Legislators struggle to find remedies for school funding Wednesday, October 25, 2006 • BY DUNSTAN McNICHOL • Star-Ledger Staff Experts who studied the cost of schooling in New Jersey for four years delivered a dose of sticker shock yesterday to lawmakers trying to come up with a new state aid formula to ease property taxes. They said even with the $7 billion the state currently gives out each year, and another $11 billion raised through local property taxes, more must be spent to cover the cost of providing a basic education. "That's one of the rubs we have," said Assemblyman Herb Conaway (D-Burlington), co-chairman of a special committee charged with proposing a new school funding formula by Nov. 15. "The only way to get increased property tax relief is to spend more." The exact dimensions of the problem lawmakers face were still unclear yesterday, after a 90-minute presentation on school costs from the Department of Education and John Augenblick, a Denver consultant who was paid $130,000 to help determine what a decent education in New Jersey should cost. Augenblick's formula was applied to the 600-plus school districts in New Jersey and concluded the total tab for providing an ade quate education to the school children in New Jersey should be $15.3 billion -- or about $8,000 per stu dent. That compares with the $14.9 billion taxpayers actually spent on their schools in 2004-2005, a number that does not include costs for transportation, pre-school, retirement benefits and other costs. "This is all reflecting what people in New Jersey think is necessary," said Augenblick, who testi fied before the Joint Legislative Committee on School Funding Reform by videoconference from Denver yesterday. But even that overall shortfall does not tell the full tale. A Star-Ledger analysis of the figures Augenblick produced showed New Jersey's 128 wealthiest communities, labeled "I & J" in the state's funding system, are overspending the base budgets by almost $200 million. Meanwhile, hundreds of middle- income districts fell more than $500 million short of raising the amount needed to pay for the teachers and materials local education experts determined are needed for an ade quate education, the analysis showed. How much of that shortfall will be filled, and what mixture of state and local funds will be used to fill it, are the questions lawmakers still must answer as they try to develop a new school aid distribution for mula. "It's one of the big policy questions we have to face," said Conaway. "How do you manage the districts that are both underspending and underachieving?" The goal, they say, is to devise a formula that will deliver state aid to the school districts educating students who need extra resources, regardless of where they live. The Augenblick formula at tempts to define one element of that need by determining how much each school district in the state needs to educate its enrolled students, based on how many of its students are needy, how many re quire special services and a variety of other factors. Yesterday's presentation was the first time state officials had publicly discussed the school cost report, which was produced in 2003. The report's conclusions, up dated with statistics from the 2004-05 school year, were released last week after an advocacy group successfully sued the state to make them public. State officials said it will take them another week or two to deliver lawmakers an updated version of the cost study, using enrollment and expenses from the 2005-06 school year. Once that information is in hand, Conaway said, lawmakers can begin to analyze what lies behind the total spending to determine how much of that tab should be covered with state revenues, versus how much should be raised locally through property taxes in each community. Republicans on the committee questioned whether the level of spending Augenblick's process determined to be "adequate" was reasonable, particularly since the necessary services were selected by professional educators and lobby ists. "It strikes me there is a great deal of elective material that can or cannot be included in that budget," said Sen. Gerald Cardinale (R-Bergen). Dunstan McNichol covers state government issues. He may be reached at (609) 989-0341 or dmcnichol@starledger.com. © 2006 The Star-Ledger. Used by NJ.com with permission.