School Legislative Report: Tenure Reform, NCBL Waivers, School Funding Formula

[Editor's Note: If you're familiar with the school board's public meetings, you're undoubtedly aware of longtime Trustee Sheila Brogan's education legislative update, a collection of what's going on in education law and policy on the national and state level.]

The following update was provided by Sheila Brogan to Patch:

NCLB Waiver 

As reported last month, New Jersey’s Department of Education is filing a waiver from the NCLB accountability standards. The application has been developed and the NJDOE is accepting public comment on the application through Wednesday, November 9. The application mentions NJ’s educational reforms that include college and career readiness standards, assisting the low performing districts, closing the achievement gap, opening more opportunities for students by making vouchers and charter schools available, improving teacher and principal evaluation systems now being piloted in eleven districts, and changing the tenure laws. 

Special Education Funding    

Last week the NJ Department of Education released a report on special education funding required by the legislature. Denver-based consultants from Augenblick Palaich and Associates (APA) analyzed the School Funding Reform Act (SFRA) to determine if it adequately funded special education costs.

SFRA uses a census formula based on a percentage of total students needing special education services, the assumption is that all districts would have a lower or the same percentage of special needs students. That percentage is 14.69%. Many of the urban districts have a much higher percentage of students needing special education services. 

APA recommended (1) New Jersey might need to consider funding special education based on the actual enrollment of special education students in districts and (2) the state might need to consider some differentiation of funding for higher cost students before the extraordinary aid threshold is reached.” APA further recommends that “In order to move forward with any changes to the system New Jersey must fully understand the impacts of the new funding system. To do this the state must: (1) fully implement the new special education funding system; (2) collect data in a manner that allows for analysis of both where special education students are being funded/served and the costs of serving different types of special education students; and (3) undertake an analysis of special education enrollment patterns and costs associated with students across district sizes and types.”

For more info, go to this link.   

NJ Department of Education Reorganization    

Education Commissioner Cerf announced last week that the NJDOE would open seven “regional achievement centers” providing help primarily to NJ’s low achieving districts. Cerf said, “they will be responsible for a very specific degree of improvement in things like graduation rates, reducing dropouts, or increasing third-grade literacy.”  

The county DOE offices will remain in place and will focus on compliance issues and will be supervised by the regional offices. In announcing the reorganization Cerf acknowledged that the best thing for high performing districts would be for the DOE to leave them alone.

Benefits Ruling   

NJ Superior Court Judge Linda Feinberg in mid-October ruled against Governor Christie’s benefit and pension reform initiative as it pertained to New Jersey judges.  

In her ruling, Feinberg pointed to the NJ Constitution that prohibits judges’ compensation from being reduced while serving their term. The increased contribution for pension and health benefits would reduce the total compensation and thus judges should be exempt from the increased contributions opined Feinberg.  

Governor Christie disagreed with the ruling. The state will appeal the decision. Christie notified the court of his intention to appeal after the ruling was announced. Governor Christie also lashed out at Judge Feinberg saying, "This outrageous, self-serving decision, where a judge is protecting her own pocketbook and those of her colleagues, is why the public has grown to have such little faith in the objectivity of the judiciary.” 

Tenure Reform            

Tenure reform legislation is likely to be discussed in the legislature after the November election during the lame duck session. State Senator Teresa Ruiz has been working on a tenure reform bill, TeachNJ, since last winter. 

She is now collecting feedback on her proposed bill from stakeholders. In her draft bill, teachers would attain tenure after four years of work with satisfactory evaluations and tenure would be lost after two consecutive years of unsatisfactory evaluations. Also, principals would have the right to make decisions about hiring or firing staff.  

The bill summary states, “This bill provides that, except as otherwise constrained by seniority rights that have accrued to employees who acquired tenure prior to the bill’s effective date, the principal, in consultation with school improvement panels established under the bill, will have sole authority to appoint or remove an employee in the position of teacher, assistant principal, or vice-principal. Any action taken by a principal to appoint or remove an employee will not be subject to approval by either the superintendent of schools or the board of education.”  

The improvement panel consists of the principal, assistant or vice-principal, and someone from the teaching staff nominated by the principal and approved by the teaching staff.  The panel is responsible for hiring, mentoring, evaluating, and removing ineffective teachers. They would also identify professional development opportunities for the staff.          

The NJEA announced last week their proposals for tenure reform. NJEA is recommending that teachers in their first year of employment receive intensive mentoring and training and new teachers would be partnered with an experience teacher. They are also recommending four years to tenure rather than the current three and that tenured teachers moving to another district would only need two years of work rather than three to gain tenure in the new district.         

NJEA will also call for mandatory full-day kindergarten and class size limits. Both would be costly proposals to implement in these uncertain economic times.          

The Department of Education in their application for a waiver from the NCLB accountability standards mentions the Governor’s proposed tenure reform including modifying the State's tenure law, allowing for differentiated pay to provide incentives for highly effective teachers to work in the low income and urban districts and ending the practice of firing the newest teachers first during a layoff. 

Residency Requirement    

Last winter the legislature approved and the Governor signed a law requiring public employees to live in New Jersey. The impact of this legislation will be felt this year, as school districts are now required to hire NJ residents or those who will move to NJ within one year of being hired. For districts that border New York, Pennsylvania, and Delaware, this legislation might impact hiring. 

School Funding     

In 2008 the legislature approved a new funding formula, School Funding Reform Act (SFRA), and funded it in the first year (2009). In 2010 and 2011 aid was cut and the formula was not fully funded.  Governor Christie has expressed dissatisfaction with the formula and how much money is allocated to the urban districts. He has authorized a review of the formula with the idea that new school funding guidelines would be instituted with the 2012 budget.     

Last week Education Commissioner Cerf announced a panel of experts who would be advising him about the effectiveness of the formula and proposing possible changes to the funding formula.

The experts are as follows: Sean Corcoran from NY University; Eric Hanushek and Susanna Loeb from Stanford University; Brian Jacob from University of Michigan; Steve Rivkin from Amherst College; Marguerite Roza from University of Washington; Hason Willis from Stockton, California School District; Cecilia Rouse from Princeton University; Mona Mourshed from McKinley & Co.

Eric Hanushek testified for the state in the School Funding case last year. The case was decided in favor of the Abbott districts and the state was ordered to provide $500 million more in school aid to the Abbott districts.    

Senate President Sweeney requested information from Cerf as to the composition of the panel and details about the process.  

Unfunded Mandate    

New Jersey’s Anti-Harassment, Intimidation and Bullying Law is the strongest in the nation. Passed by the legislature last year and signed into law, the legislation became effective September 1. The laws intention is not questioned and districts across NJ have implemented the law. However, the layers of paper work and the amount of training required for staff has been time consuming and have expenses associated with it. In reality it is an unfunded mandate and districts are now voicing concerns about the law and its highly regulated implementation.  

Allamuchy has filed the first complaint with the Council on Local Mandates calling the legislation an unfunded mandate with costs associated for staff training, stipends for staff who must work overtime, legal fees, and new administrative fees. Other districts are likely to join the complaint by filing amicus briefs. 

Race to the Top Grants  

Federal grant money is available for preschool and kindergarten programs. NJ is filing an application for grant money. As a requirement, states who are awarded the RTTT grants will have to implement school readiness assessments to children as young as 4. Those states that design assessments for kindergartners in the first few months of school will be given consideration for the grants. The assessments are not the typical paper and pencil tests but would be based on a teacher’s observation of a child’s early school readiness skills. 

School Choice    

Last year the number of districts that could participate in the School Choice program was expanded to 70 districts. School districts can opt to allow students from other districts to be enrolled in their schools. Funding for these students would come from the sending districts. Parents must notify their home districts of their decision to send their child to a school choice district in the 2012-13 school year by November 1. The Englewood Public School District is the only Choice district in Bergen County.  (For a listing of Choice districts, go to this link.)

Education Transformation Task Force Report     

Last month the Education Transformation Task Force issued a preliminary report identifying some DOE regulations that were onerous for districts and recommending their elimination. In their interim report they concluded that QSAC, New Jersey’s monitoring system for school districts, needed significant revision. 

Currently, all 616 school districts in NJ are subject to monitoring every 3 years.  Districts are monitored in five areas: fiscal management, governance, instruction and programs, operations management, and personnel.  There are 334 indicators that are reviewed. 

The first step in the process is a one-year self-audit by the district and collecting documents that verify the 334 indicators. The NJ DOE then visits the district to review the documents, tours the buildings, and observes instruction. Ridgewood is a high performing district and does well on the monitoring, but it is a time consuming process that takes staff away from the real work of the district, educating students. 

The task force is critical of QSAC saying it concentrates on the input rather than the output: student performance and achievement. They also find fault with a system that monitors all districts and does not leave the needed time to work more closely with failing districts.     

Their recommendation is to keep the five review areas but to limit the number of indicators to 54. They also recommend that the NCLB accountability system be joined with QSAC, so that the focus is on student outcomes not the minutia of the day-to-day district operations.  There are 1,200 pages of statutes and 1,000 pages of regulations that govern New Jersey school districts. 

The Task Force has begun to identify areas where statutes and regulations overlap or duplicate tasks. They note that some regulations are overly prescriptive, like the one that mandates the type of file cabinets needed to house school records and what type of paper may be used for district newsletters. They conclude that any regulation that does not advance student learning, safety, and financial integrity is a candidate for modification or elimination.    

They point out that some regulations should be eliminated and that decision-making should be returned to the district. Districts, knowledgeable about their budgets and needs, should be allowed to make decisions about how many aides are needed, what salaries to budget when new staff is needed, and how many custodians are required to adequately clean a building.

They note that since student records must be kept for 100 years districts should be allowed to store them electronically.

Changes to statute can only be accomplished through the legislature.  Regulation modification or elimination is the job of the Department of Education and/or the State Board of Education. The Task Force will present their final recommendations at the end of December. 

School Bus Advertising    

The legislature, in an effort to provide school districts with additional revenue, passed a bill last year allowing school districts to put ads on the outside of school buses. The State Board of Education is still working on regulations to implement the new law. These regulations won’t be ready until February at the earliest. The law requires the revenue collected be split between fuel costs and the district’s program and services.