School Aid Plan Raises Questions
By: Michael M. Shapiro
The school aid plan that is slowly being leaked to the public and being reported on by the media continues a trend of increasingly distributing state aid based on each school district’s wealth while taking away aid from so called “wealthy” school districts. As a result, property taxes, the majority of which is used to fund public education, will likely increase in wealthy areas while many "Abbott" districts no longer needing such funding continue to reap the benefits. The plan as presented in recent media coverage is flawed on several levels:
First, despite the growing wealth of several of the 31 Abbott districts, including Hoboken, all 31 will continue to have "Abbott" status under the plan and are guaranteed to continue receiving special State aid at the same level or more than they are currently receiving. Why should a place like Hoboken, with a burgeoning upper middle class, continue to have Abbott status and further, why should New Jersey taxpayers continue to subsidize its funding at the current level? Hoboken and other Abbott districts similar to Hoboken should be removed from the Abbott classification or its residents should pay their fair share to educate their children.
Second, the plan distributes funds based on both the economic status of each community as well as the individual students in every school district. School districts with a large number of students who qualify for the federal government’s subsidized lunch programs and students who do not speak English as their primary language would receive more aid under the plan. While providing more aid to districts that have less economically fortunate students makes sense, providing aid on the basis of a lack of English language skills might well encourage school districts to maintain the current language deficiencies of their students so as to obtain more state funding.
Third, under the plan, special education funding would no longer be distributed based solely on the population of special needs students in the district. Instead, the wealth of the district will factor in. As a result, state funding for special education may be reduced or taken away altogether from wealthy districts. Therefore, residents of those districts will have to pay even more in the way of property taxes to fund special education in their public schools.
Fourth, the plan calls for $450 million in additional funding besides the current school aid plan. From where will the $450 million come? At a time of skyrocketing State debt, debt so severe that the Governor is willing to risk his second term on helping to alleviate it, why are we handing over hundreds of millions of dollars more as part of the school funding plan? Instead, we should be looking at cutting waste in the public schools, including the top-heavy administrative staffs in many school districts that are receiving salaries that are comparable to the corporate world with better fringe benefits.
School aid to municipalities is very important. Its purpose is to assist in paying for public education in the State so as not to force municipalities to shoulder the full burden of public school costs. In addition, it is needed to help provide quality education to our State’s neediest students, which is a worthwhile and significant goal. However, the manipulation of the school funding plan that year-by-year becomes more of a wealth-redistribution scheme at the expense of our State’s taxpayers than a program to fairly and adequately fund public education is improper and should be rejected. Let's adopt a fair school funding plan based on the current level of budgeted aid that revamps Abbott funding. Then, the most financially depressed districts would receive the required aid and a fair share of the rest of the pie would be distributed among our State's many other schools.
Michael M. Shapiro, founder
of ShapTalk.com, is an attorney who resides in New Providence,
Contact Mike at
mike@shaptalk.com