanced aid is provided based on the number of children in a district needing some extra help.
"There's been no evidence offered by the state that the court remedies for urban children should be ended, especially at the very time when those efforts are resulting in solid, academic gains," Sciarra said.
"The state's rationale for the new formula is that there are at-risk kids in many school districts, not just Abbotts," said James Harris, president of the New Jersey NAACP. "No one would deny that. But we feel that the Abbott remedies should be extended to those students."
On the issue affecting management of the state's 615 school districts, Education Commissioner Lucille Davy said of her 14-chapter "Draft Accountability Regulations," "This will be the blueprint that guides districts on the way they spend their money."
The summary details how districts must budget, stay transparent, communicate with parents and keep their books, among other mandates.
Assembly Speaker Joseph Roberts Jr., D-Camden, applauded the draft. "The creation of a statewide set of efficiency and accountability standards will, for the first time, lay out in black and white what is and is not acceptable spending in our state's myriad school districts. These are regulations that are long overdue," Roberts said.
Frank Belluscio, spokesman for the New Jersey School Boards Association, said he and his members have to study the draft rules "before we can give it a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down."
Steve Wollmer, spokesman for the teachers union, the New Jersey Education Association, said, "We'll monitor how things are done. We'll live with it."
Tom Baldwin: tbaldwi@gannett.com
Abbott cities attack state school aid plans
Needy communities say 'callous' formula will limit kids' education
Thursday, May 01, 2008
BY DUNSTAN McNICHOL
Star-Ledger Staff
Attorneys for schoolchildren in 31 needy communities yesterday urged the state Supreme Court to deny Gov. Jon Corzine's effort to end the long-running Abbott vs. Burke lawsuit over public school aid and called the governor's new school funding formula "a callous, budget-driven effort."
Joined by urban mayors and child advocates, the attorneys filed more than 100 pages of legal briefs arguing that the state has no evi dence that its $7.8 billion school funding plan will address the long- standing social and economic barriers that the court says urban schoolchildren face.
"At bottom, the state's proposal (would) turn its back on the severe and extreme disadvantages of Ab bott school children," the brief filed by the Education Law Center said. "There is simply no basis ... to, once again, consign untold future generation(s) of Abbott children to pay the price so dearly exacted upon prior generations of those children."
State attorneys on March 17 asked the court to declare Cor zine's new funding formula constitutional, and to end the series of court orders that had required the state to steer billions of dollars in special state aid to the 31 communities included in the Abbott case.
Under the rulings, state aid to those "Abbott" communities consumed more than half the $7.3 billion in state school aid distributed last year.
Corzine administration officials argue that their new plan for handing out school aid assures that needy children will be ensured ac cess to an adequate education, regardless of where they live.
"Our position is this is not only constitutional, but provides the necessary resources to educate every child in the state," said state Education Commissioner Lucille Davy. "We would not have put this formula forward if we didn't think it was constitutional."
The Education Law Center, the American Civil Liberties Union and other advocacy groups argue that the new formula is underfunded and will prompt massive tax hikes or cuts in school services in the state's poorest cities.
"The state is asking struggling municipalities to choose between the future of their communities and the future of their children," said Irvington Mayor Wayne Smith, president of the Urban Mayors' Association. "That is exactly the untenable choice the court sought to prohibit."
Corzine said he hoped to put to rest the decades-long legal battle over how the state supports public schools in the state's neediest communities with passage of his school funding overhaul earlier this year.
At its core, the formula at tempts to define how much it costs to deliver an "adequate" public education to each community in the state, and then allots every community enough funding to bankroll the required schooling. Critics complained that the plan was underfunded, poorly devised and based on dubious cost and demographic assumptions.
Dunstan McNichol may be reached at dmcnichol@starled ger.com or (609) 989-0341.
