Sweeney Responds To Fulop on School Funding Fairness

Provides Explanation on Needed Reforms To Achieve Full Funding for All School Districts

Trenton – Senate President Steve Sweeney sent the attached correspondence to Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop, providing an explanation on the fatal flaws in the state’s school funding law and the reforms needed to provide full funding for all school districts in New Jersey.

“School funding is a complicated issue, which is why we have been working on it in a deliberative and bipartisan basis,” Senator Sweeney wrote as a follow up to the public hearing in Newark last week by the bipartisan Senate Select Committee on School Funding Fairness. “As I promised during the hearing, I am writing to you to correct some of your misunderstandings about the impact of the proposals we have been discussing to bring fairness to the School Funding Reform Act for both schoolchildren and taxpayers across the state.”

Senator Sweeney provided Mayor Fulop with an explanation on the complexities of school funding, the inequities caused by the current distribution practices and the reforms needed to bring fairness and equity to all school districts in New Jersey. He also corrected the mayor’s misunderstanding of the impact of the reforms.

“It is our responsibility as state legislators to fix these inequities by phasing out adjustment aid, properly funding enrollment growth, and by fully, properly, and fairly funding the State portion of the SFRA formula,” Senator Sweeney explained. “Contrary to your assertions at our Senate Select Committee on School Funding Fairness hearing, our proposals will not take away state aid from urban and minority schoolchildren and give it to wealthier suburbs.  In fact, the 31 urban school districts in the Abbott v. Burke litigation – including Newark, Elizabeth, Paterson, Trenton, Camden and your own Jersey City – would gain $365 million in additional state SFRA school aid under our proposal.”

Senator Sweeney pointed out that Jersey City’s schools are underfunded because the city is not paying its local fair share of property taxes under the SFRA formula.

“The SFRA established an equitable formula for determining the ‘local fair share’ that school districts should be paying, and as mayor of Jersey City, you are undoubtedly aware that Jersey City pays just 36 percent of its fair share of school funding – the fifth-lowest percentage in the state,” said Senator Sweeney in the letter.

And Senator Sweeney welcomed Mayor Fulop’s acknowledgement that tax abatements can have a negative impact on school funding.

“I am grateful for your recognition that it is important for the Governor and the Legislature to change the tax abatement laws to ensure that school districts in the future receive their fair share of PILOT payments in proportion to the percentage of property taxes that go to school taxes in each municipality,” Senator Sweeney wrote.