Legislative Update: Ridgewood Among Few To Keep Spring Elections

[Editor's note: Ridgewood Board of Education Trustee Sheila Brogan keeps a close eye on all the national, state and local education news. She compiles a legislative update at school board meetings and is kind enough to share it here.]

Elections    

Close to 90 percent of New Jersey school districts will move their School Board elections to November. Ridgewood’s BOE is one of 71 districts that the election.  Ridgewood voters will have the opportunity to vote on the and for on Tuesday, April 17. Polls will be open 7 a.m. to 9 p.m.    

Boards of Education that decided to move the election to November were enticed to do so by the law’s provision that the school board, as long as the budget is below or at cap, would not be required to put their budgets out for a vote. 

Race to the Top 3    

New Jersey will receive $38 million from the Federal Government’s Race To The Top 3 grant. Half of the money, $19 million, will be split among 372 districts and charter schools. that will be divided over four years.  

State Education Aid    

The majority of districts (485) will see an increase in state aid next year. Ninety-six districts will see a decrease in their aid. Twenty-three of the 31 Abbott districts will see deceased funding and two will be flat funded. Camden will lose $5.5 million next year and East Orange will lose $2.9 million. Six Abbott districts will see an increase in aid.     

in state aid and next year will receive $2,015,886, a $317,035 increase. For the entire state, direct state aid will increase by $139,445,982. The Department for Education released last week its Education Funding Report.  

According to an article in NJ Spotlight.com on February 29, 2012, the report’s key recommendations are as follows:

• Create a 50% reduction of adjustment aid for districts spending above the per-pupil adequacy amounts over a five-year period;
• Adjust the weights assigned to at-risk students back to the levels originally recommended by the Professional Judgment Panel that calculated the original adequacy amounts included in School Funding Reform Act (this will mean a decrease in aid to low income districts);
• Convene a task force to develop a new measure for at-risk students in place of the federal free and reduced lunch eligibility currently in place;
• Calculate individual district aid based on average daily enrollment, used by 40 other states, rather than the single day count currently in use;
• Increase by $3,346 in the per-pupil weights for special education students;
• Reduce the weighing factor used for county vocational schools, from 31 percent over the per pupil high school weight in fiscal 2012 to 26% in fiscal 2013.   

Tenure Reform

Senator Ruiz’ bill is up for discussion in the Senate Education on March 5. She would like to see her bill approved by both houses by July. 

Educators’ Evaluation System   

Rutgers University Graduate School of Education has been selected to conduct independent evaluations of the teacher evaluation system now being piloted in 10 NJ school districts. The final report will be submitted at the end of the next school year with a plan to implement the new educator evaluation framework in the 2013-14 school year. 

Legislation

 S454/A2421: a bill that permits students to participate in a voluntary survey if the district sends prior written notification to the parents, passed the NJ Senate on Feb. 13 by a 25 to 15 vote. It now goes to the Assembly Education committee for discussion.