[I'm writing solely on my own behalf]
On March 10th, new Governor Mikie Sherrill announced her proposal for the FY2027 budget, including information on state education spending.
We don't have district-by-district "state aid" totals yet, but remember, the "state aid" that superintendents and education-watchers talk about is really just K-12 formula aid, and that is barely half of the state's total education spending, and the state makes multibillion payments on behalf of public education in the form of TPAF payments, Social Security, post-retirement healthcare, Pension Obligation Bonds, and then other streams of aid that do go to districts but are not considered formula aid, such as Debt Servicing Aid, PreK, and Extraordinary Aid
Putting all of NJ's spending together, K-12 formula aid is $12.4 billion, or 55%, of $22.5 billion in state PreK-12 education spending. The formula aid increase from FY2026 is $372 million, or 3%, but it's undetermined that new aid plus redistributed aid will be enough to establish a 100% state aid floor for all districts since the underaided districts had a $382 million deficit in 2025-26.
I don't have confirmation yet, but I expect the relatively small increase in formula aid will mean an increase in expected Local Fair Share and a further decrease in how many districts are eligible for Equalization Aid.
Here's the same information in table form:
And here are year-to-year changes.
The underlying reason for the relatively modest increase in K-12 formula aid is that NJ's income tax is expected to see only a modest increase in FY2027.
I've already made my annual OPRA request for state aid targets, Local Fair Share, Adequacy Budget etc. I'll post information as soon as I can, but it'll take at least a week.
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