The Bridgewater-Raritan School District will get only $398,882 from over $268 million that the Federal Government has allocated for the State of New Jersey to save education jobs. That is an infinitesimal one-tenth of one percent of the $268,742,643 from which the state is retaining $6 million in administrative expenses to distribute those funds.
New Jersey’s governor has decided to deal out these federal monies according to the school funding formula currently in effect within New Jersey, thereby applying more pain to suburban school districts. That formula is skewed against the suburbs because, among other factors, it takes into consideration the size a community’s property tax base as a means of supporting that community’s base cost of education.
The state is perpetuating an already existing inequity between New Jersey municipalities because, while employing a controversial formula which uses the property tax base as the main source of school funding for suburban districts, it simultaneously de-emphasizes the use of the property tax base as a source of funding for urban schools.
This mess is a serious funding imbalance which the New Jersey Supreme Court has created, and which the Education Law Center supports through vigorous lobbying (think Abbott Districts).
The result of this re-distribution fiasco is that, as an example, three cities: Newark, Jersey City, and Paterson will get a whopping $50,434,830, or 19% of the $268 million, while the Bridgewater-Raritan School District will settle for a mere one-tenth of one percent of that $268 million.
All that cash from Washington is a welcome gift – if only our school district could have garnered its fair share.
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