By Jeffrey Bennett

As Senate President Steve Sweeney and his allies have gotten closer to redistributing state aid from overaided districts to underaided districts, Jersey City has opposed redistribution more strongly than any other district.

Unfortunately, many of the things Jersey City persons have said about state aid are not true.

Mayor Steve Fulop has claimed that redistribution is "clearly an attack on poorer, primarily African American, Latino and minority districts" and any belief that Jersey City has become wealthier "only takes into account the affluent waterfront section of the [Jersey City] and ignores primarily minority portions of the Jersey City that are significantly less well off"

What Fulop refuses to acknowledge is that the money Jersey City will lose will overwhelmingly go to districts who are poor and heavily minority. 19 of Jersey City's fellow Abbotts are underaided by $654 million and the biggest gainers, proportionally, will be low-income, majority-minority non-Abbotts, including Bayonne, Guttenberg, East Newark, and Fairview. Additionally, most of the districts who are going to lose state aid with Jersey City are heavily white rural and Jersey Shore towns.

Fulop also distorts when he says that the formula ignores low-income parts of Jersey City. SFRA calculates Local Fair Share based on property values and income, so the low-income parts of Jersey City already reduce Jersey City's Local Fair Share. Furthermore, from the point of view of tax base, Jersey City is a single entity; even if only a small section of Jersey City were affluent, that section would pay the bulk of Jersey City's property taxes.

Superintendent Marcia Lyles has also been inaccurate about the School Funding Reform Act and Jersey City's budget.

Lyles claimed that, contrary to what reformers say, that Jersey City's schools are in fact "underfunded" because the school district's spending is $99 million below what the SFRA considers Jersey City's "Adequacy Budget." Lyles says that since Jersey City's school system has 20,000 economically disadvantaged students and 4,200 students who are English Language Learners, it is entitled to much higher spending than New Jersey's typical district would need.

However, what Lyles also excludes is that the SFRA already takes demographics into account when it calculates Jersey City's state aid. SFRA is a "weighted formula" that counts at-risk students as equivalent to 1.5-1.7 non-at-risk students, which is one of the country's heaviest weights for at-risk students. So, while Jersey City's K-12 student population is 30,815, its "weighted count" is 46,119.

Lyles also omits that the sole reason Jersey City's schools are below Adequacy is because Jersey City's school taxes are $253 million below its Local Fair Share, so the local tax deficit that is even greater than Jersey City's $151 million 2017-18 state aid surplus. If Jersey City even paid a 1% school tax rate, instead of its ultra-low 0.45, Jersey City's budget would exceed Adequacy.

Furthermore, state aid cannot be determined purely on demographics because tax capacity and student demographics are independent. Many districts who have poorer students have very strong tax bases. In tax base per student, Jersey City's tax base is average.

This isn't to say that Jersey City should have no concerns about redistribution, chiefly with how the tax cap restricts the Jersey City BOE's ability to tap the Jersey City tax base.

Steve Sweeney's proposal has always had a provision to change the tax cap, which we can assume would enable the Jersey City Board of Education to raise taxes to make up for aid losses. Insisting that this provision be implemented for 2018-19 should be a major priority of Jersey City's political class and school activists.

Jeffrey Bennett blogs about education funding and is a resident of South Orange.

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