Another year, another school funding formula.
That’s pretty much how we keep track of time here in New Jersey.
Ever since 1973, when the state Supreme Court declared the state’s method of funding the public schools unconstitutional, a succession of governors and legislators has grappled with the vexing problem of how to make New Jersey’s educational system operate thoroughly and efficiently. Countless formulas have been tried; some have failed to satisfy the court, others have fallen victim to budget difficulties, still others have provoked such outrage among either poor urban school districts or their wealthy suburban counterparts that they had to be substantially revised or scrapped altogether.
Now, with 2007 winding down, Gov. Jon Corzine has offered yet another scheme for distributing state aid among New Jersey’s 615 public school districts. By all accounts, his plan is bound to be about as popular — and as likely to prompt a court challenge — as its many predecessors.
The governor proposes to provide $7.8 billion in state aid to the public schools for the 2008-2009 school year, about $533 million more than the current spending level. But instead of providing the bulk of that increase to the state’s poor urban districts, in particular the 31 “Abbott districts” to which the court has directed large sums of money in the past, the Corzine plan favors primarily middle-class districts, 146 of which would receive the maximum increase of 20 percent.
The Abbott districts would receive an average increase of just 3.3 percent, with two-thirds of them — including Newark, Camden and Trenton — getting the absolute minimum of 2 percent. These numbers derive from a formula that calculates state spending based primarily on the characteristics of individual students — including income, language ability and special academic needs — as opposed to the property tax-raising ability of the school district in which they reside.
It’s hard, at first blush, not to conclude that this rather radical departure from past practice represents something of a Robin Hood plan in reverse — taking from the poor to give to the rich, or at the very least, the middle class. That is certainly how the Newark-based Education Law Center, which has represented the Abbott districts over the years in a string of court challenges, sees it. So do urban legislators and educators, who wasted no time denouncing the governor’s plan.
But superintendents and board members in middle-class suburban districts, along with the legislators who represent them, are thrilled. These districts have seen only minimal increases in state aid over the past several years, and their leaders and elected representatives are delighted to be getting a larger piece of the school funding pie.
Gov. Corzine says he’s confident the new formula will withstand a court challenge. If it does, it may have less to do with how fairly and equitably the formula treats all public schoolchildren than with how much the New Jersey Supreme Court has changed over the past 35 years.
It’s hard to imagine the justices who were sitting in 1973 — or 1983, 1993 or even 2003, for that matter — would approve of a funding formula that increases aid to districts like Montgomery and South Brunswick by 20 percent while limiting Newark, Trenton and Camden to 2 percent. Then again, it is hard to imagine progressive former governors like Brendan Byrne and Jim Florio embracing such a plan — yet they did just that, last week, at a Princeton University forum.
It could be that 35 years of trying to reform public school financing in New Jersey has simply left those who’ve served in executive office battle-weary. It shouldn’t take long to find out whether this same fatigue has reached those more recently appointed to the judiciary.
