By Charles W. Kim, Managing Editor
TRENTON — Education advocates from the Save Our Schools organization want Gov. Chris Christie to pony up some $3.6 billion in state funding they claim are due districts.
A group of 20 people representing the grassroots organization, school officials and several legislators representing 15 communities gathered at the Statehouse on March 8 to ask Gov. Christie to restore funding to schools based on the state’s formula.
Using figures compiled by the Education Law Center, the organization claims the state has under-funded schools in the state to the tune of $3.6 billion since 2010.
”Why is the state continuing to shortchange the schools?” SOS organizer Julia Sass-Rubin of Princeton said Monday. “Instead of a tax cut, why don’t they give (the money) to the schools?”
According to the group, the state has not lived up to its obligation to pay for education in accordance with a funding formula enacted during the Jon Corzine administration and upheld by the courts as an alternative to prior “Abbott” district funding, which provided up to 90 percent of educational costs in the state’s 21 poorest districts.
Under the newer formula, however, the state has not paid the full amount since 2010 and would under-fund almost 90 percent of districts in the state, according to the organization.
”New Jersey has a school funding formula, which distributes state aid based on the needs of individual children, wherever they live,” Ms. Rubin said. “The proposed 2013 state budget would under-fund that formula for the fourth year in a row. Under-funding our schools not only shortchanges our children’s future, it also places an increased burden on local communities in the form of higher property taxes and fees.”
The group claims the state did not contribute $476 million in 2010, $1.6 billion in 2011 and $855 million this year and is projected to fall another $715 million short in the proposed 2013 budget.
Locally, South Brunswick is owed $38 million for those years, according to the law center’s figures.
Monmouth Junction Elementary School parent Lisa Grieco-Rodgers said her district’s $28 million shortfall in state aid had resulted in “three consecutive years of double digit staff reductions, totaling more than 170 teachers and other staff members.”
The proposed FY 2013 budget would continue the trend and under-fund the district by an additional $10 million.
”If we stay on this course, we have the makings of a perfect storm,” Ms. Grieco-Rodgers said, “jeopardizing the Blue Ribbon status of South Brunswick schools.”
Kevin Roberts, spokesman for Gov. Christie, said the governor is funding the schools this year at the highest rate of any governor in history with $8.8 of the proposed $32.1 billion budget going to education.
”No other governor has funded schools at this level,” Mr. Roberts said Tuesday. “It is part of a change Gov. Christie is trying to make to bring the state up to full funding in five years.”
Mr. Roberts said there is quite a bit of misinformation regarding the governor’s plans on education circulating. He said the governor added $250 million in education funding in his proposed 2013 budget compared to this year’s appropriation.
That increase brought $1.7 million more to South Brunswick this year, according to district officials.
According to Mr. Roberts, the plan is to weed out any fraud and use more accurate enrollment figures to determine what the state should pay each district.
SOS members, however, said they feel the plan would end up hurting some districts more and actually would reduce funding permanently for children who do not speak English or have reduced and free lunch.
According to the group, schools like Camden would permanently lose $27 million a year, Princeton would lose an estimated $1 million a year, and South Brunswick could lose $3 million.
Mary Shaughnessy, president of the Bloomfield Board of Education, said her district’s free and reduced lunch population had increased by 45 percent during the last decade.
The proposed reduction in aid for this group of students would translate into a $2.6 million permanent funding cut for the district, according to Ms. Shaughnessy.
Ms. Shaughnessy said this would be particularly damaging since the district faces a state-funding deficit of almost $26 million since 2010.
Mr. Roberts, however, said the reforms in calculating enrollment would be more fair than the current system and allow the money to “follow the kids” more closely.

