State Rejects Jersey City's Request For $215M In Emergency Aid

JERSEY CITY, NJ — The district continues to receive less and less aid from the state, causing one school official to say the state has abandoned the district's 33,000 students.

The district recently asked the state for $215 million in emergency state aid for the 2019-2020 school year. It received $0.

Board of Education President Sudban Thomas railed against the state when asked about the lack of aid awarded to Jersey City.

"The state's continued reckless abandon of the 33,000 students of Jersey City public schools is most disappointing, further vindicating our decision to sue the state for full funding of Jersey City Schools," Thomas said.

The lack of emergency aid is the latest blow to the district that has faced ever-decreasing financial support from the state.

Jersey City could get $379.7 million in state aid, 6.6 percent less aid for the 2019-2020 academic year, nearly $27.1 million less than it received last year. The state had direct control of the Jersey City Public School District until October 2018.

The decrease in state aid could deal a major blow to the district's teaching staff, according to an article on NorthJersey.com.

"We're looking at laying off 415 schoolteachers if these cuts are allowed to stand," Thomas said in the article. "We have 2,400 teachers, so that's close to 20 percent of our population. It would lead to further overcrowding of our classrooms, which are already crowded because of underfunding over years."

Thomas told Patch about how recently, more than 80 of the district's most severely disabled students at A. Harry Moore School had to be relocated from the building partially collapsed.

The state identified the roof at A. Harry Moore School in 2005 to be replaced, Thomas said, "but yet they allowed the most vulnerable of our children to continue to operate in an unsafe building."

Dozens of district applied to the state for more than $362 million in emergency state aid. The state granted just $15 million in aid. Camden asked for the next most aid after Jersey City, $43 million, and the state is reviewing that request. Paterson asked for more than $24 million. It received a little more than $5.1 million.

Related: Jersey City Schools Could Get Less State Aid Under Tax Plan

Email: daniel.hubbard@patch.com