A growing spate of budget deficits at school districts around New Jersey drove Assembly lawmakers to convene a public hearing Thursday at the Statehouse, where advocates blamed all sorts of culprits but united on one big bogeyman: inadequate state funding.
School districts including Hackensack, Montclair, Perth Amboy, East Orange, Jefferson Township, Lakewood, and Toms River have grappled in the past year or so with deficits ranging from $5 million to $100 million. Those budget shortfalls have driven administrators to lay off teachers and school nurses, ax programs, sell property, hike taxes, and make other controversial cuts.
Witnesses who testified over 90 minutes before the Assembly’s education committee attributed deficits to everything ranging from mismanagement by business administrators to lax oversight by school boards and superintendents to rising costs for health insurance, transportation, and special education.
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But they agreed budgets are stretched thin at most of the state’s 600-plus school districts, including the majority that do not have deficits, because the state doesn’t give them enough money to cover everything districts must provide. The current state budget includes about $12 billion in formula aid for schools, which is about 3% more than last year.
“When we don’t get more aid, what are we doing? We’re begging from this pot over here to fill those mandated holes,” said Deborah Cornavaca of teachers union the New Jersey Education Association. “So I implore you, and I plead with you, and I ask for your support that when we tell you, as education stakeholders who see the bottom lines, we need this funding, we need this funding.”
The panel heard horror stories about the impacts of budget gaps, such as one school that cut speech therapy altogether and another school where a student who needed an inhaler during an asthma attack found the nurse’s office empty and locked.
Assemblywoman Verlina Reynolds-Jackson (D-Mercer), the committee’s chair, asked those testifying to offer policy solutions, and witnesses had a few in mind beyond increasing state aid.
Cornavaca urged legislators to contain “unsustainable” hikes in health care premiums for public school employees.
She also called on them to align the state’s and schools’ budgeting timelines. School districts typically must approve their budgets by early March, with county education superintendents and state Department of Education officials signing off on those budgets in April. Legislators don’t pass a state budget until the end of June.
“Public schools are forced to do their budget based on estimated state budget numbers that are not finalized until after the school budget is finalized,” Cornavaca said. “That is a recipe for errors. Not malintent errors, not malicious errors, not careless errors, but simply errors, because what the state may end up doing may not be what you think they’re doing based on the initial notices.”
State auditor David J. Kaschak said he couldn’t recommend policy solutions for districts he’s tasked with auditing. But he told the panel eight financially struggling districts he has audited in the last five years had common problems legislators should consider, including accounting and state aid application errors and lapses that resulted in increased procurement and health benefit costs.
Cornavaca also urged lawmakers to allow districts to set aside surpluses of up to 4%, instead of the 2% surplus cap now in state law.
“While a lot of districts may not have the money to put aside at 4%, what they would be able to do if they had that cushion would be avoid some of the problems that you’re seeing right now,” she said.
Assemblyman Erik Simonsen (R-Cape May) warned such recommendations are pointless if school districts turn a blind eye to incompetent officials whose bad decisions ruin budgets.
“If you’re in that leadership position and you can’t build a surplus and you can’t balance a budget, you shouldn’t be in that job,” Simonsen said. “It’s pretty cut and dry. But until districts start to do that, they’re going to continue to have the same issues.”
Teachers union leaders from Perth Amboy echoed that concern, telling lawmakers that district leaders have blamed past administrations for a $13 million deficit — even though the district’s superintendent has been in place since 2015, and the business administrator, since 2021.
“The poor leadership of this district is putting our children at risk,” said Josiah Santamaria, an American Federation of Teachers representative and an eighth-grade language arts teacher at William C. McGinnis Middle School.
Susan Young, executive director of the New Jersey Association of School Business Officials, bristled at such blame.
“The financial challenges we are discussing today are not the result of poor administration or lack of oversight. They are the result of a misalignment between rising, largely uncontrollable costs and the constraints placed on local decision makers,” Young said. “School business administrators are doing exactly what they are trained to do — advising boards honestly, managing resources responsibly, and implementing difficult decisions they did not create but are required to carry out.”
Worsening budget pressures have fueled growing turnover in the profession, she warned.
“We have reached a crisis,” she said.
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