Gov. Jon Corzine is ready to wade into the swamp that is school funding in New Jersey, a move that could go a long way toward determining what real tax and budget reform will look like.
After more than a year of review, Gov. Jon S. Corzine will propose a new school financing formula as early as next week that would give at least $400 million in new state money to poor and disadvantaged children who live outside traditional inner-city school districts, according to officials familiar with the plan.
The new formula would replace a two-tiered system that concentrates education spending on 31 districts in historically poor cities like Newark, Camden and Paterson.
The current arrangement, known as the Abbott system, has been widely criticized as shortchanging the other 584 districts in largely suburban and rural areas, some of which serve children just as needy. The new approach would apportion money to schools based on the characteristics of the students, including income, language ability and special academic needs.
The new aid formula is likely to create a political firestorm in the state — legislators have irresponsibly pit the urban schools against middle-income suburban ones — and certainly will land in court. This is especially likely because the looming budget gap has killed any chance that the state will boost funding to the level necessary before the plan has been unveiled.
According to the Times, the governor is proposing an increase in school funding of about $400 million, which sounds like a lot but isn’t when you take into account that the state pays such a small portion of school funding across the state now.
That means that, in order to create a formula that addresses the main issues — equalizing funding for rich and poor, ensuring that all students in the state have access to the same level of education, cutting property taxes — school spending in the state will probably have to be cut, a move destined to create more problems than it solves and that could end up benefitting no one, while hurting the court-protected Abbott districts. (And this doesn’t even take into account future funding.)
If that happens, the courts are sure to dismantle the formula, sending everyone back to the drawing board.
South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
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Hank Kalet 