Starting School Funding Cuts at the Top

Education funding ALWAYS generates interest. For many years, it was the funding percentage increase that schools would receive. In recent times, the focus has switched to cuts and trying to minimize the dollar reductions.

In New Jersey, cost cutting governor Chris Christie has state budget woes and education tied together. His target, however, is superintendents’ pay. Not only are there 591 school districts in the Garden State (that’s a ridiculous number), but apparently bidding wars contribute to driving up salaries. While the governor makes a tidy $175,000 a year, that salary is exceeded by 253 of the school leaders.

The solution (one that does not require any legislative or regulatory steps): superintendents will be paid on a sliding scale — the smaller the district, the smaller the salary. It was reported that 366 of the current 591 would be getting pay cuts. In addition, state government will negotiate the pay for the leaders of the 16 largest districts. There would also be caps for assistant superintendents and business administrators.

Christie’ s response when asked about the possibility of superintendents leaving the state: "If that’s the sole reason they’re here, then goodbye."

It just might be that Christie sees too much red tape to reducing the number of school districts (New Jersey also has tried unsuccessfully to eliminate townships), so this is a money-saving alternative.

Jersey Devil is in Details Over Property Tax/School Formula

New Jersey has an interesting predicament. It needs to dissolve some school districts because they, you know, don’t actually have any students. However, some residents are up in arms because doing away with the districts would boost their property taxes. Alan Greenblatt of Governing writes:

New Jersey has just 21 counties, but it has more than 600 school districts. Although merging small districts is a problem everywhere, New Jersey’s system is so out of whack that it borders on comedy. This year, the state took what it thought was an easy first step: closing districts that don’t actually operate any schools. But even that has proven to be controversial.

Several other states allow what are known as “non-operating districts.” These have school boards and part-time staffers who take care of paperwork—largely writing checks to a neighboring district for educating the kids they send over. But they have no students and no schools. “This was a prime target to go after,” says Lucille Davy, the state education commissioner. “Clearly, it’s not efficient to have a whole system in place, with employees who are not educating any children.”

But when the state moved in July to shut down half of its 26 non-operating districts, it ran into surprising resistance. Residents of those districts groused that their property taxes would shoot up because the funding formula would switch from a per-pupil calculation to one based on home values. “When you look at the individual situations,” says Frank Belluscio, spokesman for the state school board association, “you realize that most of these arrangements are in place because it was cheaper to send their students to another district.”

The state is allowing the non-operating districts to phase in tax increases over a multi-year period. State Representative John Burzichelli, a sponsor of the legislation that led to the closures, says that the increased bite these communities are now facing reflects the fact that they have been enjoying a tax haven. Writing a check to cover an individual pupil’s education didn’t reflect the neighboring district’s full costs, including its administrative burdens. As taxes rise within the shuttered districts, they should go down by a concomitant amount within the districts that actually hold classes. And the costs of staff and paperwork in the closed districts go away.