PACKET EDITORIAL, Sept. 15
By: Packet Editorial
With the Legislature hard at work searching for ways to lessen the burden of New Jersey’s highest-in-the-nation property taxes, the temptation to latch on to a quick fix is apparently too great for some lawmakers to resist.
Sen. Bob Smith, for example, is enamored of Maryland’s system of administering and funding public education and he’s convinced New Jersey could save a bundle of tax dollars by adopting the same system. The Middlesex County Democrat is touting the Maryland model as a surefire way of trimming bureaucracy and lowering administrative costs in New Jersey school districts, and other legislators have quickly picked up the mantra.
Here’s their reasoning:
Maryland’s school districts are organized along county lines; New Jersey’s are administered locally. Maryland has 24 school districts; New Jersey has 616. Maryland spends $240 per pupil, about 3 percent of the total public-school budget, on administrative costs; New Jersey spends $1,235 per student, or about 10 percent of total school spending, on administration.
Therefore, if New Jersey adopted a county-based school system, like Maryland’s, it would dramatically reduce the number of districts and, in turn, the administrative costs associated with running the public schools would plummet.
On the surface, this doesn’t seem entirely unreasonable. Fewer districts presumably mean fewer administrators, and fewer administrators presumably translate into lower administrative costs. But in practice, it doesn’t always work out that way.
For one thing, New Jersey couldn’t restructure its public-school system overnight, tossing untold numbers of administrators many of them under contract for three years or more out of work. For another, the money saved by reducing the number of administrators may well be gobbled up by the salaries paid to the new super-administrators who would have much larger areas of responsibility and would, therefore, command much higher levels of compensation.
More important, this whole line of reasoning that Maryland has fewer districts than New Jersey, Maryland’s administrative costs are lower than New Jersey’s, therefore reducing the number of districts results in lower administrative costs is tortured logic. Consider a comparable example:
Montgomery Township has a township committee form of government; Princeton Borough has a mayor-council form. In the past two years, Montgomery’s municipal tax rate has been stable; the municipal tax rate in Princeton Borough has risen by about 5 percent each year. Therefore, to reduce the municipal tax rate, Princeton Borough should adopt a township committee form of government.
Substance, as it happens, does not always follow form.
We’re not suggesting that the Maryland model should be dismissed out of hand. Far from it. It’s self-evident that a state the size of New Jersey should not have 616 school districts, that some sort of restructuring is in order perhaps at the county level, perhaps along other regional lines. And, while we’re at it, let’s take a good hard look at consolidating municipalities of which New Jersey has a staggering 566 as another step toward relieving some of the property-tax burden.
But we’re in no position yet nor do we think Sen. Smith and his colleagues are to embrace the Maryland model as the elixir that will cure New Jersey’s chronic property-tax affliction. This is a complicated problem that requires a comprehensive solution. Perhaps some ideas inspired by Maryland’s experience can become a part of that solution but that, at least for now, is as far out on a limb as anyone able to see the forest for the trees should be willing to go.