Despite some of the recent issues facing the Plainfield Public Schools, real economic challenges face the State and school districts across New Jersey in the area of educational funding. These challenges threaten to rock the very core of the educational foundation in many school districts---ultimately, impacting students. Specifically, the State of New Jersey faced a reported $2.3 billion dollar shortfall in this current year.
Governor Christopher Christie, with a simple stroke of a pen, wiped out $476 million in funds set aside by school districts in their school budgets. Many Districts, including Plainfield, depend largely on “rainy day” or surplus funds to close budgets gaps year to year. Last year, over $3 million dollars were used in reserve funds to close the gap in the 2009-2010 school budget.
As a part of the recent action taken by the State, the Plainfield Public Schools has already lost $950,000 from this year’s budget. Another school district lost over $22 million!
Governor Christopher Christie, with a simple stroke of a pen, wiped out $476 million in funds set aside by school districts in their school budgets. Many Districts, including Plainfield, depend largely on “rainy day” or surplus funds to close budgets gaps year to year. Last year, over $3 million dollars were used in reserve funds to close the gap in the 2009-2010 school budget.
As a part of the recent action taken by the State, the Plainfield Public Schools has already lost $950,000 from this year’s budget. Another school district lost over $22 million!
By law, districts must use any surplus funds over 2% to reduce taxes in the second year after the funds have been accumulated. The Governor, by Executive Order, has decided not to pay $476 million in state aid due to districts to support educational programs in the current (2009-10) school year. Instead, the Governor has directed districts to use their reserve, “rainy day” funds to pay for current year expenses, rather than keeping those funds in reserve to build next year's budget. Over 500 districts are affected by the state aid cut and loss of reserve funds.
These districts will not have any reserve funds available next year to cover increased salary, benefits and other costs of necessary educational programs and services. Without these funds, districts will have to address any budget shortfalls through staff and program cuts, by increasing local property taxes, or some combination of both. Although there were many school districts that settled new contracts, several districts, including Plainfield after over a year of negotiations, did not reach an agreement. This becomes even more troubling on the heels of recent news regarding the grim financial picture facing local school districts.
For "high needs" districts such as Plainfield Public Schools and those serving large numbers of poor students and students of color -- the aid cut is especially troubling. Because of their low wealth and high student need, such districts are heavily dependent on state aid to support their educational programs. Also, many such districts were counting on rainy day funds to help maintain teachers, staff and other programs next year. Many such districts might not receive any state aid increase under the state's new funding formula. For middle income and suburban districts, the aid cuts will likely trigger higher property taxes, as districts ask local taxpayers to make up for the loss of the rainy day funds. These districts, however, do not rely heavily on state aid.
Most of the educational funding in Plainfield comes from state aid---not the local property base. Approximately 14% comes from the local taxpayer base in Plainfield. The remaining 86% of funding for Plainfield Public Schools comes from State and federal dollars.
The problems with school budgets next year will be compounded for all districts if the Governor ignores the state's funding formula and does not increase state aid in the FY2111 State budget, or even worse, proposes a cut in state formula aid. The Governor announces his proposed FY11 State budget on March 16.
There have already been recommendations to local school districts to plan for budgeting at 90% of current funding levels. In the Plainfield Public Schools, that could result in budget cuts upwards of $10 million---a reduction never seen in the District. This will be on top of rising health care costs and the need for a new teacher contract that has yet to be settled, despite a year of ongoing negotiations. School districts that were able to settle their contract prior to this economic crisis were able to anticipate and factor in such costs in their decisions to meet the budget challenges.
A school district’s first and foremost obligation is to the education of its students. Although there have been issues that have faced the Plainfield Public Schools in recent months, the fiscal challenges that lay ahead represent real challenges for the school district---and more importantly, to the education of our students.
3 comments:
Can you provide specific examples of areas that will need to be cut? What are the top five PPS priorities? What are the unique challenges facing PPS that other districts dont have?
None of this should affect the students or any effective teachers. We need to streamline our administrative staff. We need to weed out waste and unnecessary perks provided to the administrative staff like Blackberries. We need to investigate and mimic what the successful districts do.
Every year it seems we face a budget crisis. We continuously riff personnel only to bring them back because the positions maybe hard to staff. We have a lot of waste in Plainfield. Hopefully since monies were spent this year on textbooks and other things to remedy the QSAC recommendations, we should not need to allocate additional funds towards those things.
Something is going wrong if the fiscal managament of the district calls for cuts every year. Do we not plan ahead for the cost of inflation, salaries, benefits, heat, electricity, etc.? I find it quite interesting teachers are often riffed, as though buildings can only function with an admin, students and custodians.
Please ensure every nickel and dime is accounted for and has a strong correlation for student needs and achievements before they are sliced and/or removed.
Post a Comment