epps, he's awesome...

http://www.talkingpolitics.net/Charles-Epps.htm

(check out the clips on his London 'conference'...)

The original point was not really about teachers' salaries, per se. The issue is whether Healy is allowed to get away with the "easy out" of automatic tax hikes to meet the city's obligations to its schools. There is so much inefficiency, nepotism and sloth in the Greater JC Bureaucracy (and by this I include not only City Hall proper but the JCPA, etc.) that a house cleaning is long overdue---and MUST precede any discussion of raising taxes.
By the way, on the subject of teacher (read: school administrator) salaries: does anyone believe Epps really deserves to earn $230K a year? That's a princely sum.
http://www.nj.com/hudsoncountynow/ind ... ink_of_threeyear_ext.html

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Was the original reference to city government salaries or school district salaries?

If to school district salaries: Personally, I agree completely that I'm tired about teachers, who mostly work way fewer hours than other professionals (even after you factor in extracurricular work, grading, etc.), whining about their low salaries at a time when they earn more than most of the parents and actually earn more than a lot of low-level lawyers and accountants.

On the other hand, at this point, I think one of the things that's really right about the district is the quality of the elementary school teachers. Even at the schools with weak test scores, a lot of the teachers are fine.

So, given the challenges involved with educating the children of uneducated parents who grow up eating toxic food, breathing toxic air and playing in toxic dirt, I think it's reasonable to pay pretty high teacher salaries here.

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School systems are a bit different though than straight up municipal government. Certainly there is room for mismanagement and patronage, but the largest salary cost is probably teachers. Teachers usually earn more money as they accrue more education-- credits beyond bachelor's, Master's degree, credits beyond Master's, PhD. They also earn formulaic salary increases based on the duration of employment. While experienced teachers with a lot of education cost more, in most cases they also make better teachers. Additionally, the Jersey City school system is also competing with suburban districts for teachers, so really I don't think there is a whole lot of room to lower the biggest overall salary cost in the school system. On the other hand, in a district the size of Jersey City, there are probably a lot of administrators earning far more than the teachers and doing far less work.

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I wonder what it would take to actually get the demographic info for the schools by zip. You know they'd stonewall you right off the bat. Maybe a FOIA request?

As for where our money actually goes, in August the JJ reported that in Jersey City, more than half of the city's employees earned at least $77,448 last year, the highest median salary among the county's 12 municipalities, and well above the median for all of NJ residents. That's more than many people with a Masters degree and decades of experience. It's a government run for the benefit of it's employees, not the public.

dont look at me - i already pay 12k a year

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I hate the idea that the state and the taxpayers might be holding the kids hostage, but, yes, we somehow have to clean house at city hall and in the tax abatement area.

It is absurd to think of a struggling single mom who lives in a little, overpriced house in the suburbs subsidizing pre-K education at P.S. 37 for the children of well-paid Newport residents who don't directly or indirectly pay much to support the schools. (A few years ago, when I went to a birthday party at Newport, I met a bunch of parents who were sending their children to the P.S. 37 pre-K, so, no, the parents there do not send all of their children to Stevens or other private schools.)

We've got mothers hiring their felon sons onto the public payroll (and ducking camera-toting reporters), broken down street sweepers that act like leaf blowers and a mayor who doesn't check in until 10:30 and then breaks at 12:00 for a liquid lunch.
So before Healy even THINKS about raising taxes to pay for promised wage hikes and offset lower school funding increases (not cuts, mind you), he had best free up some funds by firing about half the paper-pushing bureaucrats at City Hall.

Gov's school spending plan approved

by Journal staff
Monday January 07, 2008, 9:18 PM

The debate and arm-twisting went well past dinner time, but Gov. Jon Corzine's controversial school spending plan was approved tonight by both the state assembly and senate.

The assembly passed the measure with 41 votes, Assemblywoman Joan Quigley, D-Jersey City said earlier tonight. The holdup was in the senate, where for much of the evening, the spending plan appeared to be doomed.

The vote at one point was 20-19, against the measure, but when supporters of the plan got their 21st and deciding vote, 10 Republicans changed their "no" votes to abstentions, an aide for Sen. Sandra Bolden Cunningham, D-Jersey City, said. The final vote tally in the senate was 21-8, with 11 abstentions.

In the Assembly, Hudson legislators Brian Stack, D-Union City, Silverio Vega, D-West New York, Vincent Prieto, D-Secaucus, and Joan Quigley, D-Jersey City, voted in favor of the funding formula, Quigley said.

Jersey City Democratic Assemblymen Lou Manzo and Charles Epps Jr., who is also the city's superintendent of schools, voted against the gov's plan.

"It breaks my heart to vote for it," Quigley said before the vote. "But I have six towns that I represent and five towns benefit, as does the Hudson County Vocational School."

The one town that doesn't benefit, of course, is Jersey City, where Mayor Jerramiah Healy has waged a vigorous campaign against passage of the new formula.

"The governor said we will find another way to help Jersey City and I have to take that on faith," said Quigley, who also represents East Newark, Harrison, Kearny, North Bergen, and Secaucus in Hudson County and Fairview in Bergen County.

Quigley said she learned yesterday Jersey City would be eligible for $1 million in additional preschool aid.

In the state Senate, Nicholas Sacco, D-North Bergen, and Bernard Kenny, D-Hoboken, voted for the funding plan while Bolden Cunningham, D-Jersey City, voted against it.

Bolden Cunningham also represents Bayonne, which would receive a 20 percent boost under the plan.

"I think the formula works for Bayonne. Unfortunately for Jersey City it would require we raise taxes," Bolden Cunningham said. "I understand from the (schools) superintendent (Charles T. Epps Jr.) he is going to have to lay off people."

Asked if she felt any obligation to support the measure given her recent appointment as the Senate's majority whip, Bolden Cunningham pointed out she begins that post today, and in any event, her "main concern is always going to be Bayonne and Jersey City."

According to the formula, Jersey City would get a 2 percent bump in aid next year -- from $410.3 million to $418.5 million. But since according to the state's calculation Jersey City's taxpayers should be paying roughly double the $82.8 million they are paying now for their public schools, the district in three years would either have to raise taxes or cut services, according to Healy and others.

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Assembly, Senate approve school funding plan

GEOFF MULVIHILL

The Associated Press

TRENTON, N.J. - A plan to overhaul the way New Jersey's state government subsidizes local schools was adopted late Monday, after stalling in the Senate for three tense hours.

The Senate approved the measure 21-8, some five hours after debate began on the Senate floor. The measure originally stalled one vote shy of passing, but was approved after $20 million in special education funding was promised.

The bill had to be approved in both houses before the end of the legislative session at noon on Tuesday. Otherwise, it would have needed to be reintroduced in the new session.

The Senate's second vote followed intense lobbying and talk of stopping the clock just before noon Tuesday. The Assembly passed the bill 41-36 earlier in the evening.

The original Senate vote was 20-19 in favor of the bill. But it takes 21 votes to pass a bill in the Senate. Failure to approve the bill would have been a major setback for Gov. Jon S. Corzine, who put forth the new funding plan.

"The new law replaces a flawed system with an equitable, balanced, and nonpartisan formula that addresses the needs of all students, regardless of where they live," Corzine said in a statement after the final vote.

For three hours, lawmakers huddled in a case of serious politicking that crossed party lines in complicated ways.

The Democrats who favored the changes gave up on any hope of swaying the six African-American Democrats in the chamber, who remained united in their opposition to the bill out of concern that it would hurt the high-poverty, largely minority cities in their districts.

Instead, the Democrats tried to change the minds of Republicans who opposed the measure for other reasons.

They finally got three of them , Martha Bark, Gerald Cardinale and Joseph A. Palaia , to change their votes by promising to introduce legislation early in the next session to increase subsidies for special education students. Ten senators who had voted on the measure on the first ballot did not participate in the second vote. They can officially enter their votes later, though.

In a bill that calls for $7.8 billion in state spending, it took in the end a relatively modest $20 million to persuade them.

"We had to get this done," said Sen. Raymond Lesniak, D-Middlesex. "This was so important, not only for the governor but also for the future of the state."

Ahead of Monday's vote, senators from both parties bashed the Corzine proposal.

Sen. Ronald Rice, a Democrat who represents parts of Newark and other Essex County communities, and Republican Leonard Lance, who represents a swath of rural northwest New Jersey, both urged their colleagues to take more time to study the bill and vote against it Monday, the last day of the legislative session.

"We need to know where the new funding is coming from," said Lance.

That's one of many questions opponents said remained unanswered.

Under the proposal from Corzine, aid would be tied in part to the number of low-income students in each district. As a result, a structure set up in response to a series of state Supreme Court mandates that used one formula for 31 poor districts and another for the rest of the state's 618 school systems would be essentially scrapped.

"He can put in some reforms," said Telissa Dowling, a Jersey City parent who came to Trenton to protest the governor's plan. "He doesn't need to cut the money."

Suburban districts with big jumps in enrollment or a large number of low-income students could see annual aid increases as big as 20 percent. The relief is welcome in many of those places because most of those schools have seen their state aid barely budge this decade.

But most of the 31 urban districts would see aid hikes of 2 percent this year, then have state support held flat after that.

Advocates for the urban districts, including Sen. Wayne Bryant, a Democrat who represents Camden and some of its suburbs, say that even with a 2 percent increase, some of those poor districts are likely to have to cut programs because the districts' costs , including contracts with teachers are rising faster than that.

You should contact them

If you have a news story or story suggestions, please contact
City Editor Jason Fink at (201) 217-2550 or jason.fink@jjournal.com

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GrovePath -- I love the Journal, but someone needs to tell the editor who butchered this story to rerun the story, or some kind of big clarification. It looks as if the editor cut out the paragraph explaining what Kenneth Robinson, and that really wrecks the story.

Obviously, I'm the Titan of Typos, but leaving out the explanation of how Robinson died is more than just a typo.

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Which school was it? One thing I've discovered is that, to some extent, each school here is a fiefdom. Each of the downtown schools has a good or great principal who really fights to keep that school at a reasonable level of quality, but some of the schools south of Journal Square are really terrible, and those are the ones that are responsible for bringing down the district test schools.

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Was this because the school had no money for books, or was too disorganized to buy books, or because it had a curriculum that tried to do without books?

The reason I'm asking is that sometimes schools try to reform their curricula by getting rid of textbooks.

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But, if you look at teacher Web site discussion boards, the teachers there talk about how the pay in the Jersey City schools is pretty good and the student-teacher ratios are reasonable.

The teachers seem to have more complaints about, for example, the Paterson schools, and really bitter, bitter complaints about the Catholic parochial schools. A lot of the parochial schools pay terribly poorly.

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Here's another great site (the New Jersey Department of Education report card site):

http://education.state.nj.us/rc/

If you look up a report card for a school, the report card will tell you much the district spends per child on teachers, buildings, etc.

Author talks of Abbott's impact, gov's new plan

Monday, January 07, 2008
By JOHN MOONEY
NEWHOUSE NEWS SERVICE

Gov. Jon Corzine's proposed $7.8 billion school funding plan would effectively end New Jersey's decades of focus on its 31 poorest districts, as dictated under the state Supreme Court's Abbott vs. Burke rulings. Instead, it would spread the money across all districts with rising numbers of poor and immigrant children.

As a journalist with The Jersey Journal and then the Gannett News Service newspapers, Deborah Yaffe spent 13 years writing about the Abbott decisions and their impact on schools. Five years ago, she began research for a book chronicling the people and legacy of the Abbott rulings and their legal predecessor, Robinson vs. Cahill. "Other People's Children: The Battle for Justice and Equality in New Jersey's Schools" has recently been published by Rutgers University Press.

Yaffe talked with Star-Ledger education writer John Mooney about the Abbott and Robinson cases and about the current debate over Corzine's plan.

Q. Who were some of the people at the heart of the Abbott and Robinson cases?

A. Kenneth Robinson was the named plaintiff in the original case and also was from Jersey City, where I started. It was important to me to find out what happened to him. It was an extraordinarily sad story and his death made no impact at all. Nobody remembered him, and to a certain extent I found that to be emblematic of the way this whole case unfolded. The people who were nominally at its center, the kids, the parents, arguably the whole poor of New Jersey, ended up being shunted to the sidelines.

Q. Were the families bitter about that?

A. A lot of the kids didn't even know they were involved in this case, certainly not at the time. Some of them vaguely knew about it, but it hadn't been a part of their lives in a meaningful way. They had plenty to worry about in their own lives. A couple of parents said to me that they had thought naively that the case might make a difference to their own children, but the whole thing has taken so long that their kids were well out of school. I wouldn't say they were bitter, but some of the parents noticed the irony in that.

Q. In his new funding plan Corzine has proposed doing away with the Abbott districts' special status and its requirements that the state provide the resources for these schools to spend at least as much as the richest districts, or so-called parity. What do you think of that? Will it pass muster with the state Supreme Court?

A. It is a new court, and there is nobody on that court who had any hand in any of the decisions that led to parity or that sustained parity. It may well be that members of the court will be very skeptical of whether parity has made any difference and whether it matters and whether it is a reasonable goal. But then they would be abandoning a major precedent of the New Jersey Supreme Court. I'm no expert on law, but I think judges are leery of doing that, and for good reason.

Q. Has parity succeeded?

A. It is very difficult for me to defend the statement that we should spend more money on rich kids than on poor kids. I don't see how in a democracy we can defend that statement.

THE JERSEY CITY PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM SUCKS. My daughter attended a public school here. It was one of the worst experiences I had. Her school didn\'t have any books, so the children wrote down as the teacher dictated from the only book. WHERE IN THE HELL WERE THE BOOKS!!!!!! Whenever she had homework, I couldn\'t help her, There wasn\'t a book for me to explaine the work. I could go on and on but the bottom line was-----the more that I complained the more I was being labled a trouble maker. Can you believe that??? I took action---I TOOK HER OUT OF SCHOOL AND NOW I\'M HOMESCHOOLING. It\'s one on one and she actually has BOOKS.
The schools are over populated and the children are suffering. The teachers are over worked and under paid. And my tax dollars were lineing the pockets of the government. So if we lose 111 million dollars, it\'s not like we had it before. And as far as the property taxes----everyone is suffering except the mayor

You have a good point. I always thought the rebate was a stupid idea. Why not just CUT the tax rate? Well, it must make a nice job(s) for the state to oversee this rebate... Issuing a check takes a ton of transactions and oversight.
heh heh.

Also, we're all overlooking a very important fact here. Corzine is only in his first term. Democrats can't win the state without carrying the cities by big margins. Ultimately, cutting off Jersey City's schools is not in the best of interest of Corzine unless he's not planning on running for reelection. He might be arrogant enough to believe he can win without a huge plurality in Jersey City, but his political advisers probably know better.

Well if you want to open up the entire state budget to scrutiny, maybe its time the state governments stop giving property tax rebates-- where's the sense in collecting money only to give it back to people. Or perhaps the state government should stop subsidizing bloated municipal government with municipal aide every year. Or once again, why not look at an even more radical solution and reverse the legislative mandate that schools are funded through municipal property taxes.

I agree with GrovePath Why aren't we looking at EVERYTHING the state spends before money is yanked away from education? This whole thing sounds like a rob peter to pay paul to me. Sure money can be saved and things be made more efficient to cut waste in the BOE but the State was in charge for a long time. The report they issued on JC was like the fox reporting on the chicken coop.
Grove is right. What about all these towns, with hands in the state till? What are there like 600? I heard an economic report last night that the three major employers in this country are now:
Services, Healthcare and GOVERNMENT

The Newark/Jersey City area is a major hub of the movement of goods and commerce for the whole state, we have problems these smaller communities don't because of the size of the population, density, environment, and infrastructure that supports the tri state area.

Not sure if this helps much with the discussion, but here's a link to the NJ DOE site offering spending data.
New Jersey DOE

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Maybe Ridgewood is a skewed example somehow, but, again, I don't think the downtown schools are mediocre. Under the difficult circumstances they face, they are quite good.

If you go into New York, for example, they talk as if a school in which 80% of the kids pass both the verbal and math standardized tests as a top-tier, 5-star/5-star school. E.g., "Park Slope P.S. 321" and "Greenwich Village P.S. 3" and all that. But all of the downtown schools and most of the Heights schools, and a lot of the schools elsewhere in the city, are either what amounts to 5-star/5-star, 5-star/4-star, or, occasionally, 5-star/3-star schools.

Most of these schools probably could make it into "New York's best schools" book based on test scores.

The question is whether the percentage of cool teachers, teachers with nose rings, great art classes, etc. is as high in Jersey City, but I'm starting to think it is, and the support services (after care) are much more extensive.

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a) I come in peace and respect everyone in this thread. I'm just trying to share data/views here, not be negative toward anyone. Sorry if I somehow err in that regard.

b) I'm not sure what the numbers really include, and I still don't a child in the upper grades, so my data for big kids is based mainly on the test scores and just looking at the big kids at the parks and in my daughter's school, but, anyhow:

1. Even though the amount may look high, it may not really be that outrageously high, for what we're getting, because:

- We are, presumably, making up for years of neglect at weaker schools, and that's bound to cost extra.

- At Cordero/37 in Jersey City, for example, the teachers are getting an average of $7,600 per pupil, compared with $6,500 per pupil at Hawes in Ridgewood. That makes sense, because: expenses and pay might be higher in Jersey City than in Ridgewood; it probably takes higher pay to attract comparable teachers to an urban school; and the figures seem to support the general observation that, whatever is wrong with the Jersey City schools, the teachers them are mostly fine.

- A much higher percentage of our kids come from low-income homes and English as a second language homes and probably would need extra support to do well whether they're here in JerseyCity or in Ridgewood. So, support services costs are $2,400 in Jersey City vs. $1,900 per kid in Ridgewood.

- We have creaky old buildings, and Ridgewood may well have nicer, newer buildings. So, understandably, Ridgewood is spending about $1,160 per kid on buildings while Jersey City has to spend about $$2,250 per kid. If there's corruption, it stands to reason that some of the corruption might be in that figure, but I'll bet the, adjusted for quality, a square foot of residential or commercial space is also quite a bit more expensive than a square foot of space at the same quality level in Ridgewood.

So, these three factors alone could account for about $2,500 in spending differences between Jersey City and Ridgewood.

Also: Jersey City has a kickass pre-K program and a really extensive after care program. It could be that those programs account for a big gap between an "adequate level of spending" and actual expenditures. If so, first, those are great, useful programs, and, second, it might be possible to generate a fair amount of revenue for those programs by charging parents more. Personally, now that I know that the public pre-K program is a good program, I'd be willing to pay a fair amount for it.

I think its a disgrace that JC is spending $2k more per student with such miserable results. Why have we come to accept mediocrity?

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You can't compare Jersey City schools with those of little wealthier Ridgewood!

From Wiki: Ridgewood's median income for a family is $121,848. Only 1.8% of families and 3.0% of the population were below the poverty line, including 2.5% of those under age 18 and 4.3% of those age 65 or over.

I think if Jersey city is only spending $2,000 more per student then it is amazing! Corzine took the easy road and gave our urban school money away to the suburbs -- places like Ridgewood need to be forced to consolidate their services and schools with neighboring areas. NJ is loaded with way too many tiny fiefdoms. Ultimately we (urban property owners and urban parents & children) will pay the price for Corzine giving in to the voting power of these wealthier suburbs!

PILOTs is really only a small part of the problem. Fact is that JC is spending around 17K per pupil..the proposed formula is based on a per pupil spending of around 9K (adequacy). so currently JC is spending almost twice adequecy. That is a big part of the reason the city is only getting a 2% increase (the lowest) from this year. Added to that JC has high "relative" property wealth..even in "bad" parts of the city when compared to other municipalities. JC falls into the group of municipalities that according to state are overspending AND are not paying their fair share for school funding. Under the proposed formula BOTH will be dealt with.

Best case scenario is that JC state aid will be frozen at this year's amount+ 2%, which will not cover the current and expected expenses if the city maintains its current educational services/worforce/etc.. The city will have to raise taxes AND cut services. It cannot continue to increase spending annually at the clip it has been because the state will not pay AND the city can only raise school tax levy by 4% annually, which will not support its current need.

whether to do a reval in light of this formula MUSt be on their minds. Simply raising taxes across the board would be bearable for a year or two..but at some point if they continue to just tack on tax increases without doing a reval and the tax disparity among neighbors increases residents will revolt.

As it relates to school funding, not having a reval in over 10 years and having all these PILOTed properties def. DOES NOT help the situation but the PILOTs are really not THE problem, however it will make addressing the problems (overspending and not paying fair share..according to formula) much harder to deal with.

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If the city collects $100 in total tax revenue before the reval, after the reval the city collects $100 in total tax revenue. Lets say in the city there are 10 properties (Properties A,B,C and so on). Before the reval each property is valued at $100. The tax rate is 10%, and each property pays $10 for a total collection of $100. The total value of the property in the city is worth $1,000.

After the reval, however, property A is worth $1,000. Property B, C, D and so on are only worth $111.11. So now the entire city has a value of $2,000. The 10% tax rate would produce $200 in tax revenue; but a revaluation does not change revenue. Instead, the new rate is 5%. 5% of the total value of the city is $100 in tax revenue.

So property A, worth a lot more than the other properties, pays $50 for property taxes. The other 9 properties pay $5.5. So for one property owner, A, the tax bill goes up. For the other 9, the tax bill goes down. The RATE is reduced. The TOTAL REVENUE remains the same.

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Josh, doesn't the city also get lump sum up front payments as part of these deals? This allows the administrations to basically balance their books by taking revenue for today from the future, a sort of deficit spending.

I am also in a building with a PILOT & there have been many times when I've wondered why we are even in the program: our taxes are almost as much as if we didn't have one. We might even be better off if we opted out of the program as Jphurst mentioned in his post.

As a first time buyer there's a lot that I'm still learning about all of this but it does seem odd to me that the city is pushing these PILOT programs (Grove Pointe is an excellent example) but buyers aren't necessarily benefiting from them.

And clearly the city & the educational system isn't benefiting from PILOT either. My husband & I don't have kids yet but we will one day. And this concerns me already.

So I'm assuming this all leads back to the theory that our elected officials are pushing these programs for their own benefit. Can they do as they want with the PILOT money? Or is supposed to be earmarked for something specific?

Theoretically, Ian is correct in that the abatements are a question of encouraging investment. That may have been true when the waterfront was first being developed.

It's less true, if not at all true, now. In fact, there was at least one large project, I think it was Grove Pointe, that felt it did not need the abatement (or PILOT) to go forward. But the City actually encouraged them to take it and sweetened the pot.

The reason the city is currently promoting PILOTS for large development is not to encourage investment. It is because under the abatement formula, most of the payment goes directly to the city, whereas property taxes are split between the city, county and school district. A few years ago Jersey City agreed to re-do the formula to increase the amount to the county because some other Hudson County municipalities sued Jersey City, claiming that the abatements were improperly depriving the county of revenue. But the school districts didn't get any more money.

Thus, while the overall PILOTS may be LOWER than the total property taxes (or maybe not, as discussed below), the city, which makes the decision, gets more money because of the formula. So over the past several years, abatements have not been done to encourage investment, but to give the city a temporary increase in funds.

Again, the problem is that we are now finding out that there will be significant increased costs in this city, and the State's failure to increase education funding to keep up with cost is a major reason why. If the new developments were part of the ratable base, any increase in taxes could at least be more equitably spread.

In the interest of disclosure, I am under contract to purchase a new unit in one of these developments, which has an abatement. The PILOT is actually quite high, and significantly more than the property taxes on the row house which we own, even though the value of the properties is about the same. If I had any faith in the city's ability to manage itself responsibly, I would seriously consider opting out of the PILOT and just going on regular tax rolls (which I think can be done). Given the latest news, however, I wouldn't do that.

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No. The overall taxes collected by the city should stay the same, but individual RE taxes will rise and fall all over the place. Newly constructed but unabated places will likely fall as the rate falls since their assessments are more accurate, but older places with low assessments that haven't sold in decades will rise considerably even as rates are lowered since their assessments will triple or more.