NJ education budget cuts: State aid cuts sharp for Bergen, Passaic districts

[no_hypocrisy]

School district officials who had braced themselves for big state aid cuts lamented Wednesday that the actual cuts are deeper than they had feared.

Passaic County will get $64 million less, an 8.5-percent cut.

“It’s certainly worse than anybody anticipated,” said James Montesano, superintendent of Paramus, which lost 99.8 percent of its aid, or $3.5 million. “It’s a wrecking ball pointed at our district.”

“This is beyond disastrous,” said Wayne school trustee Cindy Simon. Her district faces a $6.4 million cut.

Education Commissioner Bret Schundler acknowledged districts “are facing an extremely difficult time financially” due to the state’s budget crisis, but stressed the Christie administration had done its best to shore up education while slashing other areas even more. Overall, total federal and state dollars for districts will drop 7 percent next year.

Statewide, 60 wealthy districts will get no so-called formula aid next year, including 27 in Bergen. Bergen faces the steepest percentage drop in aid of any county.

http://www.northjersey.com/news/NJ_plans_sharp_cuts_to_most_school_districts_.html#

[NJmaverick]

1. The only ones gov christie hasn't hurt is the wealthy

[no_hypocrisy]

2. Directly, no. But note the wealthy districts lost 100% of state funding.

Either they plug the hole via raising property taxes in those districts or cut teachers and/or programs which has the effect of lowering property values. A town's quality of education has been crucial to maintaining how much any piece of property is worth.

[NJmaverick]

5. That was misleading in the sense that most of the wealthy districts received or needed

the state funding. These cuts will raise property taxes and hurt teachers and students. They could have been avoided is the SOB had simply rolled by the Christie Whitman tax cuts for the wealthy (which have hurt the state budgets since they were enacted).

[Fire1]

3. This is a pre-planned agenda across the nation. n/t

[no_hypocrisy]

4. Looks like budget cuts means less money for charter schools in New Jersey.

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2010/03/funding_for_nj_charter_schools.html

[Fire1]

6. Hardly. Not when you've got 'nvestors' like Eli Broad,

Bill Gates and the like.

edit for punctuation.