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NJ Spotlight articles - 1) The List: Which NJ School Districts Spend the Most Money Per Student?...Vocational districts, small schools tend to have the highest expenditures in a big-spending state..., and 2) NJEA Super PAC Spending on Buono, Dems Helps Triple Totals from Past Elections…With its latest media buy, NJEA has shelled out over $6M on top-of-the-ticket, legislative races
NJ Spotlight - The List: Which NJ School Districts Spend the Most Money Per Student?...Vocational districts, small schools tend to have the highest expenditures in a big-spending state
John Mooney | October 21, 2013
New Jersey often ranks at the top of state rankings for how much it spends on public education -- roughly $18,000 per student.
And schools in New Jersey’s own top ranks can lay out as much per pupil as the equivalent of private school tuition.
Still, there's usually a reason for the steep spending.
For instance, any list of New Jersey’s highest-spending schools is always heavy on the very smallest elementary school districts -- especially from the Shore. Crowded with families during the summer, these towns shrink when the fun and sun ends, leaving far fewer families -- and sometimes as few as 100 students -- and schools that still need to be staffed adequately for each grade.
The state’s big-spending lists also always include a few so-called Abbott districts, the high-poverty urban districts targeted under the state Supreme Court’s Abbott v. Burke rulings. These 31 districts have received considerably more state aid to cover the extra costs of serving students from disadvantaged backgrounds.
And the last big group encompasses the state’s vocational districts, once seen a stepchild in the public education system but now home to many of New Jersey’s highest-performing schools.
Following is the Top 10 Spending List, compiled on the most recent data released by the state, based on the 2012-2013 budgetary costs per pupil. These figures cover general fund and operating costs, and do not include pensions paid by the state, and also exclude certain capital and legal costs not uniform among districts.
1. $43,520 -- Avalon
This tiny one-school district has been on the highest-spending lists for years. With just 100 students, it has student-to-teacher ratio under 5:1. A couple of years ago, it merged administration and programs with neighboring Stone Harbor (#2), while keeping local governance.
2. $29,953 -- Stone Harbor
After Hurricane Sandy, Stone Harbor’s lone school was forced to close for repairs, and its 70 students attended Avalon until March.
3. $27,238 -- Asbury Park
Asbury Park schools are often held up by critics as the poster child for what they describe as the excesses of the Abbott v. Burke ruling. It has by far the highest spending of the 31 Abbott districts -- and historically has been one of the lowest performing.
4. $26,927 -- Bergen County Vo-Tech
Vocational school districts are always on these lists, because of their specialized fields of study. The booming expansion of new selective career academies has only added to those costs. Bergen County’s district is among the state’s largest and most extensive vocational districts, with more than 2,000 students. Passaic is the largest, with more than 3,000 students and would have been ranked 15th on this list.
5. $25,590 -- Somerset Vo-Tech
Somerset’s vocational program, with 500 students, is among the state’s smallest. It is also one of the ones that most recently started county-wide “magnets.”
6. $24,529 – Alpine
Alpine is the Avalon of the north, with just 200 students and perennial mention in the highest-spending lists. It is also one of the richest communities in the state, helping to ease the price tag on the tax bill.
7. $23,828 -- Washington Township
The one school in this Burlington County district has just 85 students -- and a student-teacher ratio of 8:1.
8. $22,819 -- Beach Haven Borough
Another Shore town, with just 70 students in its one school, it was also forced to close for repairs after Hurricane Sandy, and students and staff attended Eagleswood until Beach Haven Elementary School was ready to reopen this fall.
9. $22,639 – Hoboken
Another Abbott district, Hoboken’s average teacher salary of $77,000 last year was one of the highest among comparably sized districts.
10. $21,961 -- Long Beach Island
Next-door to Beach Haven, the LBI Consolidated District is the result of a merger of schools in four different communities that have all seen their enrollments shrink. Even so, it still has only 250 students in the K-6 district’s two schools
NJ Spotlight -NJEA Super PAC Spending on Buono, Dems Helps Triple Totals from Past Elections…With its latest media buy, NJEA has shelled out over $6M on top-of-the-ticket, legislative races
John Mooney | October 21, 2013
Its gubernatorial candidate may be on the ropes, but the New Jersey Education Association is not holding back in the upcoming New Jersey election and is already spending triple its previous totals in campaign efforts.
The union’s new super PAC, Garden State Forward, has spent or distributed more than $5 million for the governor and legislative races, according to the state’s Election Law Enforcement Commission.
Since the last reporting, Garden State Forward also wrapped up another television advertising buy of nearly $1 million for Democratic challenger Barbara Buono that brought the total to almost $6 million.
Add to that at least another $630,000 already reported by its long-standing NJEA PAC, and the total nears $7 million. More is to be disclosed in the next report to be released today.
The NJEA’s total election spending in each of the past two statewide elections was a little over $2 million each time.
This doesn’t include the union’s massive lobbying efforts in recent off-election years -- largely to combat Gov. Chris Christie and funding and pension cuts. With those, the NJEA has spent more than $30 million since 2010, double all of its political spending in the previous decade, according to the commission’s reports. An ELEC analysis in August found that NJEA was by far Trenton’s largest political spender between 1999 and 2012.
“Ever since it first registered as a lobbying group in 1964, NJEA has been a major influence in Trenton,” said Jeff Brindle, executive director of the state’s enforcement commission. “But its spending since 2010 has taken the group to a whole new level.”
The difference in this election has been the creation of Garden State Forward, the union’s new political action committee launched this spring in the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizen United ruling that loosened rules on how campaign money could be raised, spent, and reported.
According to ELEC, the NJEA’s super PAC has spent at least $5.16 million to date on the election, including $2.5 million passed directly to the Fund for Jobs, Growth and Security, a Democratic super PAC out of Washington, D.C., targeting a half-dozen legislative races here. The Democratic fund alone has spent $2.6 million in New Jersey legislative races so far, ELEC reported.
The NJEA’s top political director said the union is just trying to keep up with other super PACs created out of Citizen United, including the Christie-backing Committee for Our Children’s Future, which tops the spending list at $8 million this year.
‘We’re not the only ones spending big,” said Ginger Gold Schnitzer, the NJEA’s director of government relations. “There is a lot of crazy money being spent, and anything we’ve done, we’re just trying to keep pace with it.”
With the PAC entirely funded out of dues from the NJEA’s 200,000 members, Schnitzer said the stakes are high for the union, not just in the governor’s race, where they have endorsed Buono, but in the ultimate composition of the Legislature. She cited recent legislative battles over collective bargaining rights and other key union issues in Ohio, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Michigan.
“This election is so important to us,” Schnitzer said. “You just need to look around the country, and you can see why. You can see what happens if we are not actively engaged.”
When asked how much money would go to the governor’s race versus the legislative ones, she declined to give a precise breakdown. She did not hide the fact that Buono is far behind Christie in public opinion polls, but said the NJEA’s support has been aimed to benefit both Buono and key Democratic legislative candidates.
“All of it is intended to help Buono and not hurt her,” she said. “Can’t say about some of the others out there . . . with some [campaigns] talking about how much they have worked with Christie.”
She said Buono remains a priority, but if Christie does prevail, the aim is that he does not bring with him large Republican legislative gains.
“You can’t take for granted that it’s not going to impact down the ticket,” she said of Christie’s frontrunner status. “We have to work all of it this time
