Most of the Abbotts are Now Underaided

When Steve Fulop of Jersey City spoke in February 2017 against any redistribution of state aid the worst lie he told was:







Wealth should determine state aid, not race, but even if race is your criterion, most of the districts in New Jersey that will lose aid are rural and Jersey Shore districts, who are majority white.

Contrary to Fulop's idiocy, the biggest gainers of aid redistribution are heavily minority.  Bound Brook is underaided by $10,596 per student and is 83% black and Latino.  Freehold Boro is underaided by  $8,484 per student and is 83% black and Latino.  Manchester Regional is underaided by $7,563 per student and is 77% black and Latino, plus many of the students there classified as "white" are Middle Eastern immigrants.  Fairview is underaided by $8,204 per student and is 82% black and Latino.

Fulop's own aid-gaining neighbors, like Bayonne, North Bergen, Kearny, and East Newark are heavily Latino.

And what is Jersey City?  Its schools are only 67% black and Latino.

Perhaps Fulop conflated "Abbott" with "heavily minority," but not all of the Abbotts are heavily minority anyway.   Pemberton is an Abbott and was the second most overaided district in New Jersey for 2016-17, but is 56% white.  Phillipsburg, another overaided Abbott from 2016-17, is 59% white.

Hoboken is technically 44% Latino, but the Latinos of Hoboken are almost never from Spanish-speaking homes and are not as poor as the Latinos of towns like Dover, Red Bank Boro, Belleville etc etc etc.  Many of Union City's Latinos are Cuban who look "white" to me.

Anyway, in 2016-17 only half of the Abbotts were overaided at all, but for 2017-18 only 14 out of 31 are.

Of the fourteen overaided Abbotts three are overaided by less than $1,000 per student (Millville, Burlington City, Salem City).  Hoboken is overaided by $7.5 million, or $2,895 per student (part of which is Interdistrict Choice), but Hoboken's Local Fair Share is $205 million and it can easily make up for the lost state aid.

Vineland is overaided by $10.3 million, or $1,024 per student, but it has $38 million in untapped Local Fair Share too.


The other seventeen Abbott