Abbott foes join to seek school aid Wednesday, February 21, 2007 • BY DUNSTAN McNICHOL • Star-Ledger Staff Two lobbying organizations representing school districts left out of a series of major education funding lawsuits announced yesterday they have joined forces to press for a bigger share of New Jersey's state school aid. The Abbott vs. Burke decisions have produced a series of state Supreme Court mandates for extra state aid to 31 of the state's neediest communities. Now, after six years in which state aid for the communities outside the court order has remained frozen while the Abbott aid has grown by more than $1 billion, suburban school lobbyists unveiled a strategy that could be called Ab bott vs. everyone else. "We will have power that we have not had," said Lynne Strickland, executive director of the Gar den State Coalition of Schools, an organization that represents 110 of the state's wealthier communities. Strickland's group grew by about 40 districts yesterday with the announcement that a second lobbying group, the Association of Middle Income Districts, is disbanding and becoming part of the Garden State Coalition. "We cannot afford to divide New Jersey schools into three distinct groups," said Bruce Quinn, president of the middle-income districts group and superintendent of the Matawan-Aberdeen School District. Quinn said it was not the new group's intent to pit any group of students or parents against the poorer communities included in the Abbott ruling, but that the court had set the stage for such a showdown. "When you have a funding formula that treats one class of school districts differently from everyone else, that's going to be the case," said Quinn. "I don't think we're trying to divide the playing field; I think the court did that when they made their decisions." Lawmakers failed in a six- month effort to devise a new for mula for distributing the $7 billion in aid New Jersey sends to schools each year. Since 2002, when the Legislature stopped funding the existing school aid formula, state records show that aid for the Abbott districts has grown from $3.1 billion to $4.2 billion, while aid for the rest of the state's more than 600 school districts has risen from $2.9 billion to $3.1 billion. Sen. John Adler (D-Camden), co-chairman of a special legislative committee set up last summer to develop a school aid formula to distribute funds based on each stu dent's needs rather than by general measures of community-wide wealth, called the state's failure to enact a new program "a real show of disrespect to taxpayers." "I'm embarrassed that collectively we haven't found the will or vision to get it done," he said at yesterday's news conference. Lawmakers have frozen funding to most school districts for the past six years. A recent Rutgers University study found that has cost schools outside of the 31 communities covered by the Abbott rulings more than $2 billion in aid they would otherwise have been scheduled to receive. Lawmakers say they expect to see suburban school aid raised for the first time since 2001 when Gov. Jon Corzine presents his state budget tomorrow, but that they still plan to press for a new formula. "We can't have a two-tiered system of funding public school education -- one set by the Supreme Court and the other set by whatev er's left over," said Sen. Barbara Buono (D-Middlesex), one of three lawmakers who attended today's merger announcement in the Statehouse. "What we have now in New Jersey is a dysfunctional system." Chandra M. Hayslett can be reached at chayslett@starledger.com or (732) 404-8089. © 2006 The Star-Ledger. Used by NJ.com with permission.