TRENTON — The New Jersey Department of Education is expected to adopt revisions to the Interdistrict Public School Choice program in August.
An NJDOE report from the Division of Field Support and Services, published Jan. 17, 2024, provides an overview of the School Choice program and some changes that are being considered.
According to the report, in fiscal year 2024 there are 125 operating Choice districts with 5,174 Choice students, representing about 0.4 percent of public school students in the state. The districts are in all counties except Essex and Middlesex.
The program cost $59.9 million in the state budget in fiscal 2024.
Ocean City, one of the three largest Choice districts in New Jersey in terms of number of students accepted, received $2,938,906 for the 2023-24 school year. That is almost 5 percent of the total Choice aid in the state budget.
Due to limited funding in the budget, the report notes, the number of Choice districts and enrollment of Choice students have been virtually flat since fiscal 2015. Ocean City has averaged just more than $2.7 million a year in Choice aid over the past 10 years.
The state pays a Choice students’ tuition to the receiving district and that district counts those students in the calculation of state formula aid. Districts that send choice students keep the tax levy for students who have left the district.
That means the receiving district, such as Ocean City, gets both the Choice aid and state formula aid for those students. (Transportation aid stays with the sending district.) Sending districts lose those students for their own state aid calculations.
Ocean City’s state aid has grown from $1.08 million 10 years ago to $1.59 million in the 2023-24 school year, in part based on the student body enhanced by Choice students. Other local school districts have consistently received less and less regular state aid because of declining enrollments.
A proposed amendment in the program would allow school boards in sending districts to limit the number of students participating in Choice to 10 percent of their students per grade level and 15 percent of their student body.
Background: the program was originally established in October 1999 as a five-year pilot by the state Board of Education. The Interdistrict Public School Choice program Act followed in 2000. The act expired in 2005. Rules were readopted in 2004 and 2009. The act was amended in 2010 to expand it to additional school districts. It has been reauthorized in five-year increments.
– By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff