ELC News - Myth #4: Abbott Districts Get Too Much State Aid

How many times have you heard this one: "Abbott districts serve less than a quarter of the state’s students so they shouldn’t get 50% of all state school aid."

People who toss this myth around seem to think taxpayers should only pay for schools in their own communities. But school funding hasn’t worked that way in New Jersey for decades, nor should it now.

Public education in the Garden State is paid for by a combination of revenue collected from municipal property taxes and from state taxes, especially sales and income taxes. As a result, every taxpayer – urban, suburban, rural -- helps pay for the public school in their hometown, as well as schools in other communities.

And under our State school funding formula, the "local share" of the education budget from property taxes is determined by a district’s property wealth and resident income. The "state share" from state taxes makes up the difference so that all school districts can properly educate their students. As a result, wealthier districts pay more in local property taxes because property values and incomes are so much higher, and receive less in state aid, than poorer districts.

Does this mean residents in more affluent towns pay to educate children in poor communities to the detriment of their own local schools? No! What it means is that school funding in EVERY case comes from both inside and outside the district. Urban residents, like suburban and rural residents, help pay for their local schools. In fact, property tax rates in all of the Abbott districts are higher than the state average, but property values and incomes are too low to generate sufficient resources. And all of us pay sales, income and other state taxes to help pay to educate all students, no matter where they go to school.

So school funding is based on local need and ability to pay. Is this a new approach? Hardly! In fact, this funding method hasn’t changed in 30 years.

Melvin Wyns, a school finance expert and the former Director of the NJ Department of Education’s Office of School Finance, recently analyzed historical data on the levels of state aid provided to poor districts, including the Abbotts. Mr. Wyns concluded:

"In my experience, the poorest districts, mostly Abbott districts, have always received close to half of the state school aid because of the extremes of community wealth and student poverty in New Jersey’s public education system. Recent data confirms the persistence of this hyper-segregation. It is misleading, therefore, to suggest that the state aid to enrollment ratio for Abbott districts represents anything other than an indicator of the longstanding condition of low wealth and extreme concentrated student need in the State’s poorer urban districts."

Bottom line: state school aid is distributed based on a system that was in place long before the Supreme Court’s Abbott mandates. And that system is purposely designed to mitigate the factors of poverty and segregation still so glaringly apparent in our urban centers. It’s called education equity.

And unlike so many other states, school funding in New Jersey has a high degree of equity, which means that we do a good job of providing adequate education funding to students in our high poverty, high minority school districts.

But this myth doesn’t end there. The same people who say wealthier taxpayers "heavily subsidize Abbott districts" also say that because the State funds a higher percentage of the education budget in those districts, the level of State oversight should be greater than in other districts.

This claim ignores the long-settled legal principle that all funding for schools – whether generated from local property or state taxes – is controlled by the State, and that local school districts only exist to enable the State to fulfill its constitutional obligation to provide a thorough and efficient education to all school children. As a result, the State, through the Department of Education, has a responsibility to ensure ALL education dollars in ALL districts are used effectively and efficiently to give students the opportunity to meet the State’s rigorous academic standards.

Consider these myths busted! Abbott and other poor districts do not get "too much" state aid, and the State’s responsibility for the proper use of education funds extends to every school, no matter what mix of state and local revenue supports the education budget.