Following up on my recent email asking New Jersey residents to support a bill in the legislature that would help charter schools like KIPP: the NYT article below notes that the bill passed two important legislative hurdles on Thursday and will go the floor of both chambers on Monday, but I have since learned that this bill is opposed by Newark Mayor Cory Booker, which surprised me, given his strong support for charter schools.  A friend explains the unusual political dynamics:

Booker's in a tough spot.  The new funding formula is more fair and I'm guessing that Booker supports it philosophically, because what it does is take all the Abbott money that currently goes to just 31 districts and redistributes it to ALL districts that have poor kids - the dollar truly follows the child who needs it. So, just to make up some numbers that are roughly close to the real ones: the Newark public school system (NPS) used to get about $20,000/student, but now every district with poor kids will get $16K/poor student and $10K/non-poor student. Both levels of funding are lower because all that Abbott money is now being distributed over a much larger population.

 

What's good about it is that districts that are 40% free/reduced get funding for their low-income kids now, and this time charters were not excluded. Charters still only get 90%, but now it's 90% of the new numbers (average of $15K or so) rather than 90% of $10K, which charters get now. Charters also still don't get facilities funding, so it's still not

perfect, but it's a LOT better than the system we have now.

 

Booker’s between a rock and a hard place. He has to protest this formula because after the indefinite hold-harmless period (it was originally to be three years), NPS stands to lose $85 million/year out of a $700 million budget. That will be particularly painful for Newark’s new superintendent (who wants a job where you have to cut a huge percentage of the budget right away?), and will mean layoffs, deep program cuts, bigger classes, and Booker will have to raise property taxes again.  It's bad for him and it’s bad for the district.  In Newark, the only people it helps are the kids in the charter schools.

 

Unfortunately, the culprit here is the original Abbott law. It was unfair to poor non-Abbott kids and to charter schools, and it raised the funding expectations of Abbott districts to obscene levels.  NPS should be able to educate kids on $15K/student (it's probably more than that, actually), but when they can't do it on $20K, it's tough to imagine them being successful with less.

 

So this has created really weird bedfellows. Both NJEA (the teachers union) and charters/E3support it. Urban mayors are strongly opposed. Corzine of course is in

support, and so is Senate President Codey. Most Republicans support as so all the non-Abbott districts. Charter schools with no low-income kids oppose.

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Panels Approve New Jersey School Financing Plan

By DAVID W. CHEN

Published: January 4, 2008

www.nytimes.com/2008/01/04/nyregion/04jersey.html

TRENTON — Despite mounting criticism from the mayors of the state’s largest cities, Gov. Jon S. Corzine’s proposal to revamp New Jersey’s formula for financing schools cleared two important legislative hurdles on Thursday.