What is incredible is that he now has the audacity to say that urban schools are getting a disproportionate share of school funding:
"The same way that the Abbott decision in New Jersey, which said that we must give 31 failing districts (a) disproportionate amount of the state aid has not solved the problem either," Christie said. "We now give 31 districts in New Jersey, out of 588 school districts, we give 31 districts 70 percent of the aid."
Politifact calls this number "mostly true" - it's actually 60 percent. But it fails to mention that part of that - though admittedly not all of that - is of Christie's own making. And it's a mess for middle-class suburbs that got a real boost from the School Funding Reform Act in 2008 only to see their funding go back down.
Cities SHOULD get a disproportionate amount of state aid. They have big tax base problems - especially because many of their core employers such as universities are not taxable. And unlike in most of the country, cities can't annex surrounding suburban land to increase their tax base (really, this is how most of the country works, though it seems strange to us). And of course they have a disproportionate number of lower-income people due to many suburbs highly exclusionary policies on land use - suburbs like Roseland that took a lot of Newark's jobs but won't let the people who work in those jobs live there.
But working and middle class suburbs, where a growing share of New Jersey poverty is and increasingly struggling with their own tax base problems, should get a significant amount of state aid for education too. Especially when the state is subsidizing developments that take away their tax bases, like Xanadu, which will surely lead to reduced commercial activity in older malls and downtowns in Bergen County.
Christie was wrong to choose millionaires over these suburbs, and the Legislature was right to insist on the restoration of this aid to lower property taxes. That is a fight that should be renewed in 2012. |
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