Time
is ripe for poorer districts to
contribute
Friday, March 10, 2006 • The
Star-Ledger
David Sciarra is a lefty lawyer whose
mission in life is to help urban kids get a decent
education.
And he's very good at it. For a decade or
so, he's been beating the state over the head in court,
forcing Trenton to send a flood of money to the poorest
school districts, known as Abbotts.
That money has helped poor kids catch up
to suburban kids on reading and math scores. Among fourth
graders, the gap has been cut in half.
But these days, Sciarra is a nervous
fellow.
Because while the urban schools have
gotten more and more money, the suburban districts have not.
Their basic aid has been virtually frozen since 2002,
sending their property taxes soaring.
Sciarra knows that suburban legislators,
the majority in New Jersey, won't let this go on forever. It
is a political time bomb, and he wants to defuse
it.
Which brings us to his surprising
recommendation: Sciarra now believes that some of the
healthier Abbott districts should lighten the state's load
by raising their own property taxes. Hoboken, that yuppie
haven, is only the most obvious case.
So now Sciarra, the man who brought
billions of dollars to the cities, says some of them are
making out a bit too well.
"If an Abbott district can contribute
more funds because property values have gone up, they need
to do so," Sciarra says. "We have to adjust."
The next move is up to Gov. Jon Corzine,
who now faces a test of his political gumption.
He is traveling the state this week
warning people to brace themselves for tough budget moves.
Now we'll see if that includes some of the heavily
Democratic Abbott districts.
Gordon MacInnes, the assistant education
commissioner charged with running the Abbott programs,
recommended recently that Corzine take the leap.
"There are a number of districts that can
afford to raise their taxes," MacInnes says. "This is not a
fair system now. I don't think it's sustainable over time.
You may get to the stage where the Legislature just won't
budge, and then you'll have a constitutional
crisis."
But he knows it will be tough. It's been
tried before.
In 2003, the state ordered 11 Abbott
districts, including Newark and Elizabeth, to raise their
taxes by a combined $26 million a year. A few days later,
the McGreevey administration reversed the order.
"After they got a few phone calls, they
folded," says MacInnes.
Corzine seems to be a more serious
fellow. And the pressure to change has grown since
2003.
"This is a wound that gets worse every
year," says Lynne Strickland, head of the Garden State
Coalition of Schools, which represents more than 100
suburban districts.
Strickland and her coalition have been
remarkably supportive of the Abbott programs over the years.
But it's getting harder for her to hold that alliance
together.
"Things have gotten better in a lot of
Abbott districts," she says. "They need to contribute more.
Fair is fair."
Even if it raises only a modest sum, she
believes it would relieve the political pressure. The state
could divert the savings to special education program in the
suburbs.
Sciarra, who's with the Education Law
Center, would take only a small step in this direction by
requiring tax hikes in the five or six districts with tax
burdens below the state average. And he is pushing for an
increase in aid to all districts this year, against all
odds.
If Corzine tries to freeze aid to the
Abbott districts this year, as he may, you can expect that
Sciarra will go back to court. That, he says, would
shortchange the kids by forcing cutbacks in
programs.
The tax argument concerns only who should
pay the bills. And on that question, Sciarra is more
flexible.
He doesn't represent Abbott district
taxpayers, after all.
His clients are the kids.
Tom Moran's column appears Wednesdays and Fridays. He may
be reached at tmoran@starledger.com or (973) 392-1823.
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