Lots of OC/OS supporters were among more than 250 hundred people who turned out on Dec. 18 for hearings on a new school funding formula. They gave the NJ Department of Education (NJDOE) an earful and helped slow down the effort to rush a new formula through the state legislature.

The hearings were the public’s first chance to respond directly to the NJDOE’s "Cost of Education" report, which was designed to provide the basis for a new school funding formula. Critics, including state legislators, parents, school board members, child advocates, and educators, repeatedly pointed to flaws in the report’s data and assumptions, and in the process that produced it.

Three sessions were held on the same day, a morning session at Burlington County College and afternoon and evening sessions at Kean University. Commissioner Lucille Davy chaired the hearings, which included remote video feeds from other locations to allow more participants to testify. She heard lots of concerns. (archived webcast of hearings).

"This report was produced in secret, hidden away for almost four years, and now it’s being rushed through an inadequate public review process. This is a terrible foundation for credible reform," said Tina Cintron of the Statewide Education Organizing Committee, a member of OC/OS. "We need to slow this process down and open it up."

"It’s good that the NJDOE is belatedly holding hearings on this old cost study," said Junius Williams of the Abbott Leadership Institute.  "But what we really need is a new one. This is an unprecedented opportunity to get it right for all children of the State of New Jersey. But this study has too many holes and gaps."

"Even a quick look at the report shows the numbers can’t be trusted," said Rosie Grant of the Paterson Education Fund.  "The NJDOE’s estimates are based on cookie-cutter models that bear little to no resemblance to many of our own communities," she continued referring to the models of varying size and populations of children with special needs, including low-income children, English language learners, and children with disabilities.

Others noted that the models drastically understate the number of special needs children in many districts, including the state’s urban Abbott districts. "Some Abbott districts are two and three times the size of the state’s largest district models," Kathleen Witcher of the NAACP-Irvington Branch added. "Even many smaller districts have thousands more special needs children than the models include. The models used by the NJDOE come from Fantasyland, but we live in New Jersey. We need a formula that reflects reality and that protects our most vulnerable children."

 "The difference between the NJDOE model districts and real districts is crucial. Any funding formula based on these models will simply not meet the needs of actual students, schools and districts, especially in urban communities with high concentrations of poor and disadvantaged students," said Jan Jackson of the New Jersey NAACP. OC/OS members said they also shared several other concerns with parents and residents in the suburban districts. These include fear that the models will "dumb down" existing educational programs and force districts to trade off between programs and services for special needs children and their general education peers, pitting parents against districts instead making them partners in educating all children.

Daniel Santo Pietro, Executive Director of the Hispanic Directors Association of NJ, said it was "unfortunate" that the report did not address some key issues, like the cost of preschool and the needs of NJ’s growing population of English language learners. He also stressed the importance of using "school funding reform to improve accountability to get the job done—which is to educate children to meet agreed upon standards."

Maintaining the commitments to equity for poor children embodied in the NJ Supreme Court’s Abbott decisions, and improving implementation of those commitments was a recurring theme. "In just a few short years, we’ve made unprecedented progress in improving education for urban school children through Abbott funding. Over 40,000 children now attend high quality preschool programs, elementary test score gaps have been cut in half, and NJ has the nation’s highest graduation rates for African American and Hispanic students. Much more urgently needs to be done, but these are not small accomplishments," said Jerry Harris of the New Jersey Black Issues Convention. "Any new school funding law must strengthen, not diminish, this effort, while giving disadvantaged students across the state the same educational opportunities."

The groups coming together as Our Children/Our Schools to express their position on school funding are:

Abbott Leadership Institute
Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now  (ACORN)
BlueWaveNJ
Concerned Citizens Coalition
Education Law Center
Hispanic Directors’ Association of New Jersey
New Jersey Black Issues Convention
New Jersey National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NJ-NAACP)
NJ-NAACP Irvington Branch
NJ-NAACP Jersey City Branch
NJ-NAACP of Maplewood and the  Oranges
Paterson Education Fund
Paterson  ACORN
Statewide Education Organizing Committee
Trenton CHANGE  Coalition
Urban League of Hudson County

Other highlights from the public hearings included:

• Serious concerns by the Garden State Coalition of Schools that the proposed base or foundational education cost is far too low, was not determined using real-world inputs and costs, and will cause a "leveling down" of excellence in suburban school districts.
• Objections by the NJ Education Association to the use of "median" salary levels in the NJDOE cost calculation, thereby reducing the proposed foundational education cost well below current districts’ costs, and far below costs in successful suburban districts.
• Substantial questions from NJ Principals and Supervisors Association concerning the validity of the cost study, especially the recent claim by NJDOE that it used "professional judgment panels" in 2003 to determine costs.

Prepared: January 19, 2007

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