Lea Kahn and Victoria Hurley-Schubert

By: centraljersey.com
The Princeton Regional School District could pick up nearly $1 million in tuition payments from private schools and colleges in the Princetons if two bills pending in the state Legislature are passed.
Senate Bill S-426 and Assembly Bill A-3463 would require private secondary schools and independent institutions of higher education to reimburse the public school districts for the cost of educating children who live in tax-exempt housing provided by those institutions and who attend the public schools.
If the bills had been in place, PRS would have received $953,680 in reimbursement for the 2010-11 school year for 52 students whose families live in housing provided by the Hun School, the Princeton Theological Seminary and the Institute for Advanced Study. Princeton University does not provide tax-exempt housing.
The reimbursement amount is based on the average per-pupil cost of $18,340. The average per-pupil cost is contained in the financial section of the 2009-10 annual report card on each public school district. The report is prepared by the state Department of Education.
The tuition reimbursement bills have been pending in the state Legislature for more than a decade. State Sen. Shirley K. Turner (D-15th Legislative District) introduced the bill in 2001. State Assemblyman Reed Gusciora (D-15th Legislative District) introduced an early version of his bill in 1998 and re-introduced it in November 2010. The bills, however, are bottled up in the Senate Education Committee and the Assembly Education Committee.
The New Jersey School Boards Association, which represents school districts statewide, is making adoption of the two bills a legislative goal, said Frank Belluscio, the NJSBA director of communications. The NJSBA will strongly support the bills – or similar ones – when they come before the state Senate and state Assembly, he said.
The Delegate Assembly, which is the policy-making arm of the NJSBA, approved a resolution submitted by the Lawrence Township Board of Education that calls on the NJSBA to support such legislation at its semi-annual meeting in November 2010.
"It’s an issue of fairness to the schools," Mr. Belluscio said. A public school district is required to educate all children who live within its boundaries. The money needed to do that is not available to the school districts because of a private school’s or college’s tax-exempt status, he said.
The Princeton Regional School District Board of Education supports the proposed bills, said school board president Rebecca Cox. The result of having students who attend the public schools and who live in tax-exempt housing "puts pressure on all the taxpayers in the borough and the township," she said.
"We really need the extra money. We are trying every which way to take the burden off the taxpayers," Ms. Cox said, adding that it is an equity issue because it means the school district must go to the taxpayers to ask them to contribute more money in property taxes.
But the New Jersey Association of Independent Schools and the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities in New Jersey oppose the proposed legislation. The NJAIS represents 71 private schools and the AICUNJ is the voice of 14 private colleges.
"As the statewide association of independent schools, we recognize that public school districts are experiencing difficult financial times," Carole Everett, the executive director of NJAIS, wrote in an e-mail. "However, unfairly taxing non-profit organizations is not the solution to the fiscal problems faced by New Jersey public schools."
The AICUNJ has not yet been asked to support or oppose the bills, but opposition to the pending legislation "would be based on the dangerous precedent it sets regarding taxing tax-exempt institutions," according to John Wilson, president of the Summit-based group.
"(But) there would be no impact on our member colleges and universities by the passage of these bills because most do not provide faculty housing, and those who do have maintained the properties on the tax rolls," Mr. Wilson added.
The Hun School, the Princeton Theological Seminary and the Institute for Advanced Study each provides housing for faculty that is tax-exempt. The private school and the two institutions do not pay property taxes on faculty housing.
But Princeton University voluntarily keeps all of its non-dormitory housing on the tax roll, which means the university pays full property taxes to Princeton Borough and Princeton Township, the Princeton Regional School District and Mercer County, according to Kristen Appleget, the university’s director of Community and Regional Affairs.
Meanwhile, Ms. Everett, the executive director of the NJAIS, wrote that "taxing charitable institutions such as the Hun School is a counterproductive solution to New Jersey’s economic challenges that seems shortsighted."
She pointed out that the parents of private school students pay property taxes, but those students do not make use of the public schools. This saves taxpayers "millions of dollars" by educating students for whom the state does not have to pay, she added.
"Unlike public schools, boarding schools are required to have the 24-hour presence of adults to ensure the security and well-being of their students, deal with school emergencies and to act ‘in loco parentis’ for students," Ms. Everett wrote.
"Many on-campus faculty residences are also used for other purposes consistent with a school’s mission and non-profit status, including school-related functions and community events," she wrote, adding that "boarding school faculty members do not stop working at 3 p.m."
After classes end for the day, faculty are assigned to supervise students in the dorms, study halls, libraries and dining halls, she wrote. The faculty taken on the roles of counselors, coaches, conductors, directors and mentors to the students.
"Having sufficient staff and administrators on or near campus 24/7 is simply a requirement of operating a boarding school," Ms. Everett wrote. "Unfairly taxing non-profit independent schools would burden boarding schools, increasing substantially the costs of ensuring adequate care and safety of students."