Murphy has big plans for education, but can he deliver?

Phil Murphy has promised to invest heavily in education when he takes office as New Jersey's next governor in January, laying out a liberal vision for fully funded schools and pensions and for free tuition at community colleges. He’s also pledged to undo current state testing requirements.

If Murphy’s vision is realized, it will have a significant impact on families, taxpayers, teachers and school districts across the state.

However, critics and policy experts have raised doubts over the large price tag for those promises, and Murphy’s plans to pay for them.

His pledges for school aid and community college tuition would cost an estimated $1.2 billion a year, but the largest piece, funding pension for state workers, would cost far more. The Teachers' Pension and Annuity Fund alone has $34 billion in unfunded liabilities, or future payment obligations.

Though he has offered few specific details about his proposals or his plans for funding them, Murphy has said he'll raise taxes on the wealthy and close tax loopholes to raise money. His proposals so far spare middle class and low-income residents, but many taxpayers are skeptical that he can fulfill his promises without adding to their bills.

"We are all going to be hit and we are going to be hit badly," said George Kneisser, executive director and founder of New Jersey Citizens for Property Tax Reform. "Tell him to start cutting costs. We in New Jersey can no longer afford high salaries, high health care benefits and high pension benefits for public employees."

The path laid out by Murphy, a former Goldman Sachs executive and U.S. ambassador to Germany, marks a break from Gov. Chris Christie, who underfunded schools and pensions and ignored the state’s formula for distributing money to schools, describing it as unfair.

Since 2010, New Jersey under the Christie administration has shorted schools under the state funding formula by more than $9 billion, according to the Education Law Center, an education advocacy organization. State school aid also was not adjusted to reflect enrollment changes until Christie’s last year in office.

Murphy says he will follow the formula established by the School Funding Reform Act of 2008, which also requires that the state shift more money to schools based on their number of high-needs students. The state would need to spend about $1 billion more each year to fully fund schools, according to the state Department of Education. Murphy has said he will fully fund schools “immediately.”

Promises bring hope, worry

During the Christie administration, state aid to districts stayed mostly flat even as some districts saw significant enrollment growth and others grew smaller.

In Clifton, a district where enrollment grew, officials have long complained about rising costs and flat aid. The district, which has an annual budget of around $170 million, has taken on more high-needs students, including English language learners and low-income students, in recent years. It typically receives only about a third of the $75 million in state funding to which it is entitled, according to data from the state Department of Education.

District officials, who say they have been shorted about $450 million in state aid since 2008, hope that will now change.

"It is our hope that we do get appropriately funded," said Tafari Anderson, a member of the Clifton school board. "It would be a huge benefit, not just to the kids in Clifton but also to taxpayers."

Anderson said it had been difficult for Clifton to keep tax increases under the state's 2 percent cap and that the district has laid off staff members as a result. He hopes Murphy will follow through with his plans.

"There’s been a lot of promises made to the public, as far as funding the pension system and all that," said Anderson, a technology coordinator for the public schools in Milltown, in Middlesex County. "The question is where is the money going to come from?"

In Paterson, another growing district, school leaders also hope to see an increase in state aid. Charles Ferrer Sr., a history teacher and local union leader, said he was in "wait-and-see mode."

"I’m going to reserve judgment," he said. "I have to wait until he gets in office and see what he’s going to do. The first 100 days will be very important."

"I'm sure he has a plan he hasn’t shared with everybody," Ferrer added. "I'm just going to sit back like everybody else that supported him. It didn’t get messed up in a day and it won’t get fixed in a day."

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The governor-elect has also said he plans to prop up the underfunded state worker’s pension system, including teachers’ pensions, which is nearly $50 billion in debt.

Murphy told The Asbury Park Press that he would add $650 million to $700 million a year to the state’s payments until the system is fully funded. “I hope we can do it faster,” he said.

At the higher education level, Murphy wants to offer free tuition at community colleges. He first estimated it would cost $400 million a year, but has since lowered that to $200 million based on a study by the Campaign for Free College Tuition.

“We’d have to find the money for that," Murphy said in an interview with The Record. "The good news on that is it’s not as expensive as I thought it was going to be."

Murphy's team did not respond to subsequent requests for comment about the governor-elect's plans for fully funding schools and his stance on charter schools.

Muphy has said he expects the local tax burden to go down as the state picks up a greater share of school funding. School taxes account for about 52 percent of the average New Jersey property tax bill.

But Kneisser, of New Jersey Citizens for Property Tax Reform, said Murphy still has to raise the money somewhere and he does not believe a millionaires' tax will go far enough. He said the state needed to look at cost-cutting measures, such as moving state workers from a public pension system to a private 401(k) plan.

"How is he going to get the money from the state?" he said. "Who is going to fund that formula? The taxpayers. Whether we pay it in property taxes or a different tax, it’s still a tax."

Ronald Merlino, a retired computer specialist, said he pays $16,000 a year in property taxes already, but with Murphy's big promises on transportation infrastructure and education, he worries that his share of the bill is going to go up.

"Somebody has to pay for all this," said Merlino, of North Haledon. "You can't fully fund anything when you don’t have the money."

How he’ll pay

Kim Guadagno, the Republican contender who lost the governor’s race, repeatedly knocked Murphy for failing to detail how he’ll fund his plans.

"Where you getting the money?" Guadagno said when the candidates met for their final debate in October. "Ladies and gentlemen, that $9 billion is coming from your back pocket."

Murphy said he plans to raise about $600 million by raising taxes on millionaires and $300 million from taxes on marijuana, which he hopes will be legalized in New Jersey. Millions more, he said, will come from closing corporate loopholes. The entire package could raise $1.3 billion, according to Murphy — a fraction of what’s needed to fully fund his plans.

John Weingart, associate director of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University, said governors often set ambitious goals during campaigns, and it remains to be seen how Murphy's promises will play out once he takes office.

“He is not going to ... implement everything he talked about in first six months or first 100 days or probably in the first term,” he said. “What he said during the campaign points to a general direction with some specifics of how he would like to govern.

“It’s going to meet the reality of what funding is now available and whether there are ways in which the state can get into better fiscal position.”

Carl Golden, a senior contributing analyst with the William J. Hughes Center for Public Policy at Stockton University, raised doubts about Murphy's agenda in a column on NorthJersey.com on Nov. 3. Murphy, he said, failed to adequately detail how he’d fund the extra investments in education and other plans like infrastructure improvements and pensions.

“Murphy embraced them all while avoiding any discussion of details or how he’d produce the billions of dollars necessary to implement them,” Golden wrote.

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The governor-elect, who received strong union support, also hasn’t agreed to financial reforms, such as a 2 percent cap on interest arbitration awards for police and firefighter salaries, Golden noted.

Erica Jedynak, New Jersey state director of Americans for Prosperity, the conservative political network funded in part by the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, said the state must find a way to pay its pension debt and that there needs to be “real financial work as to how we get there.”

Murphy has to explore ways to raise revenue, whether it’s finding health benefit savings, considering moving funds to 401(k) savings or privatizing roadways, she added.

“Everything needs to be put on the table,” Jedynak said.

“We can debate about the community college proposal, but before that we really have to discuss where the money is going to have to come from,” she said. “Particularly with the pension crisis, every year, we see a crunch around June and we need to do the fiscal work.”

Funding v. teaching reforms

Murphy’s priorities contrast sharply with those of his predecessor, Christie, who has said repeatedly that more funding would not lift struggling schools and claimed schools that had received millions of dollars in extra aid under a court order were still “failing.”

The governor’s mantra was that teaching — not funding — was the key to improving schools, but he clashed with the New Jersey Education Association, the state's largest teacher's union, on how to accomplish that.

Christie rolled out new teacher evaluation systems and tied them to students’ test performances. He also tried to undo teacher seniority rules that led the newest teachers to be laid off first. He called for merit pay and for changes in union contracts to permit longer school days.

Under Christie, New Jersey also adopted new standardized exams by Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC. The tests are given in math and English in grades 3 to 11, but many parents and educators don’t like them and thousands of families have refused to let their children participate. Critics say the tests are too tough, take up too much time and force teachers to narrow their instruction to the tests.

Federal law requires some testing, and Murphy said he plans to replace the current exams with new ones. But there’s been no agreement, or even discussion, on what might take the place of PARCC.

Business leaders and officials in higher education had been among the most vocal supporters of PARCC, saying that students need rigorous testing because too many have been graduating without the skills they needed to succeed in work or college.

The New Jersey Chamber of Commerce, a strong PARCC supporter, declined to comment about Murphy’s plan to overhaul the tests.

Murphy has been less clear about his stances on charter schools, independently-run public schools that grew under Christie’s watch. Critics say charter schools don’t reflect the populations they serve and that they steer money away from regular public schools.

Murphy has said the charter school issue is “complicated” and called for a “time out,” but he has not given a clear indication of whether his administration would allow their continued growth.

Email: adely@northjersey.com