NEWARK, NJ - Newark Public Schools would get nearly $24.7 million more in state aid for the 2019-2020 school year under a new proposal from Gov. Phil Murphy.

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The increase is part of the state School Funding Reform Act that passed last year and devised a new funding formula for districts over the next seven years. The legislation redistributes aid from overfunded districts to districts that have been deemed underfunded.

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That means Newark could see an increase of about 3 percent in aid for a total of $812,391,624 in the upcoming fiscal year. Last year, Newark saw a 5 percent increase of about $37.5 million.

Murphy announced his school aid proposal at a press conference in West Orange. His proposal would increase K-12 aid by $206 million for a total of $15.4 billion.

“We’ve made a commitment to education, and that is reflected in the historic levels of state aid to schools in our proposed spending plan,” Murphy said in a statement. “When you make that kind of commitment to education, you see the results. The results we celebrate today are the graduation rates, which are improving to even higher levels.”

The governor also spotlighted an all-time high in the state's overall graduation rate of nearly 91 percent for 2018. However, Newark's four-year graduation rate dropped from 78.48 percent in 2017 to 75.69 percent in 2018, according to state data.

“The additional resources for education are a much-needed investment in our future and will help prepare our students to become our next generation of leaders,” said Essex County Executive Joe DiVincenzo in a statement.





Murphy's proposal is part of his budget plan for the next fiscal year. That budget still needs to be approved by the state legislature.

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