Time to redefine school aid equity

Asbury Park Press editorial

The Education Law Center, seemingly dedicated to extracting as much money as possible from suburban districts and pumping it into dysfunctional urban districts, is taking the state to court — again.

This time, it is arguing that Gov. Corzine's revised school funding formula is unconstitutional. The center objects because the formula will provide 20 of the 31 state's poorest districts, formerly known as the Abbotts, with the minimum 2 percent funding increase next year.

The law center filed a brief with the state Supreme Court last week. We doubt it noted that between 2002 and 2007, the Abbotts received average annual aid increases of 6 percent, compared to 1 percent average aid hikes in New Jersey's 585 other districts. And the aid to the Abbotts continued to pour in despite sharp drops in enrollment and ample evidence that much of it was squandered and yielding little in the way of improved academic performance.

The law center continues to ignore the impact its demands for increasingly larger pieces of the school aid pie have on property taxes and the quality of education in non-urban districts. And it also ignores the fact that not all poor or underachieving students reside in the poorest districts — something Corzine's new formula attempts to address.

Remarkably, law center executive director David Sciarra denies that continuing to pour more money into urban districts has an adverse effect on every other district. "There is no evidence that the funding that the urban children are receiving in any way has reduced funding for children elsewhere," Sciarra said.

No? Then how do you explain the huge per-pupil spending gaps, even under Corzine's formula, between former Abbott districts such as Hoboken ($19,363), Asbury Park ($19,102) and Newark ($17,954), and suburban districts such as Toms River Regional ($8,878), Brick ($9,191) and Point Pleasant ($9,308)?

How do you justify having 98 percent of the school spending tab of Camden and 80 percent of the tab for Newark absorbed by the state, while Manchester, one of the least affluent towns in largely middle-class Ocean County, receives just 15 percent from Trenton and Lakewood just 41 percent?

The formula is grossly unfair — for reasons far different from those cited by the law center. It's time for the Supreme Court to tell the law center that it has more than enough money to get the job done. And it's time for the court to recognize which districts' taxpayers and children are being treated unfairly.