The 2007 SFRA legislation created a formula to determine an “Adequacy Budget” for
each local school district necessary to meet the state’s constitutional requirement to provide athorough and efficient education for students attending public school in New Jersey.
Even though T+E is a constitutional requirement for the state, the same legislation made
meeting the Adequacy Budget a shared responsibility of the state and local districts.
Additionally, in an effort to reduce its funding obligations to suburban districts, the legislature created a subset formula based largely on the wealth of the district to determine the amount districts should contribute to the Adequacy Budget. That amount, known as the “Local Fair Share”, is then subtracted from a district’s Adequacy Budget to determine the amount of state aid to be provided. However, since legislation passed in 2010 constrained districts to a 2% percent tax levy increase, which inevitably results in funding in suburban districts significantly below their ever increasing “Local Fair Share”, districts including Toms River, Jackson and Hillsborough have been unable to meet their Adequacy Budget and are trapped in annually spiraling structural deficits that have reached crisis level and could soon result in bankruptcy filings by Toms River and potentially other districts.
If the Adequacy Budget is truly the key to guaranteeing fulfillment of the state’s
constitutional mandate of providing T+E, and if the state wants to maintain the 2% tax levy cap, logic would and the law should dictate that the state provide suburban districts with additional aid to address the structural deficit created by the difference between the district’s “Local Fair Share” and the amount actually able to be raised under the 2% levy cap. To the contrary, the state has taken the position that Adequacy Budgets are not mandatory making the SFRA a sham and a blunt tool utilized by the legislature to over fund less wealthy districts in urban areas, such as Newark, while choking suburban districts like Toms River.
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The New Jersey Supreme Court Abbott line of cases stand for the proposition that as
much per pupil funding must be provided to students in poor urban districts, as is provided for students in more affluent suburban districts. Over time that principle has been perverted by the legislature such that currently $34,000 (Total Pupil Cost) is spent per pupil in Newark, all but $1000 of which is provided in state aid, while $24,000 (Total Pupil Cost) is spent annually per pupil in Toms River, almost all of which from local property taxes.
The state must be compelled to rectify this imbalance and comply with Abbott by
providing sufficient funding so that less wealthy urban district and suburban district per pupil spending is equalized thus complying with the Thorough and Efficient clause and the Equal Benefits clause of the constitution, the latter of which requires that state funds for the support of free public schools “shall be annually appropriated to the support of public schools, and for the equal benefit of all of the people of the State.” If the state does not provide sufficient funding, districts like Toms River Regional will be compelled to file for bankruptcy, cut jobs that directly impact the classroom, e.g. teachers, counselors, and in classroom aids, and slash programs that directly benefit students, e.g. sports, extracurricular, and advanced placement classes.
