The Jersey City Board of Education adopted a $973.8 million budget for the 2022-23 academic year at its special meeting Thursday. The new financials are projected to increase school taxes by $1,608 per year on a $460,000 home.
In a formal precursor to yesterday’s vote, the board voted to “approve” the nearly $1 billion budget in March, a plan that was subsequently also approved by interim Executive Hudson County Superintendent Melissa Pearce.
Board trustees voted along similar lines in their 5-4 vote to adopt the budget as they did to pass it in March. Board President Gerald Lyons and trustees Lorenzo Richardson, Noemi Velazquez, Gina Verdibello, and Paula Jones-Watson voted in favor; trustees Younass Barkouch, Alexander Hamilton, Natalia Ioffe, and LeKendrick Shaw voted against.
“We submitted a budget to the county superintendent that we do not all agree on but that allows us to continue serving our students without reducing personnel,” Jersey City’s Acting Schools Superintendent Norma Fernandez said at Thursday’s meeting.
About 77 percent of the revenues in the budget are allocated to salaries and benefits for teachers and staff, according to Fernandez.
In addition to a $426.7 million local tax levy, Jersey City schools receive funding from the state. For Covid-related expenses, such as pandemic recovery and technology, they also receive money from the federal government.
Local school taxes will help close a gap left by severe state aid cuts that have affected the district as rising home values and a significant amount of new development has increased the city’s tax base, which stood at $45 billion in 2021.
The district is also using “excess surplus,” a fund balance, and some cost reductions to close the gap between expenses and revenues.
School Business Administrator Regina Robinson said at Thursday’s meeting that the state reduced by $225 million its aid to the district this year.
Both Fernandez and Robinson warned of more reductions in state funding next year.
“S2 legislation will continue to remove the equalization aid during the next fiscal year,” Fernandez said, referring to a law designed to redress the “over aiding” of districts like Jersey City that have a lot of property wealth compared to others that don’t. “We may not receive any equalization aid at all.”
Several members of the public spoke in favor of the budget at the meeting, including parent Dana Patton, who said she is dismayed to see a narrative circulating that the schools created their funding shortfall.
“The school district in Jersey City last year was only getting 37 percent of the property taxes when school districts across the state on average get more than 50 percent,” Patton said. “The city has held an outsized share of the property taxes to fund its own budget and continues to be antagonistic about the schools’ getting a more appropriate percentage.”
Patton is on the education team of multifaith coalition Jersey City Together whose members have been advocating for “full funding” of the city’s public schools. (Full funding corresponds to that level of taxation that would produce an “adequacy budget” leading to all students’ meeting New Jersey’s minimum achievement standards for public schools.)
She joined fellow Jersey City Together education team member Jessica Taube in a statement commending the board on adopting the budget Thursday night.
“We congratulate the board on final approval of this fully funded budget that brings our schools closer to a fair share of property taxes,” the women said. “Real work lies ahead. Jersey City Together will continue our work to ensure this money is invested so that our schools are fully staffed, that our children receive mental health supports, and that every school has potable water. Our children deserve schools that are fully funded, fully staffed, and fully safe.”
This is in response to “The Mayor Says Jersey City Schools are Failing: Critics Disagree” in the Jersey City Times. It is rare for me to agree with Mayor Fulop but spending $1 billion for the local school system is tantamount to stealing private property. It is not equitable because there are too many exceptions in the law on who pays property taxes, especially school taxes. The state is responsible for the shortage of aid due to its actions of placing more children in the local public schools.
I became aware of the state giving grant money to non-profits to place immigrants in urban communities. Back in 1990, Governor Florio put a 1% tax on toilet paper which caused an uproar. That lead to community meetings when the governor decided not to give money to local communities for six months.
I attended one of those meetings where non-profit groups saw their funding cut. They boldly stated they needed their money to place immigrants in urban areas. Fast forward, these groups also receive tons of money from the federal government, too. Catholic Charities received over $1.6 billion during the Obama years. New Jersey, with the blessing of many governors, has been packing urban communities with more people who use the public schools, unlike the suburban towns. The majority of these immigrants were placed in affordable housing and rent control buildings that do not pay yearly taxes compared to the regular small homeowner.
Suburban towns have zoning which prevents multi-family buildings, so communities like Jersey City are educating non-citizens with local taxes. This is not about who is an immigrant but who pays for education. If the state wants a policy of placing immigrants, especially immigrant children in urban communities, then the state should pay for this policy.
So, those graphs that show Jersey City receiving more state aid than suburban communities are wrong, at least the suburban areas were paying for local residents’ students while Jersey City was educating students globally.
It is the State of New Jersey’s obligation to educate students they placed in Jersey City; it is ironic that Democratic Phil Murphy whose budget is 41% higher than Governor Chris Christie but he is the one who cut state aid to Jersey City.
This November, Jersey City will have a lien sale on homes that cannot pay their 2022 taxes. Last year 4,200 homes were in the lien. Where is the fairness in a system that displaces long-term homeowners for education dollars while the governor is spending more money? Chris Christie’s last budget was $34 billion. Phil Murphy’s budget is now close to $50 billion.
Furthermore, the state pushed the sales, income, and lottery as a way to pay for local education. So, use that money and leave local taxpayers alone. Let’s stop treating education so sacred as though it is a religion that requires sacrifice. In reality, as long as this country keeps importing foreign workers, it does not mean Jersey City’s students will have a job when they are adults, either.
Two outside experts and the former Board of Education president are taking issue with Mayor Steven Fulop’s recent attacks on the BOE and school officials following their adoption of a record $955 million budget and a tax levy that would cost the average homeowner an additional $1,600 per year.
In an interview with the Jersey Journal, the mayor asked, “What are we getting for that money? And where is our money going?” The mayor claimed that the annual cost to educate a child had reached $32,000 thousand. Jersey City is, he asserted, “amongst the highest in the entire country for a school system that is largely failing and hasn’t shown meaningful progress.”
“You need actual good decision making and good accountability,” the mayor said. According to the Jersey Journal, the mayor “took a shot at the ‘bloated salaries’ of district leadership, saying district officials and the board ‘have not looked at any common-sense changes that have been recommended to them for years.’” At an April 2 meeting at the St. John’s Apartment Complex, the mayor repeated the charges, complaining that teacher salaries were 30 percent above average.
His spokesperson, Kimberly Wallace-Scalcione, piled on, calling the school tax hike “unconscionable.”
The mayor has found a receptive audience. Said “Brian O.” in a Facebook thread on the subject, “Schools are an industry that can raise taxes on people any time they want to continue funding their criminal operations.” “Tricia R.” added, “We will be in the same boat again next year, mismanaged, promises…same shit diff year. You don’t throw money at a problem and think it’s gonna be fixed!” “Bill A.” added, “The BOE spends money like a drunken sailor, and everyone knows it yet we have very little to show for it in the way of graduation rates, Math or English proficiency.”
The mayor’s criticisms, however, don’t appear to be well supported by the available evidence. Indeed, the data suggests that the mayor has misrepresented and, in some cases, made false claims about the budget and the state of the Jersey City Schools.
The 2022-23 school budget of $955 million is, indeed, breathtakingly large; and to the uncritical eye, can only be explained by profligate spending.
According to experts, however, it’s not that simple. The school budget and the simultaneous need to raise taxes are being driven by factors largely beyond the control of the Board of Education and administrators. These include Jersey City’s explosive development, changes in state law, and a push by education advocates to fund the schools at an “adequate” level. Moreover, Jersey City schools perform relatively well when compared to similar districts.
It isn’t surprising that Mayor Fulop would go after the Board of Education and school administrators. The narrative of free-spending, “unaccountable” bureaucrats plays well with many voters. In the wake of the 2017 revaluation of the city’s properties, which raised taxes for many downtown homeowners who form the mayor’s political base, rising school taxes are an understandable concern.
However, the blame appears to be misplaced, say those knowledgeable about school funding. The Board of Education and school administrators have been captives of a system of state funding that made today’s tax increases inevitable and necessary.
A rich city with many poor children
In a sense, Jersey City is a microcosm of America, with vast disparities in wealth. Driven by a building boom and gentrification, the $45 billion value of Jersey City’s property, on which school taxes are based, far exceeds any school district in the state. At the same time, Jersey City’s poverty rate is close to 16 percent, compared to 9 percent statewide. Approximately 60 percent of students in Jersey City schools are enrolled in the state’s free and reduced lunch program.
Reflecting this high rate of poverty, Jersey City is one of 31 state-designated “Abbott” districts, named after the 1985 case Abbott v. Burke in which the New Jersey State Supreme Court held that significant expenditure disparities between poor urban and wealthy suburban school districts were unconstitutional.
For years, because of this high poverty rate, Jersey City received massive amounts of state aid. But according to critics and many legislators, the formula on which that aid was based, first put into place in 2008, didn’t account for Jersey City’s ballooning property values. The old formula, they say, kept school taxes artificially low.
In 2018 alone, one analysis showed that Jersey City received $151.5 million more in state than it should have given its wealth. “Despite [its] staggering increase in wealth, Jersey City still receives state aid as if it were the struggling city of the 1980s,” wrote the analyst Jeffrey Bennett, a recognized expert on New Jersey school funding.
Bennett was, and is, by no means alone in this view. “From 2010 to 2018, we were technically over aided” says Jersey City resident, blogger, and St. Peter’s University Assistant Professor Brigid D’Souza.
Awash in state aid and limited in its ability to raise taxes more than two percent per year, the Board of Education shielded local taxpayers from the school tax rates found elsewhere in New Jersey. Thus, in 2018, Jersey City homeowners paid school taxes at a rate of .36 (per $100 of assessed value) compared to a state average of 1.45. The overall tax burden (which includes school, county, and city taxes) was equally low, with Jersey City’s homeowners paying at a rate of 1.5 compared to a state average of 2.8.
S2 and the end of Jersey City’s free ride
Jersey City’s luck ran out in 2018 when state legislators voted overwhelmingly in favor of a new school funding formula called S2. S2 eliminated the “over-aiding” of districts like Jersey City in favor of less affluent districts, like Elizabeth and Paterson, which lack the wealth to adequately fund their schools. It has been estimated that S2 will, by 2025, reduce Jersey City Public School’s state aid by $375 million.
S2 sent the Board of Education, school administrators and local politicians scrambling for ways to fill the budget gap. In November 2018, Jersey City enacted a payroll tax, the proceeds from which would go to the schools and help to offset some of the loss in state aid. In May 2019, more than 200 non-tenured public-school employees were threatened with layoffs that were only narrowly averted.
Mayor Steven Fulop and former Jersey City Board of Education President Sudhan Thomas
A few months later, the Board was thrown into turmoil when its president, Sudhan Thomas, was indicted for promising to make a lawyer the district’s “special counsel for real estate” in exchange for a cash bribe. Thomas was a close ally of the mayor, who had appointed him to also head up the Jersey City Employment and Training Program. Thomas was later also indicted for embezzling money from the that agency.
Amidst the upheaval, the group Jersey City Together pushed back against budget cuts and layoffs as the solution to the schools’ funding woes. Instead, D’Souza, and others argued that Board of Education needed to raise taxes to meet the state prescribed “adequacy budget” — the cost of educating all students to achieve state standards — which it hadn’t done since 2008. Advocates called this “fully funding” the schools.
As Jersey City’s wealth increased, it had also been missing another state target: paying its “fair share” of the costs of running the school system.
Faced with stiff opposition to budget cuts and large cuts in state aid, the Board of Education began raising property taxes dramatically. In the three years following the passage of S2, the average Jersey City homeowner’s school taxes climbed $320, $550, and $993 respectively. The city was able to offset last year’s increase by using $69 million in Covid-19 relief funds.
If the tax increases dismayed homeowners, the view was very different for education advocates, who celebrated the 2021-2022 budget for “fully funding” the schools for the first time in thirteen years. For his part, with this year’s $1,600 average school tax increase and nothing to soften the blow, it appears the mayor found the school board and administrators an easy target.
An “unconscionable” increase in school taxes
Experts place the blame elsewhere. Danielle Farrie, research director of the Education Law Center, and Jeffrey Bennett have rarely seen eye to eye on school funding issues especially when it comes to teachers’ unions. But, when it came to the need for Jersey City to pay up, they were of one mind.
Said Farrie, “Jersey City has been able to prosper under … artificially low tax rates for years, and now that the state is saying that [the] district and the municipality needs to ante up its school taxes like every other district … Jersey City has for decades has been able to coast on these really low tax rates because they were getting lots of funding for schools that was disproportionate to the property values.”
Bennett agrees. “Jersey City is just catching up to the state average. Because the taxes have been so low for so long, the taxes now have to increase by a lot each year.”
The mayor “wants to blame the district, but it’s not the district’s fault,” said Farrie.
“What I find so infuriating about the mayor’s comments,” continues Farrie “is that it is completely divorced from the reality the school district is facing, which is that the state gives them a number of the amount of local revenue that needs to support the school district. They are nowhere near that number.”
Bennett agrees. “It doesn’t make sense to criticize the Jersey City Board of Ed for [the size of its budget] because it operates within parameters set by the state and JCEA [the Jersey City Education Association].”
“Top-heavy” salaries
In his critique, Fulop called administrator salaries “top heavy” and cited high teacher pay, which he claimed was 30 percent above the average. But the reality is more complicated.
Former Board of Education President Mussab Ali
Former Board of Education President Mussab Ali, currently a second year student at Harvard Law School, acknowledges that teacher pay had become “top heavy” for those with seniority when he entered contract negotiations in 2019. But the story was quite different lower down the pay scale, he says.
“When we went into our negotiation [with the union], I remember when I looked at teachers’ salaries, we were just not competitive at an entry level. Newer teachers got the bulk of the raises. A new teacher went from $54 to $61 thousand. The elder teachers, which is about fifty percent of the union along with the union leadership, got a $500 increase.”
If Ali was miserly with overpaid senior teachers, the contract he negotiated was still controversial. Then Senate President Steve Sweeney called the contract “a giveaway to the local NJEA.”
On average, Jersey City does pay its teachers relatively well. A 2020 analysis ranked Jersey City 30th of 657 districts statewide, with a median teacher salary of $87,130. That would put Jersey City teachers 23 percent above the state median of $70,815, not the 30 percent the mayor has claimed. But despite this, when it comes to the 94 school districts with 3,500 students or more, Jersey City isn’t even in the top 20 in terms of classroom teacher salaries and benefits.
Says Ali, “I still don’t think we pay our teachers enough for the work they have to do … You look at districts like Milburn, which are resource heavy, easy jobs, no real other issues that they have to deal with with these children: They still make more than Jersey City teachers.”
“Bloat” and “common-sense changes”
If there is a kernel of truth to the mayor’s point about teacher salaries, his claim that administrative salaries are “bloated” appears to be wholly unsupported by data.
According to the most recent Taxpayer Guide to Education Spending published by the New Jersey Department of Education, of the 94 districts with more than 3,500 students, Jersey City is ranked 33rd lowest in total administrative spending. When it comes to just the salaries and benefits of the school administration, Jersey City did even better, at 27th least expensive.
The data jibes with Ali’s assessment. “I don’t think there’s any way you can look at the central office number and say that it’s super bloated. Our business administrator makes $30 or $40 thousand less than the business administrator in Newark.”
Perhaps most misleading for many was the mayor’s claim that Jersey City is spending $32,000 dollars per student per year.
Instead of using the standard figure — the district’s [2021-22] operating budget of $754 million — to arrive at a per pupil cost, the mayor, said Acting Superintendent Norma Fernandez, included “one-time grants to address specific needs such as keeping students safe during the pandemic, testing students and staff for Covid, doing contact tracing, addressing the learning loss or providing specific services for special needs students by 2024” as well as “federal funds for charter and non-public schools that are presented within the Jersey City Public Schools’ budget.”
Jersey City School Acting Superintendent Norma Fernandez
In contrast, for the purpose of comparing school districts, the state excludes the one-time revenue sources used by the mayor to inflate the per pupil number. According to the commonly used formula, the real cost to educate a child in Jersey City, says Fernandez, is approximately $22,657, putting it well within what is typical for a district of its size.
Where Jersey City currently stands in relation to other districts will become clearer in the next few months after it releases its “user friendly budget,” which allows an apples-to-apples comparison of New Jersey’s school districts.
In his Jersey Journal interview, the mayor also criticized the Board of Education for not looking at “any common-sense changes that have been recommended to them for years.”
But Ali disagrees vehemently with the notion that there are obvious “common-sense” cost savings to be had. “We go through this extensive process where every single principal goes before the administration and presents exactly what they need for the following year. I challenge people to look at those numbers and tell us where we would make reductions.”
In fact, The Jersey City Schools Annual Budget is surprisingly detailed, allowing people to do as Ali suggests. The school budget sets out school-level expenditures as small as $250. Peruse the mayor’s municipal budget, in contrast, and figures generally round out to the tens of thousands of dollars with no detail as to how the money is being spent.
You need “good accountability”
The mayor’s claim that the schools are “unaccountable” also rankles Ali. “This argument about accountability, I’ve always hated it … I think we’re more accountable than the City Council is.” Ali points to the fact that three members of the Board are elected every year, giving the the public regular opportunity to weigh in. “The city council gets elected once, and for four years they’re in. For four years [the public] is stuck with the people who are there, and you can’t really make a difference.”
“The amount of people voting in school board elections has gone up and up and up. People see these tax increases and are continually supportive of the team. More people voted for Lorenzo [Richardson] than voted for Steve Fulop for mayor.”
“The difference between a school district and the city is that there are real metrics … you can look at student performance. In a city, there’s no real metric for quality of life. There’s no statewide survey.”
However, in a 2020 report by the Bloustein Local Government Research Center at Rutgers University monitoring the system’s compliance with its plan to return to local control, Jersey City Schools were criticized for “inconsistent submissions of evidence, mis-identified documents, limited reporting, and repeated requests resulting in several rounds of evidence submission.”
But the BOE has shown a willingness to find waste. In 2018, prompted by the looming state aid cuts wrought by S2, the district hired consultants O’Connor Davies, LLP to identify “operational inefficiencies.” The firm came back with a report identifying $116 million in potential savings and unrealized revenues. As a result, Ali says the district changed its health insurance plan and made other adjustments. Fully $53 million of the total, however, was the result of expenses incurred by the district for capital improvements that should have been covered by the state and revenues that the district lost because of tax abatements given to developers.
A “largely failing” district that “hasn’t shown meaningful progress”
On performance, the mayor was equally critical, characterizing Jersey City schools as “a largely failing public school system” that “hasn’t shown meaningful progress.”
This was not his position, however, in 2017, as the state turned control of the district back over to the Board of Ed, which had lost it in 1989 due to poor performance. At the time, the mayor called the move validation of the district’s progress.
Ali pushes back on the mayor’s description of the district today. “It depends on who you compare us to. If you compare us with other Abbott districts like Newark and Paterson, we outperform them by a landslide. The demographics of Jersey City are changing, and as the schools improve there can be other districts that we compare ourselves to. But it’s tricky because we are still an Abbott district.”
Bolstering Ali’s point, the website schooldigger.com ranks Jersey City 372nd out of 590 districts statewide, handily beating Abbott districts like Elizabeth, Paterson and Newark and even edging out non-Abbott districts like Bayonne and North Bergen.
Kearny, next door, has similar demographics to Jersey City, with 54 percent of its students termed economically disadvantaged. According to state data, Jersey City students bested that district as well on English and math.
If there’s a place where Jersey City’s schools are failing, it’s in graduating its students. In 2019, New Jersey had one of the highest rates nationally at 91 percent. That year, Jersey City graduated just 75 percent of its high school seniors, slightly fewer than Newark or Paterson, both of which have higher rates of poverty than Jersey City.
Asked about the low graduation rate, Ali is forthright. “I’ll be honest with you, it wasn’t top of mind because the problem that we were facing was financially how is this district going to survive … this was our problem with strategic planning. How can you strategically plan if you don’t know how many teachers are going be in classrooms? That burden that was placed on the district was a very tough burden.”
Yet not all schools are having a hard time graduating their seniors. In 2019, at Infinity Institute, a magnet school for sixth through twelfth graders in which 66 percent of the students were classified as “economically disadvantaged,” fully 100 percent graduated.
When it comes to the performance of individual schools, the Jersey City Public Schools district is as diverse as the city itself. McNair High School and Infinity rank as the 5th and 11th best high schools, respectively, statewide. Academy 1 Middle School has been designated a national Blue Ribbon school.
But the failures are equally noteworthy. At Snyder High School in 2019, only 60 percent of students graduated, and just 29 percent met or exceeded expectations on statewide English tests. At Lincoln High School, the number of students meeting or exceeding the English standard was a paltry 17 percent, and the graduation rate was 62 percent. Chronic absenteeism, which refers to students who were absent for 10 percent or more of days enrolled, for both schools was 24 percent, nearly double the state average.
But the issues sabotaging student achievement at Snyder and Lincoln are not limited to Jersey City. At Weequahic High School in Newark just 10.9 percent of students met or exceeded expectations on statewide assessments in English in 2019. Absenteeism was a stratospheric 46.9 percent. At Central High School in Newark a slightly better 13.9 percent met the English assessment standard. There, absenteeism was a stunning 55.2 percent, three times the state average.
The discouraging performance of Snyder, Lincoln, Weequahic and Central rightly beg the question as to whether educators know how to overcome the impediments to learning wrought by poverty. A study in 2008 found that funding under Abbott brought about “a significant positive impact on 11th grade achievement.” However, a 2012 study found that years of increased funding had had a negligible effect on improving outcomes for the poorest districts. The mayor’s critique seemed to make no allowance for the difficult task facing teachers and administrators.
***
In the end, Jersey City looks a lot like other school systems with large concentrations of impoverished children. It is expensive to operate and in many ways an underperformer academically when compared with wealthier suburban systems.
Given this reality, it easy to see why it would be smart politics and a fair question for the mayor to ask, “What are we getting for that money?”
But in going one step further and lambasting the system, the Board of Ed and administrators, the mayor, it would appear, is on shaky ground. The per pupil cost is not $32,000 per year, and the BOE is no less accountable than the mayor or the city council.
Despite massive state aid, the system, which was underfunded for years by the state’s own criterion and tasked with serving some of New Jersey’s neediest children, has done alright. It has shown that it can fund and staff excellent schools like McNair, Infinity and Academy 1. But like districts in other large New Jersey cities, it has struggled to properly educate kids suffering the effects of poverty.
Facing higher costs on everything from food to trash pickup, the mayor has found a sympathetic audience in Jersey City’s property owners. But though the mayor left it out of his comments, even with this year’s tax increase, Jersey City residents will continue to pay property taxes at a much lower rate than most school districts throughout the state. But it’s probably not a winning strategy for a politician to talk about it.
Plans to use the third floor of P.S. 39 for a young women’s leadership academy this fall drew concerned parents and students to Thursday’s Jersey City Board of Education meeting. Although Acting superintendent Norma Fernandez says no one will be displaced from the building, members of the school community worry about being forced to compete with the new program for resources that are already lacking.
At P.S. 39 on Plainfield Avenue, also known as Dr. Charles P. DeFuccio School, moving to the third floor is a “rite of passage,” Jamillah Moore, an alumnus of the school and parent of a fourth grader there, said at the meeting. “At that moment you become upperclassmen, and you take pride in that. Taking that away from any student: absolutely not fair.”
Moore had numerous other concerns. She said the school needs a permanent principal and repairs to “fix a building that has been falling apart for years” before any new program should be moved there.
She said having the school’s existing teachers take on an entirely new curriculum would stretch the educators too thin. And she said parents had been kept in the dark about the planned changes.
“Dr. Fernandez stated at the caucus meeting on Monday there was misinformation given. In fact, there was no information given to the parents of P.S. 39 at all until that meeting,” said Moore.
Several young students at DeFuccio also shared concerns that the school’s numerous autistic students might be relocated. These students have already adapted to their surroundings and feel safe there, their peers said.
The school features an Autistic Program that recently marked Autism Awareness Month with a series of activities, according to posts on the school’s Facebook page.
In response to the various comments, Acting Superintendent Norma Fernandez said Thursday, “There is no action to move anyone out at P.S. 39. We will keep the complete program from preschool to eighth grade, including the self-contained classes and inclusion students with disabilities.”
The acting superintendent said students will need to apply to the new program.
“This is purely by application. It is not on achievement, and it is not about just filling it up with girls,” Fernandez said. “It is about students who are interested, and we’ll have the next year of planning for the process.
Fernandez’s office did not return a request for comment from the Jersey City Times sent on April 11, when a parent’s meeting was scheduled at the school. A follow-up request on April 15 was also unanswered.
The public school district’s budget, which the Jersey City Board of Education approved in March, lists “Opening a Young Women Leadership Academy at P.S. #39 as a school within a school and additional staffing needs with two classes per grade level from 6th–12th grade” as a “program investment.”
Declining enrollment at P.S. 39 has been cited by the superintendent as a reason for looking to place the program there.
“The question of the the Young Women’s Leadership School at P.S. 39 is still under review,” Fernandez said at Monday’s caucus meeting. “The school’s enrollment has gone down, as I shared with the board of trustees significantly over the years.”
According to a teacher who spoke at that meeting, however, enrollment could be increased in other ways.
“It also needs to be noted that we have approximately 60 students from an ESL middle school program that we send to other buildings to be educated because we can’t accommodate them at 39 because we don’t offer that program. If we brought that program to P.S. 39, we would have about 60 slots already taken,” the teacher said.
“Also, if we hire a science and social studies teacher for the middle school, we could probably become competitive again with the students in that area. Maybe we could bring back those children from charter and private schools.”
A petition started by P.S. 39 parent Ashley Wilson had 18 signatures as of Friday.
“There are other schools who have much more room that could house this all-girls school,” the petition states.
By Brigid D’Souza, Rev. Dr. Willard Ashley, Rev. Laurie Wurm
Jersey City has often been called “a tale of two cities.”
One tale: that of glass-lined corporate skyscrapers, thriving restaurants, and luxury housing that overlooks the Manhattan skyline. This tale is supported by a city government with marketing aimed at suburban New Jerseyans and Manhattanites who see Jersey City as affordable “gold coast” real estate with close proximity to Manhattan.
But let’s talk about the other tale.
To do so, we have to move off the coast, further into the city, to neighborhoods like Greenville, West Side, and the Heights. Here, we find dozens of school buildings, most of which are nearing one-hundred years old, lack potable water fountains, and have ceilings that crumble into classrooms.
The children who attend these schools are as talented as the children in any other zip code, are deserving of an excellent education, and are the greatest asset of the most diverse city in the country.
Many of the students are emerging bilinguals, and the student body is 38% Hispanic, 25% Black, 18% Asian American, and 15% white, reflecting the rich, racial and ethnic diversity of the city. Sixty percent of these students qualify for free or reduced lunch. And all students have been affected by teacher shortages, gaps in mental health support, and resources stretched thin – even before the pandemic even hit.
These two tales are intimately connected. The public numbers help show us how.
Between 2013 and 2018, Jersey City’s tax base grew from $19 billion to $34 billion, or 79%. Over that same time period, state education aid to Jersey City remained flat at about $400 million per year and our local school tax levy – the primary local resource to fund our schools – grew only 8%, from $114 million to $124 million.
By 2018, Jersey CIty Public Schools were $100+ million underfunded, due to insufficient local school tax. All that time, most of the $400 million in state aid was “excess” aid, held in place by a confluence of factors which acted like a fragile dam.
Then, in 2018, the dam broke and state aid began flowing away from Jersey City.
The state legislature passed “S2” and told Jersey City: you have a large enough tax base to fund your schools locally, so we are lowering your state aid accordingly. The legislature had to remove a “2% levy cap” rule which had previously restricted Jersey City from raising its school levy by more than 2% per year. In effect, Trenton forced Jersey City’s Board of Education to leapfrog its school funding paradigm within a truncated time period, forcing a tripling of the school levy within just a few years.
The state aid cuts were like hard medicine that the state was shoving down the city’s throat, with the mandate being: raise your school tax.
The state aid cuts have necessitated a mature, local response to locally fund our public schools. Yet that local response has been fraught.
In 2019, the Board of Education ignored Jersey City Together’s pleas to raise the local school levy and hundreds of teachers were laid off. In 2020, our organization grew its advocacy base, educated the community about tax facts, and supported a courageous budget put forth by then-Superintendent Franklin Walker that invested $50 million into the school levy to make up for that year’s aid cuts. That budget passed just as COVID-19 was hitting.
Through 2020 and 2021, as the pandemic left our children in isolation over zoom, we organized and advocated, supporting year-on-year school levy investments to make up for the state aid cuts, mostly to ensure we didn’t have a repeat of 2019’s devastating layoffs. This past March, Acting Superintendent Dr. Fernandez presented a budget that raised the school levy by $148 million, in part, she explained, to stave off layoffs.
Our advocacy has called for school tax levy increases so that our schools can remain open and operational. Yet we have seen that a major challenge is misinformation around why the school tax is needed and what the costs are if we do not invest in our schools.
So here are pertinent facts.
Children in Jersey City are still experiencing severely under-resourced schools due to years of chronic disinvestment. Most schools still lack potable water fountains, sufficient teaching staff, and mental health supports. The average per-pupil investment in 2020 (the most recently available data) was $19,000 per student, but even this is misleadingly high.
The state funding formula quite correctly calls for school districts to make greater investments in children who have greater needs. This includes families who qualify for free and reduced lunch, children who are emerging bilinguals, and students who need additional learning support.
The board of education recently passed a $990+ million budget. Two-thirds of the budget, or about $750 million, is operating expenses, of which $129+ million will immediately be allocated to over a dozen public charter schools. Most of this money pays for salaries and benefits for JCPS teachers, principals, security guards, nurses, and more.
The remaining one-third of the budget, or about $200 million, consists of nearly $80 million of state-funded preK and over $130 million of federal COVID aid which will be directed at long-standing capital repairs such as new roofs on school buildings, boiler systems to heat schools, and fixing doors in a majority of schools.
Jersey City’s school tax rate is lower than most in the state. Consider: Jersey City’s 2021 equalized school tax rate was only 0.521%, below the state average of 1.356%. Out of 565 municipalities, Jersey City’s equalized school tax rate was 49th lowest.
But finally, let’s get real about the entire property bill, which includes school but also city and county taxes. Jersey CIty’s school tax rate has historically comprised only 25 cents for every one dollar in property tax in Jersey City. The state average is much higher, at 52 cents for every dollar. So why is it lower in Jersey City? Because in Jersey City, most of the property tax has historically been consumed by the city.
What’s more, the public is seeing a schools budget that will not take effect until July 1, 2022. So we are debating a future school levy. Yet we are now in the second quarter of calendar year 2022 and we have yet to see the calendar year levies for both the city and county governments in Jersey City and Hudson County. In effect, the city and county are using levy dollars in 2022 that have not even been made public yet.
We are parents and advocates who care about our city’s children; as such, we demand that all children – in every ward, in every school – be written into the one tale of Jersey City that we believe still can be written: that of equity, inclusion, and a future supported by access to a world class, fully funded, fully resourced public school education.
Ms. D’Souza is a JCPS parent and professor of accounting. Rev. Ashley is the pastor of Abundant Joy Community Church. Rev. Wurm is the rector of Grace Church Van Vorst. All are leaders with Jersey City Together.
It was the last period of the day at Academy 1 Middle School on Bergen Avenue. As the students of Laury Stone’s seventh grade social studies class filtered in, Stone erupted. Two of the boys in homeroom were arguing — continuing a fight that had started in the preceding science class — and Stone wasn’t having any of it.
In a twenty minute verbal torrent, Stone, who is white, berated the children, frequently employing racial stereotypes, yet imploring them to get along with one another and study.
The Jersey City Times reviewed a recording made by a student who took it as the class of special needs students took their seats. It was provided by class parent Alicia Boyken.
A student in the class confirmed that she had made the recording. The teacher “flips out about everything…it’s a daily thing.”
What follows is a transcript of the recording. Please be advised that readers may find the teacher’s comments offensive.
***
“Get that thing off your head, and take a seat right now. Get if off your head. (Door slams.)
What’s the fucking issue that we have here? Yeah, go ‘head, laugh at me. Do I look like I’m being funny to you? Oh, you’re smiling. I’m sick of this baby nonsense. It’s annoying. You come in, and you’re fucked up, and you fuck each other around. Is that not true? You go out into a safe world out there, yes or no?
As a young black girl, you got a lot of things coming your way, yes or no? Yes, you do?…But you gotta earn it, and you gotta support each other in this community, not beat each other down.
Sit up, you have enough against you. Why are beating each other around here? You need to support each other so you can all do something good with yourselves.
Do you want to be pregnant at 17? Do you want to be in jail? Do you want to be dead? Because you beat each other up mentally, psychologically, and physically. It’s not working. It’s not working for your community. Your neighborhood is filled with violence. Who’s perpetrating the violence? Black on Black. The whites aren’t coming in here shooting y’all down. Are they, are they? How many white people came and shot you today? How many white girls are waiting out there to fight you? How many black girls or Hispanic girls are waiting to fight you? A lot, right?
(Student says something inaudible.) Oh, yeah? I’m sorry, can you sit up?…Who were the people who were messing with you? (Student says something) Right. Is that the right thing to do? Is that going to make you a better young black man? So, we have to stop it, you have to stop it, the insanity needs to end. You are berating and beating each other down as a community. You need to raise each other up. You are all here because you fucked up somewhere in school. You need to fix it. You need to build a community that helps each other do better, or you’re gonna just keep beating each other down. You’re gonna have children, you’re gonna beat them down, maybe not physically but mentally, because you tell them they’re stupid, you’re gonna leave them out on their own for the streets to raise ‘em.
Stop it, it’s not working, it’s not working. We are not dealing with all this banging, getting sides, gathering against each other, we’re not doing that here, it’s not happening. I don’t care if he sat there all quiet, and you’re saying (a student) is doing this. I don’t care. We need to do different, we need to do better. We need it, you need it.
What are your chances in life of doing something if all you’re doing is sitting at home waiting for your welfare check or your Section 8 check to come in? Is that all you want? Because that’s slavery. You want to be a slave, be a slave. I’m against slavery … (looks at a particular student) What are you looking at, what are you looking at? Are you listening to me? Are you anti-slavery, or do you want to be a slave? What do you want to be, do you want to be a slave, yes? I didn’t hear you, you didn’t say ‘I don’t know,” did you? (Child says ‘no.’) Didn’t we fight against that? Didn’t we free the slaves, didn’t we? Didn’t we go against that and free the slaves? Yes. Did we free the slaves, yes or no? So, be free.
You have every opportunity to get a good solid education, to go out into the world and do anything you want to do, anything. But you choose violence, you choose ignorance, you choose to just beat each other down. Do you like violence, you like negativity, you like when people call you idiots and put you down, do you like that?…You know you don’t like that, do you, so then why do we do it to each other? If you don’t like it being done to you, we have to stop doing it to others: It’s a very simple rule.
But some of you like drama, you know why? Because it’s the only thing you know in life. You only know violence and drama, and you feel alive. Having a nice normal day, going through a day without drama or ‘psychoness,’ you don’t feel alive. You’re bored, so you cause some drama. I don’t care if you’re bored, there’s nothing to be bored about. You have an education to catch up on, you’re barely reading at the fifth-grade level some of you, barely. You are really like on the third-grade level in math. Are you okay with that? Is that good for you, is that okay for you? So, what are you going to do to make it different? What are we going to do to make it different?
All of a sudden, we’re quiet. We all got lip when there’s drama and negativity going out there, but now that I’m asking you questions, you’re all like, ‘Oh, I don’t know anything, I don’t speak.’ What are you gonna do about it? Get an education and work hard. That’s all you’re here to do, that’s all you need to do. You’re gonna be left in the dust if you don’t get it now.
Do you think that in high school they’re going to hold you by the hand like we do and help you with everything? They’re gonna barely know your name, they’re gonna go fail, fail, fail, fail, fail. This is your opportunity with teachers in a small group that are working close with you. Do you think you’re getting 100s and A’s because of your work, do you? You’re getting it cause I’m helping you, you’re getting it because the teachers are helping you. They’re not gonna do that in high school, so you have to figure out how to spend your time and energy on work, on learning, on improving your mind, not on drama.
Go home and watch some stupid reality show, there’s your drama. Live vicariously off your drama, but this is not gonna work, this is not gonna work. We’ve spent eight months in this classroom without any of this nonsense, so the only thing I can say is we got a new kid in class and you’re all siding against each other…Is that what you wanted when you came here … divide the class? So [speaking to the new student] you need to tell these girls, ‘Don’t worry about it, I take care of it.’ You need to stay out of the business. No matter what’s happening if it doesn’t literally involve you, mind your business, got it? Stop taking sides. it? (Student says something inaudible.) That’s why we’re here right now, we’re straightening this out. This is not going to happen every day, this is not going to work. I will literally put you on lockdown where you will not leave the room any moment of the day, you will sit here during your specials, during your lunch, and whenever you’re supposed to be somewhere else, I’ll just lock this room down, that’s what I’m gonna do. Because if I can’t trust you to go into another room and act properly, then you won’t leave my room.
I know, how do you think I feel? You’re ‘Oh, Godding it?’ I have a wonderful time here. I make projects, I have great kids, we do work, I have people who are very eager and excited to do their work and then we have this. So, tell me about a shitty life? This sucks, I’m the one who should be going ugh, ugh, but I’m giving my energy to change it. Do you not want me to work to change it? Cause I’ll sit back and let you all burn. Is that what you want me to do, or do you want me to fight for you to change and make this year better? Which one do you want me to do? (Asks specific student who says ‘make this year better.’) Okay, so, that’s what I’m gonna do: I’m gonna fight, and sometimes (when) fighting, I gotta get mean, I gotta yell, I gotta get nasty. But when I stop doing this, you’re all done. When I don’t fight for you, I’m done. I will literally turn my back on you and let you go out to the wolves and let them tear you apart. So, I’m fighting for us to get through the next month and a half so you can get a solid education, so you can go into the eighth grade, and you can get yourself into high school at a decent age.
If you’re not fighting with me, you’re fighting against me, and I will gladly send you to the seventh grade next year…We all want to ride out this year in a calm, peaceful way so we can learn and get an education. That’s what I want, and if you’re not doing it, we’ll see you in seventh grade, iIs that clear? Cause I’m not playing this game, I’m not every day putting out fires cause y’all don’t know how to treat each other well, cause y’all been nothing but around psychodramas and negativity your whole life.You want to deal with your life as street kids, you deal with your life outside, but I’m showing you something different inside.
(Looks at a specific student) We need to be better, is that upsetting you? Me fighting for you to be better is upsetting you? Speak, tell me, this upsets you?…Your eyes and your body language says it all; you don’t have to say the words…so, I’m telling you, you are really not comprehending what is going on here. Your mind is making up and inserting wrong thoughts and wrong interpretations cause there is really nothing for you to be mad at me for right now (Student says I’m not mad at you). Well, you’re mad at something…You shut down, and the only one speaking was me. So, if I said something that angered you or triggered you, tell me what it was so we can straighten it out, or I can explain how maybe you misunderstood it, but if you’re going to shut down and just block everything out, you’re never going to grow, you’re never going to learn how to communicate what’s wrong so that things can get better and things can work out. But you need to learn how to use your words, not your emotions. Emotions are liars, they’re devils, they lie to you. If you make your decisions on an emotion, it’s the wrong decision. You need to make them with your mind.
(Sees student push chair back and make a face) What did I say that made you jump back? You jumped back and got really angry. What was it?
Student: I pushed my chair back, and I sat back, and I started shaking.
But why? What’s going on that’s making you upset?
I don’t know, nothing, I’m good, I aint upset.
So, again we have to understand in the big world, not your little world here, in the real world out here…you can join it and do great things with yourself. You’re nice kids, you got great parenting, you got nice lives, your moms come on field trips, they make you great lunch, but you gotta get yourself educated…Why wouldn’t you want to follow in (your mom’s) footsteps and make her really proud by you coming home and doing really well in school? She’s not impressed by you coming home and putting people down and going through some sort of psychodrama; that’s not impressive. That’s not how you reward your mom who’s done nothing but love you and take care of you. She doesn’t want this nonsense. You think she wants to be called every time you have your phone out? That’s not love, that’s not loving your mama. That’s annoying. You’re too old to be doing that.
I don’t care what goes on, my job is to make sure each and every one of you is safe, to come in here with a clear mind knowing you can come in here and learn. That’s all I care about. I’ve had kids sitting here with ankle bracelets on. I’ve had murderers sitting in my room, and you know what? They never disrespected me or my space cause they knew I was fighting for them for all the good things. So, we are not wasting our energy on this any more, it’s done.”
***
This morning, Boykin and two other parents went to the school to complain. Administrators told them that an investigation was underway but did not share any other information. Ron Greco, president of the Jersey City Education Association, confirmed this and said that Stone has been re-assigned to the human resources department pending the investigation’s outcome.
Highly rated Academy 1, located in Greenville, sits between Snyder High School and the Jersey City Police Department’s West District. In 2017, the U.S. Department of Education named it a National Blue Ribbon School.
Boykin confirmed that Stone’s outburst was the result of the dispute between the two boys, one of whom was white. Stone, says Boykin, had sided with the white youth. “Her mind was made up. The recording was made because this lady always loses her cool.”
Denise Grant’s son came to the class recently after being bullied in another school and facing significant academic challenges. “It was heartbreaking to hear that my child had to sit through all of that. Those are her personal feelings about the Black community. She took her aggression out on them kids. I felt like the message was too harsh for the kids. I didn’t feel like it was her place to give them that life coaching message.”
Grant continued. “She made comments about Black people being waiting on welfare checks, waiting on social security checks, waiting on Section 8. You know statistically, the majority of people on welfare are the whites.”
Acting Jersey City Schools Superintendent Norma Fernandez told the Jersey City Times, “The district is appalled at the comments made by the individual in the recording. The outburst is unprofessional; the incident under investigation.”
Asked what they wanted to happen to Stone, both mothers replied that they wanted her removed. Said Grant, “I want her job and her pension.”
Hudson County Community College (HCCC) and New Jersey City University (NJCU) have signed an agreement creating a Cybersecurity Dual Admission program.
Beginning September 2022, HCCC students can complete an Associate of Science in Computer Science- Cybersecurity degree at HCCC and transfer into attaining a Bachelor of Science degree in Cybersecurity at NJCU.
According to the announcement released today, “the increasing and evolving threats of data breaches, phishing, malware, and ransomware have fueled new interest in the cybersecurity industry and its challenges. Cyberattacks cost an estimated $6 trillion globally each year. Hackers target banks, colleges and universities, Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, hospitals, and private citizens. As cyber criminals access sensitive information and cripple computer networks, victims scramble to protect their assets and regain control.”
“We are proud to partner with New Jersey City University in preparing students for stable, well-paying careers that offer many opportunities for advancement, and that ultimately benefit the community,” said HCCC President Dr. Chris Reber.
“A degree in cybersecurity will provide students with solid career skills and earning potential in a number of industries,” said NJCU President Dr. Sue Henderson. “We are pleased to work with HCCC to transition students to our bachelor’s degree program, which is among just a few in the country with designations in both cybersecurity and intelligence. Students will learn from some of the top security experts in the discipline and leave with cutting-edge knowledge as well as practical experience.”
“Employers across all sectors are investing in cybersecurity, the fastest growing industry in the United States, with job growth projected at 31%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Cybersecurity professionals work in education, energy, finance, health care, insurance, law enforcement, manufacturing, retail, and more. Their responsibilities include developing and maintaining secure digital infrastructures, preventing data breaches, analyzing and identifying potential risks, and implementing digital disaster recovery plans” said the press release.
“Hudson County Community College (HCCC) alumnus Stephen Cronin viewed the issue as an opportunity to work towards a career in combatting cybercrime. The 2020 graduate of the HCCC Cybersecurity program expressed that his classes, specifically Network Security and Ethical Hacking, gave him the skills and knowledge to be successful at a four-year university and in the industry. He strongly recommends the program to anyone who is interested in a career in technology or information security” the announcement went on.
“There are no other institutions that offer this cutting-edge knowledge at such an affordable and accessible level, right here in our community,” said Mr. Cronin.
The schools say that the HCCC Cybersecurity program of study has been validated by the National Security Agency and provides instruction in computer programming, computer hardware organization and architectures, network security, cybersecurity, data communications and local area networks. “Upon successful completion of HCCC’s Associate degree in Computer Science-Cybersecurity, graduates will enter NJCU as fully matriculated students with junior standing. The HCCC Cybersecurity program also includes Year Up six-month internship opportunities where students put their training to work at companies such as Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and BNY Mellon.”
Members of the Jersey City Board of Education and the school community came together at Thursday night’s meeting to donate nearly $28,000 for survivors of the war in Ukraine and honor those who have fled the country, among them Zoya Tomash, the grandmother of board trustee Natalia Ioffe.
Natalia Ioffe was born in Kyiv, Ukraine, which was recently attacked by Russian forces. She immigrated to the U.S. with her family at age 11.
Tomash, a chemist and renowned scientist, had been leading a nonprofit in Ukraine before leaving her embattled hometown of Kyiv at her family’s urging. She attended the board meeting along with other Ukrainians.
Also at the meeting was Barbara Ioffe, Natalia Ioffe’s daughter. A sixth-grader at M.S. 4 , Ms. Ioffe briefly took the floor to read a poem she had written about her great-grandmother:
“My great grandmother lived there her whole life
and she would have stayed if it didn’t become a battlefront.
Siren after siren, bomb after bomb, she stayed unseen at home unable to flee.
That was until hope returned.”
The local school board’s efforts are part of a larger federal and statewide humanitarian response to aid Ukrainian refugees facing the conditions the younger Ms. Ioffe describes.
Gov. Phil Murphy wrote a letter to President Joe Biden on March 2, making it clear the state is “proud to do our part in welcoming Ukrainian men, women, and children who have left their generational homes.”
Biden on Thursday announced “plans to welcome up to 100,000 Ukrainians and others fleeing Russia’s aggression through the full range of legal pathways, including the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program.
In Jersey City, home to a thriving Ukrainian population, the schools recently held a “Dress Down Day” fundraiser for the citizens of Ukraine with proceeds going to Razom for Ukraine, an organization providing critical medical supplies and amplifying the voices of Ukrainians.
Students and staff were encouraged to wear the colors of the country’s flag, blue and yellow, the day of the event, a fundraiser in which students pay small amounts to wear something other than a uniform or the dress code. Students paid $1 and staff paid $5 for the fundraiser, a flier said.
At the meeting, Acting Superintendent of Schools Norma Fernandez presented a large check showing the $27,935.50 donation raised by the school community.
“We continue to view the destruction, and we wanted to do something to help,” Fernandez said. “On behalf of the students and staff of the Jersey City Public Schools, I want to present a check to Ms. Ioffe to share with Razom for Ukraine for the individuals who will find themselves starting new lives filled with uncertainty.”
Ioffe said her grandmother’s message to the acting superintendent was “Thank you for bringing me back with this.”
Her grandmother’s main sorrow in leaving her country is being separated from the people she was helping, Ioffe explained.
“For 60 years she was a career woman. She was a scientist, but she was also an executive in this field of science. She managed power stations, and then when she retired — people like that don’t ever retire — she formed a nonprofit specifically to help the veterans of her field.
“This is beyond family. You guys brought her back tonight to what she’s used to, like, her life.”
Hudson County Community College and Eastern Millwork, Inc., a high-end, automated woodwork manufacturing and installation company, have created an apprenticeship program to address the challenge of finding skilled workers.
Eastern Millwork work for Goldman Sachs
Apprentices with the EMI-HCCC Holz Technik program receive a tuition-free college education, a $24,500 starting salary with merit raises, and full benefits including health insurance, 401K profit sharing, and vacations/holidays. By the end of the fifth year, apprentices receive their Associate of Applied Science (A.A.S.) degree in Advanced Manufacturing from HCCC, earn their bachelor’s degree in Technical Studies from Thomas Edison State University, and receive a salary of $70,000, and have no college debt.
Amber Gutierrez, a Union City High School graduate and a member of the Holz Technik Academy Class of 2024, said “I knew that once I graduated high school my focus would be taking care of myself. This opportunity is giving me the ability to do that.”
Praised by New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy as an example of the blueprint for the Garden State’s economic future, the federally registered EMI-HCCC Holz Technik apprenticeship program’s earn-while-you-learn structure is modeled on proven European forms of education. Qualified high school students who are hired as apprentices each year split their time between practical, on-the-job experience and college coursework.
Eastern Millwork prides itself on employing technological innovation to challenge the belief that high-quality woodworking can only be produced by hand. It has worked on projects ranging from Rose Hall at Lincoln Center to Rockefeller University.
Applications for the HCCC-EMI education-apprenticeship program will be accepted until April 15. Contact Al Williams at 201-360-4255 or awilliams@hccc.edu for more information.
The Jersey City Board of Education narrowly approved a $973.8 million budget on Monday that will keep school staffing and operations stable in the 2022-23 academic year and raise school taxes by $134 per month on a $460,000 home.
The budget vote passed 5–4 after board trustee Paula Jones-Watson, who had originally voted “no,” introduced a motion to reconsider, prompting a second vote and changing her vote to a “yes.”
Board President Gerald Lyons and trustees Lorenzo Richardson, Noemi Velazquez, and Gina Verdibello joined Jones-Watson in supporting the budget. Trustees Younass Barkouch, Alexander Hamilton, Natalia Ioffe, and LeKendrick Shaw voted against the spending plan.
After several board members at last Thursday’s special budget meeting said they could not support the $200 per month school tax increase in the preliminary budget, Acting Superintendent of Schools Norma Fernandez and School Business Administrator Regina Robinson presented a budget with a lesser tax impact on Monday.
Reductions in overtime pay known as “comp time,” adjustments to facilities spending and operations investments, and the use of excess surplus and fund balance helped reduce the local tax levy from $483 million to $426 million.
In addition to a share of local property taxes, Jersey City schools receive funding from the state and the federal government, the latter of which is restricted to expenses such as pandemic recovery and technology.
Officials on Thursday emphasized that the budget is necessary for the continued functioning of the district and that there was little room for change without making difficult cuts to staffing. Nevertheless, by Monday they were able to slightly blunt its effect on school taxes.
“Dr. Fernandez and I talked about scaling, putting austerities in place, and making sure that we manage the dollars,” Robinson said on Monday.
Although the board president said staff positions yet to be filled will have to be looked at carefully, the budget does not appear to reduce the number of teachers in the district nor change the district’s ability to follow the recently adopted long range facilities plan to upgrade its old physical plant.
“Approximately 77 percent of the budget is costs associated with salaries and benefits,” Fernandez said. “Every year, wages, benefits, and insurance increase as do the goods we purchase.”
“We operate 46 school buildings: 14 of those buildings are over 100 years old, 16 are over 80 years old, and only 11 of the buildings are under 50 years old,” the superintendent added.
The overall tax impact on city residents will depend not only on that portion of homeowners’ property taxes dedicated to the schools but on levies from the city and county that are yet to be determined. These levies could potentially offset costs for residents.
Between the meeting’s first failed vote and the successful second attempt, Richardson, a former board president, emphasized this point.
“When we render the levy, that’s not necessarily a tax increase,” Richardson said. “Yes, it affects the tax bill, but there are other mechanisms in place to address that, and we saw that last year,” he said, referring to the city’s ability to ask for a lesser share of property taxes.
Richardson was optimistic that Gov. Phil Murphy’s ANCHOR program for property tax relief as well as a program that allows senior citizens to freeze their taxes will help some residents who are affected by rising costs.
Jersey City public schools’ funding crunch was precipitated by many things, among them an increase in home values throughout the city and a significant amount of new development that has taken place since Trenton last visited the city’s funding position. These factors contributed to the rise in the city’s tax base, which stood at $45 billion in 2021.
Despite this high valuation, prior to this year, Jersey City had the 49th lowest tax rate according to data compiled by St. Peter’s University Assistant Professor Brigid D’Souza. State lawmakers considered this unfair to other municipalities, and as a consequence announced just days before the budget was initially presented that they would cut the city’s aid by $68 million.
This was not the first time the state recently reduced the city’s school funding though. It also did so in 2018 after passing a new funding formula known as S2 that was designed to phase out “adjustment aid” in areas with higher property values.
Jersey City is also collecting less money than it had anticipated it would from corporate payroll taxes. For the 2021–22 fiscal year this source of funding was estimated to be $225 million. But City Hall has certified only $65 million, a shortfall of $160.7 million (toward the 2022–23 school year) that school officials said last week the city is unlikely to make up.
“It is actually a perfect storm of events that leaves us students at risk,” Fernandez said of the reasons for the shortfall that the budget’s tax levy increase is helping to close.
Some of the trustees who voted against the budget said they were doing so because a school tax increase would make Jersey City even more unaffordable for economically disadvantaged students and their parents.
Barkouch said his stance had not changed since Thursday, when he said, “If we increase the school tax levy, rents will increase, and economically disadvantaged families will suffer and ultimately be pushed out of Jersey City — or worse — made homeless.”
Patrick Sprinkle, a public commenter identifying himself as a teacher, agreed.
“I worry that the tax increase would be higher than the cost of living,” Sprinkle said. “It would be increasingly unaffordable for working class people and middle class people to afford to own homes in Jersey City.”
But the majority of parents who called in to Monday’s meeting asked the board to support the budget.
“Taxes will increase regardless: This is Jersey City,” said Danielle Walker. “Raising the school tax levy will not doom the city. Abstaining from voting on a sustainable budget will doom our kids. It will be an act of defiance, and it acts against our children’s benefit, and it is an attack against our children’s educational journeys.”
“We cannot afford to go backwards to understaffing and underfunded schools, ” parent Meghan Howard-Noveck said. “We cannot go back to the days of doing more with less.”
