schools – Page 3 – Hank Kalet

The stimulus fix is in: Local schools lose in compromise

ShovelWatch, a joint ProPublica–WNYC Radio project tracking the stimulus package, offers this searchable database of U.S. school districts to give its readers a sense of how the changes in the federal stimulus bill as it has worked its way from the president through the House to the Senate and to a joint committee that announced it had reached a $789 billion compromise plan.

Here is a tentative breakdown from districts covered by Packet Group papers. The money listed was included in the bill that passed the House, but was cut from the Senate bill. Some of it apparently has been returned, but it is still unclear how much and which schools will benefit.

Princeton Regional — $145,600
West Windsor-Plainsboro — $182,800
Montgomery (Belle Mead) — $0
Cranbury — $19,200
Jamesburg — $100,500
Monroe — $609,800
South Brunswick — $247,400
Upper Freehold Regional — $39,700
Robbinsville — $298,700
Hightstown-East Windsor Regional — $401,800
Lambertville — $8,300
Lawrence — $309,900
Hillsborough — $327,200
Manville — $154,900
North Burlington Regional — $58,700
Florence — $174,000
Mansfield — $71,600
New Hanover — $44,700
North Hanover — $124,000
Springfield — $10,200
Hopewell Valley Regional — $61,700

Several of these districts — Monroe, Robbinsville (which is still listed as Washington), Mansfield — share names with districts elsewhere in the state, and the way the data is presented makes it difficult to know which district is which. The numbers represent my best guess at the moment, and I plan to revise this as I get better numbers.

Suffice to say that this is a lose-lose for the region: The schools won’t get the money to modernize, which means that they will not be creating construction work, which means that the workers won’t have money in their pockets to spend at local stores and so on. But, hey, we’ve cut the stimulus — which most economists have said was too small — down to a politically manageable size. Good work (he said sarcastically).

Young artists rock — especially my nephew

I visited the South Brunswick school district’s K-12 art exhibition last night and was amazed and pleased to see the kind of work being done.

At one table, featuring work from Greenbrook School (I believe), there were imitations of Kandinsky’s abstractions, essentially explorations of line and color. Other major artistic styles and genres were represented.

I ran into Joanne Kerekes, assistant superintendent for curriculum, who seemed to be enjoying the work and the responses of the parents. She reminded me that the art programs were not required by the state and that they too often are the kind of programs that get cut when budgets fail.

It would be a shame if that were to happen this year. The Township Council is reviewing the $135.9 budget defeated two weeks ago, hoping to cut enough from the tax levy to reduce the tax rate. That will require an $800,000 cut. Good luck.

I know the voters spoke and they have to be listened to, but the council must be careful. The district’s arts programs are too important, both to the educational process — students benefit in other curriculum areas when they take art and music — and to society as a whole.

The best example I can offer of what the arts program means is the picture above — done by my 7-year-old nephew Joey Kalet, a first-grader at Cosntable School.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

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Memo to the court:Give the school aid plan a chance

I have to agree with The Record on this: It is time for the state Supreme Court to show some deference to the governor and state Legislature before it rules on the constitutionality of the state’s new school funding plan.

I have my criticisms of the plan — I think more money should have been appropriated and distributed more widely, both to improve the state’s schools and to lower local property tax bills. But I also think this plan is likely to be an improvement over what was in place.

Until it can be shown that it will create a negative impact on the urban schools covered by the Abbott v. Burke rulings, I can’t see how it can’t pass constitutional muster.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

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School funding: Let the fight begin

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
The Blog of South Brunswick

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Delay levy cap indefinitely

Gov. Jon Corzine has signed several of the Legislature’s tax reform proposals (if you want to call them that), but he’s yet to sign what Trenton has pegged as the most important of the measures — the bill that would create the 20 percent tax credits and impose a 4 percent levy cap on municipalities, schools and county governments.

The governor ostensibily is holding out for a ban on dual-office holding in New Jersey, but he should take the time to rethink the proposed levy cap and push the Legislature to find more efficient and effective ways to hold local spending down.

Spending an afternoon talking about the budget with South Brunswick school officials puts the levy cap in perspective. The cap, as Superintendent Gary McCartney points out, applies to the total amount to be raised by taxes — regardless of whether the tax base grows (new houses, new warehouss, etc), and regardless of whether enrollment grows or an unexpected major expense (roof repair, for instance) is needed.

About 80 percent of the budget is personnel costs — either salary or health and retirement benefits. The rest is a mix of facilities and supplies, including heat, electric and other utilities costs.

For the most part, the district has done a solid job in recent years of keeping spending increases to a minimum, adding staff only to keep teacher-student ratiosstatic, to man new buildings or to provide newly mandated programs.

But education is expensive — the average house with two children in school might generate $5,000 to $10,000 in school taxes but costs the district more than $20,000, a net loss. That means rising school taxes.

The new cap law attempts to control spending by attacking the sympton (rising taxes), without addressing its causes (among them single-source funding and not enough state financing, too many school districts) — setting limits without giving school districts, in particular, real tools to stay within the limits without slashing instructional programs.

It’s a prescription with the potential for way too many dangerous and debilitating side-effects. It needs to be changed.

South Brunswick Post , The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick
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