Districts including U.T., Somers Point, have seen substantial aid declines
TRENTON — A member of the Assembly Education Committee, Assemblyman Erik Simonsen told the panel meeting in Trenton last week that while he prefers to start fresh with a completely new school funding formula, he supports bills to help districts facing state aid cuts more immediately.
For some local districts, state aid has fallen dramatically under the Student Funding Reform Act of 2018.
Since 2016-17, the Upper Township School District has lost $5,986,469 in state aid, down from $10,131,084 to $4,144,615.
According to a presentation by School Business Administrator Laurie Ryan, the district will be spending “under adequacy” following the cuts in aid.
In Somers Point, the district received $5.79 million for 2020 and just $3.3 million for 2023-24. However, last year the state Legislature approved a supplemental funding measure that returned $102 million, or about two-thirds of the $157 million that was cut statewide, to school districts. Somers Point was eligible to get back $728,000 from what had been cut.
This year, the district has lost another $1.4 million and had to make up another $440,000 due to rising costs across the board.
Mainland Regional High School also lost another $1,412,716 this year.
The committee advanced bills extending the deadline for certain districts losing aid to submit school budgets to the state education commissioner (A4059) and restoring two-thirds of a school district’s proposed cuts for this year through a grant program (A4161). Simonsen is a cosponsor of the bills.
“As an educator for over three decades and an administrator in a school district that is facing budget cuts yet again, I have witnessed firsthand how the failed school funding formula has picked winners and losers for the last seven years,” said Simonsen, R-Cape May, Cumberland, Atlantic. “A new funding formula that fairly supports our schools, teachers and students is what I want going forward, but at this point we have to survive and help these school districts hit hard weather the S2 storm a little longer.”
S2, enacted in 2018, dictates how public school aid is distributed and creates unpredictable cuts for so-called “overfunded” school districts.
“A dozen of the districts that I represent in Atlantic and Cape May counties are being cut and it’s even more if you factor in the one-time stabilization aid the Legislature provided last year. The bills we heard today are Band-Aids. We need to work together to replace S2 and properly fund schools as Republican leader John DiMaio has proposed,” Simonsen said.
DiMaio’s “Fully Funding Schools and Cutting Property Taxes Act” (A1125) would fund schools up to their adequacy budget and require property tax cuts equal to the increase in state aid.
The adequacy budget is the minimum amount necessary under the school funding formula to provide a constitutionally mandated thorough and efficient education. It is calculated by adding how much a district should be able to afford and state equalization aid — the current state target for school funding.
“Taxpayers are being burdened by increasing property taxes to make up for cuts to state aid when our income taxes should be providing all the funding schools need to operate. There needs to be a seismic shift in how we approach school funding to save the future of our public-school systems,” Simonsen said.
Currently, New Jersey’s formula measures each school district’s wealth by property value, not income. As a result, New Jerseyans are being taxed as if they were nearly 2.5 times wealthier. Despite the 2 percent property tax levy cap, the average property tax bill rose by 3.3 percent last year to $9,803.
Under the Republican plan, state aid to each district would increase by $3.9 million this year and the average property tax cut would be more than $870.
“We’ve learned a lot over the last several years and understand what changes need to be made. Our kids and their education are of the utmost importance. It’s time to regroup and fix school funding for good,” Simonsen said.