N.J. education chief defends school funding law as fair

State Education Commissioner Lucille Davy said yesterday a reform-minded school funding law passed last year is constitutional and will do a better job of educating the state's poorest children.

Testifying as the first witness in a high-stakes hearing in Hackensack, Davy painstakingly detailed the steps her department went through to determine a fair way of making sure state aid gets to poor children wherever they might live.

But to protesters outside the Bergen County Courthouse and to lawyers inside representing the poorest school systems, all the talk of complex formulas boils down to one thing: the possibility that funding to Newark, Camden and the 29 other impoverished school districts in New Jersey will be cut.

"What I see Ms. Davy trying to do is deprive us of the money we need to educate our kids," said Willie Rowe, a Newark native who voiced concerns about his grandson, a seventh-grader in the city's public school system. "If you listen to her, we have all the resources in the world, but last year ... my grandson's class ... had a math substitute for six weeks who wasn't teaching to state standards."

Rowe's point gets to the heart of what's at stake in the marathon fact-finding hearing ordered by the state Supreme Court in November. The hearing is expected to last three weeks.

Davy testified that the formula -- spelled out in the School Funding Reform Act of 2008 -- will provide enough money for the poorest districts and also help districts struggling with increasing numbers of disadvantaged and immigrant students.

The dispute stems from a quarter-century of Supreme Court rulings in the Abbott vs. Burke case. The court has progressively increased supplemental funding to the so-called Abbott districts and their 300,000 children, ordering state-funded full-day kindergarten and preschool, the repair or replacement of hundreds of crumbling buildings and enough operating cash to match the wealthiest communities.

Gov. Jon Corzine's administration convinced lawmakers to go another way, abandoning the Abbott distinction and, instead, devising a formula that distributes aid based on the number of children in a particular district -- with bonuses for "at-risk" children who are poor, can't speak English well or have other special needs. The state gave a small increase to Abbott districts, which will now receive $4.1 billion of the total $7.8 billion in aid distributed statewide.

But groups like the Education Law Center in Newark are concerned the formula won't provide what the poorest districts need in coming years. They and others argue the new formula will actually lead to reduced funding for some poor districts.

"The main concern is the very important protections of Abbott for equitable funding, for supplemental funding will be gone," said Stan Karp, a program director at the law center.

The state Supreme Court ruled in November it didn't have enough facts to determine the constitutionality of Corzine's reform plan, asking Superior Court Judge Peter Doyne to oversee the hearing and report back.

Doyne, the assignment judge in Bergen County, appeared somewhat sympathetic yesterday to the concerns about supplemental funding, pressing Davy on what would happen to Abbott children during the three years the state expects it will take to review and adjust the formula.

For her part, Davy conceded great challenges for the Abbott districts -- everything from needing to compensate teachers with "combat pay" to entice them into classrooms to additional reading specialists for lagging students. But she also hinted at an inherent mistrust by state bureaucrats of district requests for additional funding.

"It's human nature," she said. "When something is available, it's, 'Let me take my shot at this,' especially given the fiscal situation now."

A letter released yesterday by Newark Superintendent Clifford Janey, however, gives a hint of how much the districts are struggling. The letter denied rumors the district plans to close 11 schools, but he said some consolidation may be needed to fill a $40 million budget shortfall.

Richard Snyder, who represents 40 wealthier, high-performing districts in a group called Dollar$ & Sense, said his members have their own concerns with the funding formula. He said the new formula will force them to spend less than they deem appropriate to provide the best education.

"The state wants to resolve its funding problems by having the suburban districts dumb down their programs," said Snyder, a board of education member in Ramsey, Bergen County.