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Officials say line-by-line accounting of impact on districts to come in 10 days
Saturday, December 01, 2007 • BY JOHN MOONEY AND DUNSTAN McNICHOL • Star-Ledger Staff

Gov. Jon Corzine yesterday started to raise the curtain on a long-awaited school funding plan that would steer tens of millions in additional aid to middle-class districts with surging low-income and immigrant populations.

The proposal would make fundamental changes in the way New Jersey pays for its public schools, including new guidelines on how much money is "adequate" to educate each child. It would mandate preschool in all districts with pockets of poverty, revise funding for special education and add new money for security measures in every school.

Corzine has pledged for the last year to move away from the current two-tiered system that focuses additional aid on the poorest districts but has done little to help struggling suburban ones.

Yesterday afternoon, he met behind closed doors with about 60 leaders of the state's major education associations to lay out further details of his plan, which administration officials said would add about $450 million next year to the $8 billion the state now distributes to schools.

The presentation left out a critical piece: a line-by-line accounting of how the proposed formula would affect each district and its property taxes. Officials said that will come in a public presentation of the plan within 10 days.

"Show us the numbers is what I would say," said Tom Dunn, a former Elizabeth superintendent and now lobbyist with the New Jersey Association of School Administrators.

Leaving the two-hour meeting at the state Department of Education, Corzine conceded such figures will be critical to the upcoming debate. But he said the session was nevertheless productive in introducing the plan.

"I think there were a lot of good-willed people, and they listened graciously," he said.

The administration appears close to settling on specific dollar amounts for what it says is enough to educate each child, based on his or her individual needs -- numbers that will serve as the basis of the state's funding for each district.

Preliminary figures obtained by the Star-Ledger show, for example, a base estimate of $11,118 to adequately educate a high school student, rising to $17,234 if he or she is poor and $18,623 if poor and with limited English skills. The current statewide average per-pupil spending, including all grades and all services, is about $16,000.

How those targets play out in individual districts -- and what each will be asked to raise from local taxpayers -- will frame much of the upcoming debate on the plan.

Corzine stressed in remarks yesterday before the meeting that no districts will see aid cut in the coming year. "This is not about hurting someone; it's not a zero-sum game," he said during a speech in New Brunswick.

Corzine has said he hopes to have a new funding system approved by the Legislature before its current session ends in early January.

The emerging formula is New Jersey's latest attempt to come up with a state aid plan that will satisfy the state Supreme Court, which has demanded a huge infusion of state aid into 31 of the state's neediest communities on the grounds that previous state aid plans shortchanged students in impoverished communities.

Through a series of court orders in the Abbott vs. Burke school funding case, the court directed state officials to steer more than half the state's total school aid funds to the 31 communities included in the lawsuit, bankrolling unprecedented investments in preschool, construction and reading improvement programs.

As a benchmark, the court said school spending on each of the students in the poor communities should equal the amount spent on students in the state's most affluent towns.

Corzine said he plans to take the new formula back to the court for review once it is passed by the Legislature, and he told the lobbyists and local officials gathered for yesterday's briefing that he is confident it will pass muster.

But David Sciarra, the attorney who has handled the Abbott vs. Burke litigation, said Corzine's plan is fatally flawed, saying the preliminary cost-per-pupil figures do not meet the reality of what Abbott and other schools need.

"We still do not have an up-to- date, rigorous determination of costs for providing a high quality education in New Jersey," he said. "We have outdated, seriously flawed cost figures that are going to be used in this formula."

State Education Commissioner Lucille Davy contested that claim, saying the figures are the product of extensive review and study over the last year. And she stressed the plan is to provide hundreds of millions in additional aid in a state that already spends as much on schools as any in the nation.

"What we are talking about growing what is already at the top of the charts," she said in a conference call with reporters.

Davy stressed a centerpiece of the new formula will be additional funds for preschool beyond that now mandated in the Abbott districts.

Under the plan, two years of preschool will be required and paid for in all districts in the very lowest socio-econonmic categories, as well as others with at least 40 percent of their students deemed low-income. Funding will also be offered for preschool in wealthier communities with any low-income students.

The new programs will have to be phased in over several years, she said, but will provide young children a meaningful educational boost, no matter where they live.

"We believe that high-quality preschool is the best way to insure they enter kindergarten ready to succeed," she said. "And the best way to insure they will be successful in the years to follow."

Corzine pitches proposal tying aid to student needs

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