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| Christie underfunded SFRA by almost $15 billion, not $9 billion as the NJEA and ELC always say. |
Speaking in January 2017 NJEA vice president Marie Blistan said:
NJEA Vice President Marie Blistan today called on members of the Joint Committee on Public Schools to commit to fully funding the state’s existing school funding formula, known as SFRA. She pointed out that since 2010, SFRA has been underfunded by approximately $1 billion per year by the Christie Administration. As a result, school funding across the state has been distorted, leading to what she called “gross inequities” among districts.Writing in March 2017 NJEA president Wendell Steinhauer wrote:
"Now the same governor who robbed public schools of $8 billion over seven years wants to move at break-neck speed to blow up SFRA, which is New Jersey's best hope for restoring fairness and adequacy to school funding." [my emphasis]
The Education Law Center, which has an aura of scholarship than the NJEA lacks, perpetuates this myth as well.
In May 2016 the Education Law Center claimed "Governor Christie has shortchanged districts through a combination of state aid cuts and flat funding over six years. The level of SFRA underfunding in the current school year is $1 billion." [my emphasis]
The ELC has also disseminated The $1 billion per year deficit with graphics took. See below.
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| Source: http://www.edlawcenter.org/research/school-funding-data.html |
Phil Murphy, who is not known for pulling punches against Christie, has used the $8-$9 billion numbers too.
This governor [Christie] has underfunded by over $8 billion. It’ll be over $9 billion by the time he he leaves. Let’s fund the formula. (see minute 4:18)
Susan Cauldwell of the anti-redistribution group SOS-NJ has also repeated the $8 billion number:
"since this Governor took office, New Jersey's public schools have been shortchanged by $8 billion dollars."
YET $9 BILLION IS WRONG. THE REAL DEFICIT FOR CHRISTIE'S EIGHT BUDGETS WAS ALMOST $15 BILLION.*
The claim that Christie only underfunded SFRA by a cumulative $8-$9 billion is based on SFRA's deficit relative to Capped Aid and that isn't the real deficit since Capped Aid is an artificial, arbitrary 10% or 20% increase on what an underaided district already gets.
As the SFRA statute says:
d. For the purposes of this section, “State aid growth limit” means 10% in the case of a district spending above adequacy and 20% in the case of a district spending below adequacy.Even if a district gets under a fifth of its recommended state aid, Capped Aid is still a 10% or 20% increase on what it already got. (So SFRA would bring a district funded at 20% up to 24%)
Since the Education Law Center and NJEA oppose redistributing Adjustment Aid, they minimize the true deficit in order to conceal from the public the impossibility of full funding without redistribution.
Just to give some examples of the gaps between the Capped Aid target and what SFRA actually says these districts need:
- Clifton's Capped Aid is $36,064,992, its Uncapped Aid is $74,093,370
- Woodbridge's Capped Aid is $34,797,211, its Uncapped Aid is $81,363,623
- Edison's Capped Aid is $18,590,429, its Uncapped Aid is $45,921,546
- West Orange's Capped Aid is $9,522,169, its Uncapped Aid is $26,124,668
- Kingsway's Capped Aid is $11,518,972, its Uncapped Aid is $20,222,609
- Plainfield's Capped Aid is $149,560,172, its Uncapped Aid is $179,338,042
- Egg Harbor Township's Capped Aid is $50,206,010, its Uncapped Aid is $72,674,342.
- Belleville's Capped Aid is $32,383,816, its Uncapped Aid is $47,434,533
- Bloomfield's Capped Aid is $27,624,372, its Uncapped Aid is $49,910,867
- Dover's Capped Aid is $31,087,078, its Uncapped Aid is $43,325,959
- Freehold Boro's Capped Aid is $12,839,774, its Uncapped Aid is $23,900,977
- Red Bank Boro's Capped Aid is $4,284,067, its Uncapped Aid is $9,546,929
- Chesterfield's Capped Aid is $985,426, its Uncapped Aid is $4,144,448
Now, after an OPRA request I have gotten the full Actual Aid versus Uncapped Aid numbers for the whole SFRA era. As usual, I've put the data online. 2008-09 (deficits only), 2008-09 (surpluses only), and 2009-10 to 2017-18 (with surpluses and deficits). The 2009-10 to 2017-18 data is broken out in several ways you may find useful.
As you can see, there is a steady trend of an increasing deficit since SFRA's inception in 2008-09, but SFRA was substantially underaided in the Corzine era, when the deficit actually was (coincidentally) the $1 billion that the NJEA and Education Law Center claim it is now, up to nearly $2 billion in 2017-18.
The $1.07 billion deficit for 2008-09 would be $1.22 billion in 2018 dollars.
Corzine actually did statutorily follow SFRA in 2008-09, but in 2009-10 he only allowed 171 underaided and under-Adequacy districts to receive aid increases and then capped those increases at 5%. Corzine's 2009-10 budget also benefited from one-shot federal stimulus money.
The trend of increasing deficits in SFRA is just history repeating itself, since CEIFA had a trend of increasing deficits which reached an (estimated) $1.336 billion in 2007-08.
The $1.07 billion deficit for 2008-09 would be $1.22 billion in 2018 dollars.
Corzine actually did statutorily follow SFRA in 2008-09, but in 2009-10 he only allowed 171 underaided and under-Adequacy districts to receive aid increases and then capped those increases at 5%. Corzine's 2009-10 budget also benefited from one-shot federal stimulus money.
The trend of increasing deficits in SFRA is just history repeating itself, since CEIFA had a trend of increasing deficits which reached an (estimated) $1.336 billion in 2007-08.
The history of Adjustment Aid is more complex and I cannot trace every factor at work.
In 2008-09 Adjustment Aid was a massive $850.6 million aid stream for 250 districts, an amount that would be $918 million in 2018 dollars.
Adjustment Aid decreased slightly in 2009-10 under Corzine before crashing by $290 million in 2010-11 when Christie cut state aid across-the-board by an amount that was equivalent to 4.9% of (almost) every district's budget.
Adjustment Aid decreased slightly in 2009-10 under Corzine before crashing by $290 million in 2010-11 when Christie cut state aid across-the-board by an amount that was equivalent to 4.9% of (almost) every district's budget.
Adjustment Aid increased again after the Abbott XXI decision (18 of the Abbotts were already overaided in 2010-11) and Christie's gradual increase in state aid to non-Abbotts before shrinking again as Christie redistributed Adjustment Aid for 2012-13.
Let's Use Real Deficit Numbers
The Education Law Center knows how SFRA operates and knows what Uncapped Aid is. Before pressure mounted to redistribute Adjustment Aid, the ELC produced charts showing state aid deficits and surpluses against Uncapped Aid.
However, now that there is a vocal movement calling for the redistribution of Adjustment Aid, the Education Law Center and NJEA have switched tack to diminish SFRA's deficit in order to make full funding look budgetarily possible without redistribution, even claiming that Phil Murphy's $284 million increase for 2018-19 is the first step towards "full funding."
I strongly oppose the Education Law Center and NJEA's stances against redistribution, but what bothers me the most is their misrepresentation of what SFRA's authentic deficit even is.
It is narrowly accurate to refer to the $1 billion a year deficit as the "statutory deficit," but the Education Law Center and NJEA do not add any such qualification and hence, they say Christie only underfunded SFRA by about $1 billion a year, or $9 billion cumulatively.
The Education Law Center has never been about budgetary realism. It has not purported to have any method to pay for its ambitions since the early 1990s before it allied with the NJEA.
Now that the Education Law Center has completely given up on suggesting any way to pay for its preferred policies it has decided to deny the real cost of what those ambitions even are.
In what must cause the Education Law Center and NJEA much consternation, awareness of SFRA's real deficit is coming out, like this April 2018 piece on NJSpotlight.
While the ultimate goal of the state aid reform movement is fair funding, getting there requires transparency on Uncapped Aid deficits. Let's fight to guarantee that too.
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| Note, my data for 2008-09 is more limited than my data for the other years of SFRA. I suspect that there were districts who were 100% funded that year, but I cannot be sure of that number, hence I am not 100% sure of the number of underaided districts. |
Let's Use Real Deficit Numbers
The Education Law Center knows how SFRA operates and knows what Uncapped Aid is. Before pressure mounted to redistribute Adjustment Aid, the ELC produced charts showing state aid deficits and surpluses against Uncapped Aid.
However, now that there is a vocal movement calling for the redistribution of Adjustment Aid, the Education Law Center and NJEA have switched tack to diminish SFRA's deficit in order to make full funding look budgetarily possible without redistribution, even claiming that Phil Murphy's $284 million increase for 2018-19 is the first step towards "full funding."
Governor Phil Murphy’s proposed education budget for FY19 is the first in eight years to distribute state aid according to the School Funding Reform Act (SFRA), New Jersey’s weighted student funding formula enacted in 2008. The Governor’s proposal also puts the state on a path towards full funding for all school districts in four years.
I strongly oppose the Education Law Center and NJEA's stances against redistribution, but what bothers me the most is their misrepresentation of what SFRA's authentic deficit even is.
It is narrowly accurate to refer to the $1 billion a year deficit as the "statutory deficit," but the Education Law Center and NJEA do not add any such qualification and hence, they say Christie only underfunded SFRA by about $1 billion a year, or $9 billion cumulatively.
The Education Law Center has never been about budgetary realism. It has not purported to have any method to pay for its ambitions since the early 1990s before it allied with the NJEA.
Now that the Education Law Center has completely given up on suggesting any way to pay for its preferred policies it has decided to deny the real cost of what those ambitions even are.
In what must cause the Education Law Center and NJEA much consternation, awareness of SFRA's real deficit is coming out, like this April 2018 piece on NJSpotlight.
While the ultimate goal of the state aid reform movement is fair funding, getting there requires transparency on Uncapped Aid deficits. Let's fight to guarantee that too.
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- NOTE 1: 2011-12 is an Estimate since SFRA was Not Run that Year: I made the estimate of what Uncapped Aid was for that year by averaging 2010-11 Uncapped Aid with 2012-13 Uncapped Aid. Because that year's surplus and deficit are estimates, the sum of $14.7 billion in underfunding for the Christie era is also an estimate. If 2011-12 is subtracted, SFRA's total cumulative deficit would be $15.2 billion and the Christie era would be $13 billion.
- NOTE 2: I did not factor out Interdistrict Choice money from any year's state aid, nor apply "Commercial Valuation Stabilization Aid."
- NOTE 3: There are some minor discrepancies in Adjustment Aid between the data the DOE sent me via OPRA and what is publicly available for the early years of SFRA. The State Aid Notices for the last few years are highly inaccurate and they may have been inaccurate starting in 2009-10.
- NOTE 4: I requested Uncapped Aid for 2008-09 to 2017-18, but the DOE did not send me 2008-09. However, I had made an earlier request for Uncapped Aid that year which the DOE did comply with. Adjustment Aid that year was on-formula and public. I've used my earlier OPRA request for 2008-09 for the deficit and the public State Aid Notices for the Adjustment Aid surplus.
Abbott XXI Increased Adjustment Aid
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