Property Taxes, School Funding issues | ||||||||||||
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GARDEN STATE COALITION OF SCHOOLS
GSCS EMAILNET 6-2-06
www.gscschools.org gscs2000@gmail.com
Annual Meeting,
GSCS Quick Facts: Next Bd of Trustees Meeting is scheduled for 10 a.m. July 12, 2006 at the East Brunswick Board of Education. Please RSVP to gscs2000@gmail.com with your attendance availability.
Reminder: June 6, 8:30 – 1 pm ‘Status of School Construction Program’ at Douglass Campus, Trayes Hall, Rutgers Univ, contact Kathyln Kelly 732 564 9099 to sign up. Sponsored by Public Education Institute, Center for Architectural & Bldg Science Research Center/NJIT, Association for Children of NJ, Education Law Center, Garden State Coalition of Schools, and NJ Institute for Social Justice. Keynote Speakers: Scott Weiner, Transition CEO of the Schools Construction Corp, and Gordon MacInness, Asst Comm of Education. Experts from sponsoring organization will discuss current research, policy and advocacy work underway in support of improved school construction programs.
Senate Education Meeting 6-8-06 1pm agenda, committee room 6, Annex:
A2556 Assaults against cert. teachers-concerns
S79 Epinephrine, cert. students-concerns
S432 Pub sch emp-concern substance abuse prog
S1220 Special ed. svcs.-concerns cert. info.
S1606 After sch. activities-concerns
S1633 Assault, cert.-incl teachers & sch admim
S1740 Assaults against cert. teachers-concerns
S1747 Sch. admin.-caps unused sick leave pymt.
S1876 Sch dist expenditures-concern
S1878 Sch. dist. admin.-concerns contract
June 8 Lobby Day at the Statehouse in Trenton 9:15 – approx. 1:30 pm. Join GSCS, and the School Funding Coalition & education community partners to talk with legislators in the statehouse about how important public education is to you and your community. Contact Lynne Strickland a gscs2000@gmail.com to sign up and for detailed information.
The GSCS Annual Meeting was held this Wednesday with a capacity crowd attending the 15th Breakfast program at the Forsgate Country Club. Featured Speakers were Acting Commissioner Lucille Davy and Scott Weiner, Transition CEO of the Schools Construction Corp & Special Counsel to the Governor. Governor Corzine sent a personal letter to GSCS, saying in part that
“…It is my pleasure to extend warm greeting to the
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At the meeting, some hard issues were discussed. GSCS believes that it is past time for a realistic debate to ensue on how to address school organization, governance and funding. There is no question that there are exceptional practices that do need addressing and that to have real effect, any remedies should apply to the whole of the system, not just a sliver of the school population. On the other hand, we are very concerned that a lock-step focus on negative issues are being used as a way to avoid the need to address 5years of flat state aid, spiraling cost drivers such as health benefits and special education, and resultant spikes in property taxes. Here is the article:
State, suburban school execs confer, and little love is lost
Thursday, June 01, 2006 BY JOHN MOONEY Star-Ledger Staff
Under the state's budget crisis, it hasn't been a good year -- make that couple of years -- for New Jersey's suburban schools, and the frustrations showed yesterday when top state officials came calling on many of the local leaders.
Acting Education Commissioner Lucille Davy and school construction executive Scott Weiner didn't mince words before the annual meeting of the
Davy described bleak times for the schools in terms of overall funding, and Weiner, transitional chief executive of the embattled Schools Construction Corp., said that program's prospects remain a work in progress as well.
But the cool words went both ways, as local leaders grumbled in their seats and took exception afterward to ongoing criticism from the Corzine administration and the Legislature about everything from administrative perks to what Davy called the schools' "runaway spending."
"The issue is with the broad brush that's being applied to all of us," said Marjorie Heller, superintendent of Little Silver schools and the association's newly named president. "There are those who really resent the way everyone's been characterized."
"It's really tough times, and we need to get off these side issues," she said.
It was the
The group has since grown to a membership of 125 districts, and with full-time executive director Lynne Strickland, it has become one of
School funding was first and foremost at yesterday's breakfast meeting at the Forsgate Country Club in
Davy, in her eighth month as acting commissioner, repeated Gov. Jon Corzine's pledge to re vamp how schools are paid for, especially in terms of their reliance on property taxes. She said a proposal still being drafted would include a more equitable formula for districts not covered under the state Supreme Court's Abbott vs. Burke rulings.
But she hardly pandered to her audience. "Is this going to mean half of your budgets will be paid for by state taxes? I don't think so, and out of the gate, we need to be honest about that," she said.
Davy then hammered at some sensitive topics, starting with a recent state report of excessive administrative salaries and other benefits in some districts, including big payments for unused sick and vacation time.
"It is not enough anymore to say that these benefits were negotiated with their school boards, were signed off by the board attorneys, and that's just the way it is," she said. "The bottom line is that the climate we are living in today does not justify getting huge payouts for sick time anymore."
Weiner, who was brought in by Corzine to help repair the school construction program, was a little more upbeat but hardly had much good news to impart, either.
The SCC remains under repair after it was found to have been rife with waste and mismanagement in spending its allotted $8.6 billion on just a quarter of the promised projects for urban districts.
Weiner said new controls and management are being put in place, and he hoped to have a clearer sense by the end of summer of how any additional money would be distributed.
"We're looking very hard at how to make this better," he said. "We're hoping in the next few months that whatever the entity we have, we'll have the management in place to handle (the work)."
The program has had more success in suburban districts, 80 percent of which received at least some construction money, but a few local officials said yesterday that they too have been left in the lurch.
The superintendent of a
And, as the annual meeting wore down, Marlboro Superintendent David Abbott posed a question about school construction that might have applied to his peers' mood in general: "How do we see through all this fog any light at the end of the tunnel?"
2006-2007 Board of Trustees & Executive Board officers elected at Annual Meeting:
President |
Dr. Marjorie Heller
Superintendent, Little Silver |
President-Elect |
Dr. Dan Fishbein Superintendent, |
Vice President |
Linda Nelson
Board Representative, Scotch Plains/Fanwood |
Vice President |
Toni Hopkins Parent Representative, |
Treasurer |
Mr. Jim O’Neill Superintendent, School District of the |
Past President |
Dr. Walter Mahler
Superintendent, Bridgewater-Raritan |
Board of Trustee districts for the 2006-2007 school year:
2007 |
2008 |
2009 |
Readington |
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Tenafly |
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Bridgewater-Raritan |
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Little Silver |
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Haddonfield |
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Northern Valley/Demarest |
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Scotch Plains/Fanwood |
The |
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Rumson |
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Metuchen |
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NOTE: The coordinator of the GSCS parent network committee has a seat on the Board of Trustees.