In mid-September, voters in the Middle and Dennis school districts overwhelmingly rejected referendum measures that would have significantly increased their property tax levy. They were not alone. A number of districts across the state saw similar angst among voters. In Collingswood, voters rejected a $44.5 million bond issue with 70% of the vote against. Hopewell Valley Regional School District had voters in all three communities the district serves say no to an $87.1 million bond issue even when the state was offering to chip in $23.9 million if the referendum measure passed.
So, what is happening here? Have voters soured on public education? Have property owners reached the end of their rope with ever-increasing education costs going directly to their property tax bottom line? Does the financing of pre-K to 12 education in New Jersey need a fresh review?
In Cape May County, 17 individual municipal school districts with two additional county districts comprising 29 individual schools are becoming a burden on taxpayers that is showing signs of being unsustainable.
Education finance in New Jersey has always been inextricably intertwined with the tradition of home rule. New Jersey has more school districts than Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland and West Virginia combined. Home rule has meant local control of school district spending, priorities and, in some cases, even curriculum. Home rule also has meant that the primary means of paying for elementary and secondary education has been property taxes.
In recent times state mandates have chipped away at home rule, with an increasing array of state requirements that must be met by each district. Even the county superintendent of schools is really a state employee in place to ensure compliance with state regulations.
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Have voters soured on public education? Have property owners
reached the end of their rope with ever-increasing education costs?
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Increasing state involvement came with the burden the courts put on the state to ensure a “thorough and efficient” education for all New Jersey students.
In 1976 New Jersey began collecting an income tax as a direct result of the state’s new responsibility to ensure a quality education for all of its citizens. This was six years after the landmark Robinson v. Cahill case, which stated that “whether the state acts directly or imposes the role upon local governments, the end product must be what the constitution commands,” that being a thorough and efficient education.
Financing schemes have been tried with things like adjustment aid to protect those whom the actual funding formula would harm. Then, seven years ago, all that changed with adjustment aid removed over a multiyear period, costing Cape May County almost $24 million in state aid and once more placing the local homeowner in the crosshairs.
When Middle Township voters said no to the school district referendum measure, they were rejecting another increase to their school property tax component that alone is already more than the property tax obligations they face from local government, county government and their local fire district combined.
It is time to rethink how we structure and finance education in this county. Yes, we are impacted by decisions in Trenton that we will have to incorporate into our thinking, but it is our task, not the task of the Department of Education in Trenton, to look seriously at how we have structured pre-K to 12 education, to look at its performance and to look at its relevance to the well-being of the county.
A quick look at our five public high schools illustrates the point on performance.
The state, responding to federal intrusion in education policy, established a summative score and rating system that takes a series of variables and creates a ranking system among the state’s 350 high schools.
We can certainly find fault with the measuring stick, but it is time to acknowledge that there is also a reality behind the relative standing that puts Ocean City High School at 96 in the state ranking system, Cape Tech at 268 and the other three county public high schools at above 300. We are not doing well by our students, who are graduating on average with fewer skills and fewer opportunities than their counterparts in other areas of the state.
It is time to take a deep look at education in Cape May County, whom it serves and whom it does not serve, what it costs and who bears the burden of that cost. How is the property tax burden shared or not shared? Is the current structure of schools, boards, administrators and educational programs sustainable in a world in which state aid has retreated? Are there not programs out there that are working and that we can learn from, working in communities very much like ours?
It is time our elected officials organize a thorough review of the structure, financing, educational programming and quality of elementary and secondary education in Cape May County. Expert help is available. Such a review needs to be organized to allow for substantial public input. It must consider the flight of young families from the county. It must examine the workforce needs of the county and the areas that would most likely offer our graduating students an opportunity to work and live in the county they grew up in.
If we demand such a review, we will get it. If we do not, we can continue to limp along until the next school district financial crisis and while the median age of county residents continues to rise.
Quotes from the Bible
Train the young in the way they should go; even when old, they will not swerve from it. –Proverbs 22:6
