Education reform has been a long time a-comin’ to New Jersey since Gov. Christopher Christie took over as head of the class. With calls to abolish teacher tenure and to swap seniority for merit payscales, Christie has long had New Jersey districts and teachers’ unions murmuring and passing notes about what it will all mean.
In this budget address this past week, Christie elicited some sighs of relief from educators after promising to restore an average of one fifth of the state aid to schools that he had slashed statewide after taking office. But the future of various programs remains uncertain.
The Republicans’ proposal would cut funding for pre-school programs in half.
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But next door, the Union City School District may suffer a blow with the New Jersey Senate Republicans’ proposal to roll back state-funded full-day preschool in urban districts. Christie failed to endorse the measure in his address, but no one knows whether it could still rear its head in some form.
Reform aid
West New York’s Harry L. Bain Elementary School will receive funding for a new building after being selected as one of the 10 schools in New Jersey to benefit from a state investment of $584 million under Christie’s revamped School Development Authority construction program.
The new program is a marked decrease from the 52 schools that had been given the go-ahead for improvements by former Gov. Jon Corzine in 2008. While nine of those schools are on Gov. Christie’s top-10 list of schools to fund now, Harry L. Bain was not on the original 2008 list.
Harry L. Bain School was selected through the completion of a six-month Capital Plan Review by an internal working group of SDA and Department of Education officials, which demonstrated that the school met the criteria of educational need and cost efficiency.
In terms of design, Christie has talked about a standardization of designs for new schools under the program, with districts choosing from possible prototypes.
In his 2011 N.J. Budget Address, Christie also announced an increase of $250 million in aid to be dispersed among districts.
Pre-school slashes
Union City got some good news last week. The city will get $2 million more than last year’s $145.6 million school aid amount, according to a published report.
But it’s unclear if the good news will trickle all the way down to pre-school programs.
When Gov. Christie came for a “town hall”-style meeting in Union City on Feb. 9, an audience member, during the Q & A portion, inquired about the budget future of all-day preschools – specifically those in Union City. At the time, Christie sidestepped the question.
On the table was a proposal submitted to Christie by the Senate Republicans to slice preschool funding in half and divert the $300 million saved to cash-strapped suburban and rural schools.
The total state pre-K spending statewide, according to a recent study by the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER), was $506,695,266 for the ’08-’09 school year.
Pre-school programs, then, would be reduced to half a day, which would mirror a state Supreme Court ruling arrived upon in 1998 with Abbott v. Burke.
The plan has not been finalized, and negotiations are ongoing. With Christie failing to endorse it in his address, no one knows whether it will reemerge in a different form.
The 1985 court case Abbott v. Burke determined that the state had to divert billions of dollars toward education in the poorest communities, with the idea that poorer districts should receive funding equal to that spent in the wealthiest districts in the state.
The most at-risk poor urban districts were labeled Abbott districts on the basis that they had the lowest socioeconomic status and demonstrated failure to provide adequate education to students.
As of 2009, there were 31 Abbott districts, including Union City and West New York.
In 1998, the state Supreme Court decision forced the state to fund a half-day preschool for all 3- and 4-year-olds in these districts. Gov. Christie Whitman took the decision a step further by extending the program to full day.
In the Abbot Preschool Program, the state Department of Education (DOE) distributes funds to school districts, which may then disperse the funds to Head Start programs or private child care centers. Additionally, the Department of Human Services (DHS) may provide funding to the district and/or providers to offer extended-day programs.
According to a 2009 NIEER study, there were 40,439 enrolled in the ’08-’09 school year in the Abbot Preschool Program, which offers certified teachers, small class sizes, screenings/referral and support services, and breakfast, lunch, and snack.
Some have decried the half-day preschool proposal for its potential detrimental impact upon a child’s early development and upon working families in poor, urban communities.
The 2006 Abbott School Preschool Program Longitudinal Effects Study (APPLES), conducted by NIEER to assess the program’s ability to close the achievement gaps between wealthy and poor districts, found that children who participate in the program exhibited substantial gains in language, literacy, and math, and that those who attended for two years significantly outperformed those who attended for one year or not at all.
Among the Abbott v. Burke districts, the Union City School District annually outperforms the others in terms of student achievement.
The Union City School District has roughly 1,800 3- and 4-year-olds enrolled in the Abbott School Preschool Program.