TRENTON – The Senate today approved legislation sponsored by Senate President Steve Sweeney aimed at restoring fairness to the state’s school aid formula by eliminating “growth caps” to provide proper funding to districts with growing enrollments and establishing a seven-year phase-out of  the “adjustment aid” that continues to compensate districts for students they no longer have.

The bill passed 25-13.

Addiego, Bucco, Cardinale, Connors, Holzapfel, Kean, Oroho, O’Scanlon, Pennacchio, Sacco, Singer, Stack and Van Drew voted nay.

The Sweeney legislation, Senate Bill 2, is accompanied by language in the budget bill that will shift $60 million in aid from adjustment aid districts and increase state aid by $65 million more than the $283 million recommended in the Governor’s budget in order to bring the overwhelming majority of underfunded districts to 58% funding.

“Our legislation will ensure that the School Funding Reform Act of 2008 lives up to its promise to provide fair and full funding for all children,” said Senator Sweeney (D-Gloucester). “State aid is supposed to be distributed based on each district’s property tax wealth, its ability to pay, enrollment changes, and the special needs of its schoolchildren. Lifting the growth cap and phasing out adjustment aid ensures that state aid ‘follows the child’ as the SFRA intended.

“But we have to make sure that state aid is not cut to districts that are spending less than the adequacy budget that the SFRA considers necessary to provide a ‘thorough and efficient’ education  because their overall property taxes are so high,” he said. “And we need to ensure that students do not suffer in districts that are receiving more than their fair share of state aid, but are still underfunded because they are paying less than their fair share of property taxes.”

The budget bill includes a five percent reduction in adjustment aid for the upcoming 2018-2019 school year, and the Sweeney legislation calls for additional reductions of eight percent in 2019-2020, then by 10 percent, 14 percent, 18 percent, 21 percent and 24 percent through 2024-2025, when all “hold harmless” funding would be eliminated and these districts would be at 100 percent funding.