maybe he is finally listening ....
http://www.northjersey.com/news/state/114532109_Christie_wants_new_formula_for_school_aid.html

The problem is not the lack of money---it is the excess administration in the school districts and the excess number of school districts. To reduce spending we need to cut the number of school districts by 10% every year until we get to a realistic number for our state of 250. That would eliminate 350 superintendenmts plus their administration underlings. Stop collecting additional monmies from parenmts and restructure the system!

But administrative spending is NOT higher in New Jersey than in other states, despite the fact that we have more school districts - that's an important fact. This is from NJSBA: "The latest report from the U.S. Department of Education places New Jersey’s overall spending on central office and school building level administration below that of 42 other states. Compiled by the department’s National Center for Education Statistics, the data show that New Jersey public school districts devote 9.5 percent of their operating budgets to central office and school building administration, compared to a nationwide average of 10.8 percent. At the same time, the state’s spending on instruction and student support services (71.9 percent of total expenditures) is higher than the national average."

It may seem as if fewer school districts would result in lower costs, but that is not born out by the facts. Even if you have a bigger district, you still need administrators in each school building providing oversite and keeping the building running. New Jersey has some of the best schools in the country, and I think that has something to do with the way school districts are tied to communities, NOT to counties - the community has real input into the schools.

Percentages are not a good way to compare from state to state. The best way is per student because NJ spends far more than most states overall on education. And check your statistics again-- NJ does not have the best schools in the nation. We have one of the highest dropout rates in the nation. Go to Irvington, Newark and Camden and tell me that we have the best schools. HAH!

Bernards Township schools with Valerie Goger at the helm have consistently provided an excellent education to our children below the state median cost. I am confident that if there were 'fat' in the budget, Dr. Goger as well as the BOE would eliminate it! I am so tired of the sound bite that a superintendent of schools shouldn't make more than the governor. It is also tiresome to have Governor Christie wags his finger at public school systems when his children have been afforded a parochial school education which is not something all of us can afford. Since the line items in the BTBOE budget are transparent, I don't see Dr. Goger's room and board for her term (as the governor and his family (!) now receive), or her driver (I believe she drives herself), her security detail (!), etc. that our governor currently has the privilege of now and in the future. Adding up all these perqs puts the Governor well over $250,000. As a matter of fact, Dr. Goger realized that belts needed to be tightened, and as an example,Dr. Goger tightened her belt when her new contract was negotiated. Governor Christie: it is time to tighten your own belt. Don't dumb down our (BTBOE) education model to promote your sound bite. In fact, use the BTBOE model as an example (as well as other performing school districts) to put in place for our public schools.

It sounds like all of you are afraid of change. The reality is that we cannot afford to keep raising real estate taxes to fund the schools. People are leaving the state-- Check declining enrollments in even the best school districts. There are fair and safe ways to combine school districts. Let's spend our time doing that not stalemating and trying to prevent any change at all.

Declining enrollments are a demographic trend over the whole nation - the number of children is declining as the baby boomers move into retirement. You can check out one of Bill Draper's wonderful demographic reports at the library - he's our town demographer - and you can see his graphs highlighting national trends. I have never seen any evidence that people are leaving the state, and I've looked for that evidence. In my experience, families want to move into New Jersey because of our great schools, and want to stay in New Jersey because of our wonderful towns.

We have higher property taxes in NJ because we fund our schools primarily though property taxes, unlike other states that use more of the income tax revenue for schools. The total tax impact in NJ, including property taxes, income taxes, and the relatively higher wages we receive in this state, is about average compared to the rest of the country. But I think some people like to point to our high property taxes as an excuse to shortcut our schools.

How about we use Jim O'Neill (superintendent of the Chatham school district)'s idea to allow towns to keep 5% of the income tax they send to Trenton to help fund their schools?

Why is it NJ ers always consider everything else except looking at successfuil states (Maryland, Virginia, etc) and try using some of those ideas to make the schools more efficient. Both Maryland and Virginia schools are organized by county and the real estate taxes are half of what ours are and their schools rate just as high as ours. WAKE UP. THERE MUST BE SIGNIFICANT CHANGES MADE. There is no extra money available at the state level to feed the black holes of the bureaucracies of our local school systems.

Why not look at other states that are doing well such as Maryland and Virginia. Their schools are organized by county which means they have many fewer school districts than we do. Significant changes are needed a 1% cut is not going to do it! There is no extra money in the state dbudget to keep funding the black holes of the local school system bureacracies! WAKE UP!

At least you got my point! I am not advocating for school districts to be more than 5,000 students. Right now the average school district in NJ is about 1,500 students. If we gradually eliminated the smaller school districts there would be efficiencies. Once we have whittled the number down to about 250 school districts as I said 5-10% reduction per year (slowly enough to allow localities to adjust). There would be great efficiencies in eliminating smaller districts not only administrative salaries but building maintenance, overhead costs etc.

I know there are about 600 school districts and yes it is economical to eliminate the smaller school districts. Branchburg is already considering closing one of its elementary schools due to enrollment decline. If they also combined with Somerville to make a school district of about 3,000 students it would save the maintenance and other overhead costs of the district admin offices in addition to salaries, health care plans and pension costs. If we start now in 5 years we will have saved a significant amount of money. The longer we wait the harder this will be.

Of course Tom states that is not logical, MEANWHILE many, many states in the nation subscribe to this way of running school systems and municipal services. Tom, time after time your SHILL commentary reveals who you truly are; An apparent arrogant, uppity, wealthy wasp who has contempt for the working class. I would go as far as saying you are severely prejudice. You and the uber wealthy of this town are a scourge, not a benefactor. You are a progressive liberal who champions a centrally planned economic ideology for those other than yourself. I really wish that the town would take 60% of your gross income (as they do in most CPE's) to fund all the so-called deserved services the residents are entitled to. Then I would bet you'd be singing a different tune out your A**. You're a typical piece of garbage who has disdain for the working class.

SZ you are correct, there is no line item budget reporting required in any schhol district. We have no idea where our money is going. That alone would be a good first step, but the districts would say that they need more employees to do the detailed reporting. And the parents would take up a collection to support whatever they say. It is insane!

Even if you could look at the school budget line by line, you would not necessarily understand exactly how the school district operates. Looking at the detailed budget generally generates more questions than answers - I know this from experience. When I was on the board and was examining the budget every year, I needed to have long conversations with the business administrator and superintendent in order to understand the budget.

There's a very effective and better way to understand how a school districts spends money - it's provided by the state, which takes information from school district budgets and districts and creates the "NJ Comparative Spending Guide" - extremely detailed information on how any district in NJ spends money, and how they compare to other districts. Provides a great overview of Bernards Township's school spending - I highly recommend it. Here's the link: http://www.state.nj.us/education/guide/2010/

I find the current BOE meetings frustrating. The public is invited to ask questions and make comments, but how can we do so intelligently, when all we ever see is very high-level data? Since the BOE is forced to wring every last cent that it can out of the budget, we are at the point where we really need to see the details.

At every board meeting at which I have heard it mentioned, "pay to play" for extracurriculars has received only the most superficial of treatments -- things along the line of 'we have looked at it and decided that we can't ask more of our sports parents.' It was a real eye opener to me when I saw the line item athletic budget and saw the half million dollars paid for coaches, the $300,000 paid for sports transportation, the over $1000 paid for each participant on each team, and all the incredibly outsized teams of up to 120 members. Shouldn't the public see this data? Shouldn't we have had a chance to discuss "pay to play" before we decided to cut science labs and teachers?