This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Schools

Budget Review: School Aid, Pricey Consultants Are Scrutinized

Despite prodding, Sarlo doesn't expect changes in education budget.

The Christie administration’s education budget was first up for the Democrat-controlled legislature’s review yesterday, facing a barrage of questions from the fairness of its funding for local schools to the high-priced consultants hired inside the state department itself.

The target of the mostly polite questioning was acting education commissioner Chris Cerf, who with his top staff, sat through more than four hours of inquiry from the Senate budget committee about his decisions and policies on a broad range of topics, not all of them budget related.

Through it all, Sen. Paul Sarlo (D-Bergen), the committee’s chairman, said it was unlikely much will change in the final budget. It nevertheless led to some political theater.    

Find out what's happening in East Brunswickwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Exhibit A was Christie’s much-vaunted proposal for a $213 million increase in state aid to local districts, a centerpiece of the Republican governor’s budget message. But it received a cool welcome from Democrats and even a few Republicans.

Sarlo immediately questioned the administration’s math that claimed it was a record-high amount of aid to local districts.

Find out what's happening in East Brunswickwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Instead, Sarlo pointed to analysis of the legislature’s non-partisan Office of Legislative Services that the funding still left a majority of districts short of their aid from before Gov. Chris Christie took office two years ago.

Cerf responded that the aid in 2010 included more than $1 billion in federal stimulus money that wasn’t available to Christie. But Sarlo persisted that a vast majority of districts are still short.

“Sitting in a district as a superintendent today, they are still 90 percent of where they were in 2009-2010,” the senator said.

He and others also questioned the arcane changes the administration is making in the School Funding Reform Act, the funding formula enacted by former Gov. Jon Corzine and still being followed under Christie’s new budget

With Cerf the architect of the changes, Christie seeks to slightly reduce some of the funding in the formula for specifically schools with the highest needs students. One change would alter how school districts count students for funding purposes, a move that some said will also disproportionately hit high-need districts where enrollment is unstable.

Cerf defended the changes as mostly minor, but was also adamant that additional funding for some of the state’s most troubled districts is no longer the answer. He cited Camden schools, which spend more than $50 million above what the formula deems as adequate but still has many of the lowest performing schools in the state.

Instead of the money, Cerf said, “have we done everything in our power to ensure a qualified teacher in the classroom? I seriously doubt that.”

At another point, he was disdainful of providing additional aid to districts that continue to lag. “I am pretty sure if we sent more money to certain districts, we wouldn’t get any different results,” Cerf said.

The questioning came from Republicans, too, some whose constituents have seen steep declines in their state aid. Some of the toughest hit have been in Sussex and Warren counties, where dropping enrollments have cost the schools millions in state aid under Christie’s plan. Cost of living adjustments in those districts also have reduced their aid, infuriating state Sen. Steven Oroho (R-Sussex) who saw 14 of 25 districts see aid cuts.

“That is one part of the formula that is significantly unfair, particularly in rural areas,” he said.

The questions ranged the gamut beyond the budget, some of them on charter schools and the administration’s delicate dance between promoting them and monitoring them.

One piece of news was Cerf’s stated indecision about online charter schools. The state is seriously lagging in providing online education, but Cerf conceded the laws and regulations have yet to catch up.

Two virtual charter schools – one in Newark, the other in Monmouth County – have received preliminarily approval but not their final charters for next year.

“I am in the process of evaluating the laws and regulations,” Cerf said. “I cannot say that definitively they will open. They propose a number of interesting questions.”

Continue reading this story in NJ Spotlight.

NJ Spotlight is an online news service providing insight and information on issues critical to New Jersey.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?