State asks high court to end Abbott school arrangement Wednesday, March 19, 2008 • BY DUNSTAN McNICHOL • Star-Ledger Staff Attorneys for New Jersey yesterday asked the state Supreme Court to end the Abbott vs. Burke school funding lawsuit, saying Newark and 30 other needy communities no longer require the billions of dollars in special state aid they were awarded through the court rulings in the case. The court orders, designed to meet special needs in poor communities and ensure the needy communities have as much to spend on their schoolchildren as the state's wealthiest towns, are not needed since lawmakers enacted a new school aid formula earlier this year, the state argues. "It is time to abandon this process and refocus, as the School Funding Reform Act does, on providing a thorough and efficient education for all New Jersey children through a unified funding formula," the state's 80-page legal brief says. Attorney General Anne Milgram filed the motion with the Supreme Court late yesterday. While it seeks to end the Supreme Court's 35-year involvement in public school funding, the state's motion will generate another legal battle, said David Sciarra, executive director of the Education Law Center, which has been pressing the Abbott case. "This formula is ad hoc, arbitrary, and does not meet the needs of New Jersey's public school students, especially in the Abbott districts," he said. "We opposed the formula in the Legislature, and we will continue to oppose it in court." Lawmakers and governors have balked at the court's Abbott rulings, a series of court mandates that have steered billions of dollars in additional state support to the so-called Abbott communities while schools in other communities saw limited state aid. Ruling that certain communities were too poor to adequately support their public schools, the court ordered the state to provide hundreds of millions of dollars for preschool programs, school construction and supplemental programs like summer school and reading programs. The result is reflected in the current state budget, in which the Abbott districts receive about $4.4 billion in state aid while non-Abbott communities, which include more than three-fourths of the state's students, receive $3.3 billion. "The continued focus of limited resources is creating the likelihood of additional groups of districts being unable to meet the special needs of their student populations," the state brief says. The state says the new aid formula, which lawmakers adopted hastily on the last night of the 212th Legislature in January, was thoroughly reviewed and based on years of input and analysis by a variety of experts. Under the formula, state officials calculated the amount of resources and money needed to provide a thorough public school education, then distributed state funds among 618 school districts according to how many disadvantaged students lived in each community and how much each town could raise locally. The state then supplemented the formula aid with $860 million in "adjustment aid" to ensure that every community will get at least a 2 percent boost in state funding next year, even if the formula would have called for a reduction in aid. In their court filing, state attorneys insist the new formula provides adequate funding for all school children, eliminating the need for the court's Abbott rulings. Dunstan McNichol may be reached at (609) 989-0341 or dmcnichol@starledger.com. © 2008 The Star-Ledger. Used by NJ.com with permission.