Quality Public Education for All New Jersey Students

 

 
     4-16-06 Sunday NY Times Metro Section, front page
     4-13-06 'Budget cap puts NJ schools on edge'
     3-9-06 Governor speaks to S1701 at town meeting
     EMAILNET 3-9-06 to South Jersey districts
     COFFEE a coalition of families for excellent education
     EMAILNET 3-7-06 S1701 Call to Action at Gov Corzine Public Hearing
     12-8-05 GSCS and Educ community testify together for S1701 amendment bills before Assembly Educa Com
     1-17-06 Asbury Park Press "Viewpoint" letters on S1701
     Op-ed piece written by GSCS Parent Network Regional Representative Kim Newsome published in Monmouth's "Two River Times" July 2005
     LINK to the S1701 Law
     S1701 Summit Board members' report re GSCS 1-11-08 Board mtg
     1-29-06 Asbury Park Press Sunday Front Page Right
     1-24-06 Asbury Park Press 'Funding sparks heated debate'
     FYI - S1701 impacts on local districts - excerpts from NJSBA spring 2005 survey, released 9-27-05
     Posted 1-17-06 December 2005 article from the NewsTranscript of Monmouth County
     1-17-06 Asbury Park Press
     1-12-06 Asbury Park Press letter to the editor
     12-20-05 Star Ledger 'Schools lower the heat and risk a backlash'
     Recap on property tax issues and S1701 - GSCS has been requesting legislative help on school budget cost drivers for a number of years - here is one example from summer 2004
     12-16-05 Star Ledger Schools may end courtesy busing, tied to S1701 budget stressors
     12-16-05 EMAILNET
     12-12-05 EMAILNET Bills move out of Assembly Education Committee
     5-6-05 EMAILNET Important S1701 meeting in Rumson
     UPDATE on 12-8-05 Assembly Education Committee hearing
     12-2-05 Hopewell Valley letter to Senate Education Committee Chair Shirley Turner re: school budget amendment bills & S1701
     EMAILNET 12-3-05 Heads Up!
     11-15-05 EMAILNET
     Parent Letter to Senate Education Committee Chair on S1701 and request to move amendment legislation
     S1701 EMAILNET Alert 11-28-05
     Ridgewood Board of Education member letter to legislators 11-15-05; good example letter with local legislator response
     Parent letter to legislators on S1701 and 'stalled status of amendment bills S2329 and S2278'
     EMAILNET 11-10-05 UPDATE on STATUS of S1701
     10-28-05 EMAILNET S1701 resignation, Gubernatorial election information
     AMEND S1701: GRASSROOTS BUMPER MAGNETS now available at the initiation of GSCS Rumson parent and their networking
     Readington Forum on School Funding & Meet the Assembly Candidates 11-1-05
     Invitation to October 7 Rumson hosts 'Stuff S1701' Party
     October 7 Sample Letter for 'Stuff S1701' Party Rumson area. html
     Parents in Trenton 9-21-05 Press Conference
     Link to The Hub article on Rumson Parent 5-19-05 Meeting Opposing S1701, GSCS and Assemblymen Sean Kean & Steve Coredemus co-hots
     Schools will seek Extra Funding
     Parents Give Codey an Earful
     Courier Post Online
     Bill to loosen school budgets altered
     Educators urge parents to fight school spending cap
     School funding plan gets OK from panel
     Legislature Acts to Revamp School Spending Caps
     Educators to Argue for Repeal of Cap Law
     S1701 One Board Member's Perspective
     Moody's Investment Services School Bond Rating Analysis post S1701 passage (pdf)
     EMAILNET 7-8-05 GSCS Take on Assembly Passage of A3680
     Asbury Park Press-Gannet Bureau 7-2-05 Legislature Passes Aid bill for Districts Near Abbotts
     October 13 2004 School Funding and S1701 Meeting hosted by Bergen County school group 'Dollars & Sense
     Glen Ridge Schools and Garden State Coalition co-host Dec 9 Meeting 'Public Support for Public Education v. Property Tax Stress' plus a focus on new school funding law S1701
     Red Bank Regional High School, Red Bank K-8 Schools, Little Silver, Fair Haven,Rumson-Fair Haven, Rumson K-8, Shrewsbury, and the GArden State Coalition Host December 6, 2004 Forum on the new school funding legislation S1701
     Rumson PTA, Monmouth Parents sponsor S1701 meeting, co-hosted by 11th District Assemblyman Sean Kean & the GSCS May 2005
     040430EMAILNET Govs PTax Proposal - reaction (Word)
     One Board's Example: Glen Ridge Public Schools
     Princeton Public Schools education symposium to explore impact of school cap legislation
     Real Figures and Sound Facts - A Grassroots Rebuttal to Trenton on S1701
     GSCS School Funding and S1701 Power Point - February 2005
     EMAILNET 2-21-05 S1701 and A3680 Still Stalled
     School Funding Presentation December 2004
4-16-06 Sunday NY Times Metro Section, front page
(The New York Times explores impact of S1701 on school budgets. A clear credibility gap is ever-widening between legislative 'take' and local reality. Parent & community family groups, such as the newly formed COFFEE [see "Links" on the sidebar] are rising up from the grassroots in response to Trenton's disconnect.) April 16, 2006 In New Jersey, Spending Cap Pinches Schools By DAVID W. CHEN

"As residents of New Jersey prepare to vote on their school budgets on Tuesday, educators and parents say that they are struggling with a major crisis forcing districts to cut programs, shed staff and charge fees for things that were once free. The chief culprit, they say, is not a public opposed to public education, or an onerous federal mandate, but a recent state law ..."

April 16, 2006

In New Jersey, Spending Cap Pinches Schools

By DAVID W. CHEN

As residents of New Jersey prepare to vote on their school budgets on Tuesday, educators and parents say that they are struggling with a major crisis forcing districts to cut programs, shed staff and charge fees for things that were once free.

The chief culprit, they say, is not a public opposed to public education, or an onerous federal mandate, but a recent state law that limits the annual growth in spending by school districts to 2.5 percent or the increase in inflation, whichever is more.

The law also requires that budget surpluses exceeding 2 percent be returned to taxpayers.

In Glen Ridge, officials say the law has meant that parents of children in pre-kindergarten programs in public schools must now pay tuition of $1,000 a year, while parents of high school students are required to pay a $200 fee before their children can play sports or join after-school clubs.

In Marlboro, it has meant that parents had to swaddle their children in extra clothing during the winter because the schools lowered the heat to save tens of thousands of dollars, school officials and parents say.

And in the Hopewell Valley district, four bus routes were eliminated and seven teachers, six teacher aides and two vice principals sliced from the payroll, all so the district could stay within the spending cap.

The law, known as S-1701, was passed in 2004 with broad bipartisan support and signed by the governor at the time, James E. McGreevey.

Supporters say the law has imposed vigorous fiscal discipline, while easing property taxes.

They also say that by embracing such an approach, however unpopular, lawmakers have sent a powerful message at a time when the state is grappling with a $4 billion budget shortfall, and surging pension, insurance and debt-service costs.

"I think people are crying wolf," said State Senator Wayne R. Bryant, a Democrat from Camden County who is chairman of the Senate budget committee and a sponsor of the original bill.

"They want total freedom to do their budgets without the transparency," he continued. "But they just can't hoard money that is taxpayers' money."

But critics, including many parent organizations, say the law has shackled districts by preventing them from having enough money or administrative freedom to absorb unexpected costs, such as emergency repairs or exorbitant fuel and insurance bills. It has also stripped districts of some of their decision-making authority.

The fiscal problems have been compounded, school officials say, because state aid to all schools has remained flat for the last five years.

"You can call any district, and everybody is going to have something affected by this," said Alan C. Reiffe, business administrator for the Wyckoff School District, which, in part because of the restrictions imposed by 1701, was forced to borrow $200,000 to pay for bathrooms in new school trailers. "It's just impossible. Your hands are tied when you're trying to do the operations of a district."

The outcry has prompted some legislators to introduce bills to loosen or even repeal the law.

State Senator Leonard Lance, a Republican from Hunterdon County who is the minority leader, said he favored expanding the maximum surplus to perhaps 4 percent.

The issue has also attracted the attention of Gov. Jon S. Corzine. At a town hall meeting on the budget last month at Montclair State University, he said he would not seek to repeal the law. But he said it had "striking problems" and suggested that amendments might be needed to allow for increases in costs of energy and pensions.

"The answer is not that I wouldn't like to," Mr. Corzine said of scrapping the law, "but I believe that it would be very difficult to say that we're going to make all these other difficult choices and then not ask for discipline where there are large amounts of state aid."

New Jersey schools receive, on average, about 40 percent of their annual funds from the state, and 60 percent from local property taxes, while the national average is about 50-50. But those figures do not give the whole picture, because state aid generally amounts to less than 10 percent of the budgets in the wealthiest districts, while the poorest ones, called Abbott districts after a long-running lawsuit, rely almost exclusively on state aid.

In 2004, legislators tried to curtail the growth in education spending and came up with S-1701, as part of a broader package that increased taxes on incomes of more than $500,000 and called for a constitutional convention on property taxes.

"It's the only salvation the taxpayers have in the current out-of-control spending," said Jerry Cantrell, president of the Silver Brigade, a statewide grassroots group that seeks to reduce property taxes. "The schools always hide behind the 'it's for the kids' mantra and it's hard for the average citizen to mount a salable argument against it."

But Moody's Investors Service released a report in August 2004 warning that New Jersey's 2 percent surplus cap would be "among the lowest school district reserves in the country" and that such a limit could "bring negative credit pressure."

In May 2005, the New Jersey School Boards Association, which supports a repeal, surveyed its members, and found that many reported that S-1701 had had a negative impact.

The bond rating for Paramus slipped, according to the group. Galloway Township cut its clubs and activities by 50 percent. Parents in Hopewell Valley and Wyckoff were asked to pay for part of their children's field trips. And, in an indication of the loss of local authority, Rumson asked Trenton for permission to use its surplus to hire a new fifth-grade teacher but was denied.

State Senator Ellen Karcher, a Democrat from Monmouth County, said she felt the ramifications in two ways: as a legislator who introduced a bill to increase the maximum surplus to 3 percent, and as a parent of twin daughters in the Marlboro school system. A few months ago, she said, she found a note in one of her daughter's backpacks explaining that the school district would turn off or lower the heat to save money.

This year, several districts, including Cherry Hill, Northvale and Franklin Borough, had no choice but to raise taxes by amounts higher than anticipated, according to the New Jersey School Boards Association. The districts have less money to work with, after returning surpluses the previous year, but higher costs because of energy, insurance and other bills, the group said.

"What's frustrating about it to me is that supposedly it's to provide good government, but it seems like more of a political fix to artificially reduce tax rates by reducing surplus," said Andrea L. Kahn, a bond attorney and partner at McManimon & Scotland in Newark, who has worked on numerous municipal bond issues. "But by reducing surplus and taxes in a given year, and causing taxes to bounce back the following year, you're really hurting the ability of a local government to plan for tax stabilization."

Around the country, state and local governments often mandate spending caps for local school districts, but there have been more attempts of late to loosen existing caps, rather than create new ones, said Jason Wisecup, an education finance researcher for the National Conference of State Legislatures.

California, of course, drastically reduced property taxes and slashed services under Proposition 13, to the detriment of the education system. Colorado mandated spending limits in 1992, then abandoned those caps in a referendum last year, because Gov. Bill Owens, a Republican, successfully argued that the spending limits meant that the state could not "keep pace with the demands of the budget." And this year, Texas, with no income tax and strict limits on property taxes, faces a court-threatened shutdown of its public schools for ignoring constitutional limits on local property taxes.

But it seems unlikely that S-1701 will be repealed any time soon. None of the top Democrats in the legislature — including Mr. Bryant, former Gov. Richard J. Codey and Assembly Speaker Joseph J. Roberts Jr. — have indicated much interest in doing so.

And in an interview after a recent budget hearing in Trenton, Assemblyman Louis D. Greenwald of Camden County, chairman of the Assembly budget committee, also sounded skeptical. He noted that a recent investigation by the State Commission of Investigation found that many school boards had provided top administrators with cars, computers, cellphones, improper pension increases and donations to tax-deferred annuities.

So S-1701, in his mind, is the right tool for school boards.

"I'm not saying that it's not a larger challenge for them," Mr. Greenwald said, "but it's a challenge that many of them need