Aleksandr's Excellent Question

Culturegeist's Friday night DVD

Tonight was going to be a night off from blogging, director Christopher Nolan's 2014 scf-fi epic Interstellar was in my mailbox (from Netflix) when I got home from a long day's work and I was all set to make dinner, prop my feet up and watch it with my trusty cat Buster snoozing at my feet.

But I went to check my blog stats and saw that a reader named Aleksandr Petrov had posted an excellent comment in response to my previous blog in which I suggested that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's "Fairness Formula" isn't really fair.

Aleksandr asked:

"How about fairness to my children from (a) "rich" district? Why (should they) get nothing from state taxes I pay?"

Excellent question Aleksandr, and obviously a complex one, I'll postpone my interstellar adventure to try and answer it.


For those who haven't heard, on Tuesday Governor Christie announced an initiative he calls his "Fairness Formula", which would cap all state funding for New Jersey public schools students at $6,599 per pupil - regardless of the school.

Now Aleksandr's question echoes the feeling of many people in New Jersey, and I respect his concerns and felt compelled to offer an answer. I went to post my answer to to his comment but found I had exceeded the number of words Blogger.com allows in a reply comment; so I decided to just blog my answer.

From the context of Governor Christie's "Fairness Formula", I think a major part of the problem stems from the way that New Jersey's public schools are organized and funded. NJ school districts exist in silos broken up by individual districts, often a stones throw from one another, separated by communities where the tax base is more of a boundary than a physical barrier like a road, a fence or a river.

Inside the Supreme Court 

TopMastersInEducation.com posted an excellent analysis online that explores the impact of how the steady decrease in federal funding of American public schools over the years has put more and more of the financial burden on states and local municipalities and districts to fund their public schools:

The opening of the article points out that a 1973 Supreme Court decision ruled that a formula of public school funding based on local property taxes does not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

The end result is the situation we currently have here in NJ, and in many other states.

As the Top Masters article observes:

"Such a system has created what many school districts view as an unequal distribution of wealth that amounts to wealth discrimination, as more affluent school districts with more business and higher residential property values have been more able to raise more money from local sources than poor districts for more than 40 years now."

So with all due respect Aleksandr, your children do not get "nothing" from the taxes you pay, by their living in a more affluent district than say, East Orange or Trenton, they are getting a lot more in terms of the quality of the public school education they receive by virtue of your ability to afford to live where you do.

East Orange High School

It's far easier for the public schools in your district to attract more qualified teachers and administrators who want to ply their skills in an educational environment where the schools are adequately funded, are better organized and better managed.

Are all communities the same?

Obviously not.


And no one, including me, is going to fault you or any other hard-working parent who wants the best for their children.

To me, the silos and little fiefdoms in NJ are a waste of both human and physical capital.

Let's look at Mercer County as an example.

I was fortunate enough to graduate from West Windsor-Plainsboro South HS, regarded as one of the top public high schools in the nation for years.

WWPSHS is no more than about 15 minutes from Trenton Central HS; but in terms of the disparities in the quality of education, the management and administration of the school systems and the school facilities; they might as well be on different sides of the moon.

Is that the fault of the students growing up in urban districts with under-performing schools?

President Harry S. Truman

I would argue that it's the responsibility of the administrators and school board members, and their inability to operate more efficiently is partly to blame; like Harry S. Truman I'm a "Buck Stops Here" kinda guy.

I actually agree with some of the arguments Governor Christie used in announcing his "Fairness Formula' initiative.

On average Trenton spends about the 3rd highest in the state per pupil, yet they have one of the lowest graduation rates and one of the worst attendance rates in New Jersey.


The Newark school system was so dysfunctional, the state took it over; not that they did any better, was the state's decision to eliminate attendance counselors and truant officers in 2013 really a smart thing to do?

The state-takeover doesn't mean every administrator and teacher in the Newark public school system was a self-serving individual with no concern for the welfare of students - but decades of poor leadership like that has consequences in terms of attracting additional funding.

Earlier this spring, Trenton laid of 164 public school teachers because they were unable to secure additional state funds to help alleviate a $5.9 million deficit.

But if Christie had his way and cut over 50% of the state funding from Trenton schools (who already lost 164 teachers) where does that leave the children?

Some are migrating to charter schools like the highly respected Foundation Academy, one of the best (if not THE best) school in Trenton, where students adhere to strict dress and behavioral codes and parents are required to play an active role on working with the school to play an essential role as liason between teacher and student. And students excel there.

Chris Christie: Sorry urban public schools

But that's another part of the problem with Christie's "Fairness Formula".

Christie is very much guided by a privatization mindset, so stripping under-performing public schools of resources also serves his goal of channeling more taxpayer funds to charter schools.

So yes, Foundation Academy students are excelling, and that's a good thing.



But remember, these are the same kids from the same communities who'd otherwise be attending more poorly run schools in Trenton that have been marginalized in), charter schools are siphoning off talent (talented teachers, students & administrators) and badly needed taxpayer funds from public schools.

Which brings me back to Mercer County, if Mercer County had a unified school system, more resources would be available to all schools. Just consider what superintendents are making in each of these individual school districts.

A unified Mercer County school system would have more power and influence too.

Instead we rely on a formula where individual districts drive the funding for their schools, creating in effect, public schools which are essentially separate and unequal. Even though they may be only a few miles from one another.

Don't get me wrong, I don't pine for some kind of socialist utopian fantasy, what bothers me is how Americans have sat back and allowed the federal government to absolve itself of responsibility for sufficiently funding public schools; even as We the People fund disastrous wars in the middle east to the tune of TRILLIONS of dollars. Why?

In part because of private conservative think tanks funded by people like the Koch brothers, people who literally have begun to endow chairs and departments at major universities to staff them with, and support people who view public education through the same anti-government privatization-mindset as Chris Christie does.

Remember Koch-puppet Gov Scott Walker (who didn't graduate from college...) cutting hundreds of millions of dollars from the University of Wisconsin?

These think tanks have begun the process of placing like-minded "academics" on local school boards throughout the country, in fact the Camden superintendent is one such person; Christie's heavy involvement in the funding of new waterfront development in Camden is no coincidence.

So I hear your concern Aleksandr, and your children have a right to reap the rewards of the taxes you pay, but Christie is self-serving to his own political ambitions and willing to do what he can to allow New Jersey to function as some kind of "conservative socio-economic laboratory" where kooky ideologically-driven right-wing policies are proposed or enacted.

Kansas Gov Sam Brownback

Just take a look at what Republican Governor Sam Brownback has done to the state of Kansas (including it's once highly-regarded public schools) and the absolute disaster it's been for the state.

Christie is clever, and he knows he can use the lingering anger over the 1985 Abbott court decision as a wedge issue to garner support for a plan that would drastically slash state public school funding for urban schools in districts already facing a host of challenges, and magically increase state funding for wealthier districts - not in the interest of education.

But as a transparent Trojan Horse to gift the wealthiest districts in New Jersey with a property tax cut. Christie's proposal serves his own political ambitions, not the interests of public education in New Jersey.


And it reeks of coded racism.

The irony here is thick enough to cut with a knife, conservative think tanks and politicians have slowly and steadily reduced the federal share of public school funding, while allowing a district-funded formula to take root, creating even more inequities based on class and race in the educational system of the greatest nation in the world.

And now a guy like Christie points to those underperforming schools in cities that have seen their tax bases decimated by the disappearance of manufacturing jobs and urban blight, and says, "these schools are getting too much state funding, it's time to strip all these Abbott schools of at least 50% of their state funding, and give it to schools in wealthier districts."

And he calls it a "Fairness Formula"?

Democrats Sit For Gun Control - Christie's "Fairness Formula" Isn't Fair

House Democrats sit in support of gun control laws

If Republican Congressional leaders thought public demands for stronger gun control laws were simply going to go away after Senate Republicans voted down two different Democratic proposals to strengthen background checks on Monday, they were wrong. 

Last week Senator Murray stood up for 15 hours on the Senate floor for gun control.


At about 11:30am earlier today 36 House Democrats shouted down Republican floor leaders with chants of "No bill, no vote!" then promptly sat down before the podium to protest Republican's refusal to allow gun control measures to be debated or voted on.

The Democrats included Georgia Congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis (pictured above), who endured severe beatings by Alabama State Troopers, hostile crowds and Klansmen on multiple occasions during marches and Freedom Rides during the 1960's in his role as one of the founding members and former chairman of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

About 100 Democratic Congressional members eventually joined the sit-in, bringing the House to a halt as chickenshit House Republicans ordered the C-Span cameras and mics that usually cover the Congressional floor sessions shut down - but the sit-ins were carried live via video feeds taken by other Democratic members.

How long are tone-deaf Republicans going to stubbornly stand in opposition to the will of the vast majority of the American people? In a presidential election year no less!

Republicans are up to some legislative shenanigans on the local state level too.

Gov Christie introduces his "Fairness Formula"

Here in New Jersey the word of the week is "Fairness Formula."

That's the term that Republican Governor-Trump apostle Chris Christie has given to a bold new conservative initiative to introduce a draconian redistribution of state aid to New Jersey schools that caps all state aid at $6,599 per pupil regardless of where the schools are located.

Christie announced his proposed changes at Hillsborough High School on Tuesday, saying he plans to introduce it as an amendment to the state constitution.

He's calling it a "budget reallocation formula", but what it really represents is a rather transparent attempt to cut the property taxes of wealthy suburban New Jersey communities by exploiting long-simmering divisions in the Garden State on how public schools are funded.

Sadly the debate falls along socio-economic and racial and ethnic lines and stretches back to 1976 when the state Supreme court actually shut down schools until state legislators came up with tax revenue to adequately fund public schools in 31 low-income school districts in accordance with the state's constitution.

This debate stems from the historic state Superior Court court decision in Abbott v Burke, a case brought back in 1981 by the Education Law Center on behalf of 20 public school students from four of New Jersey's poorest districts; Camden, East Orange, Irvington and Jersey City.

Gaps in language arts proficiency in NJ 2005 - 2001

The case challenged the 1975 Public School Education Act in order to address rampant inequities in the quality of public school education in different districts in New Jersey.

The Abbot v Burke case according to the ELC "is recognized as the most important education litigation for poor and minority school children since Brown v Board of Education."




Through changes in public school funding, more state funds were channeled to NJ's "Abbott schools" to try and address the education gap; those changes were highly controversial, particularly among some residents of the state's wealthiest districts whose much higher tax base created inherent advantages for their district's students.

One of Christie's first initiatives when he was elected Governor was to try and use his office to chip away at the funding formula in an effort to dismantle the court-ordered mandates of the Abbott decisions; he even tried to mess with the make-up of the state Supreme Court.

Christie poses with Camden HS students

As a lame-duck Republican Governor with a record low approval rate, it's not hard to figure out Christie's goal in launching this salvo - he's conscious of his legacy and wants to be "the guy who cut taxes."

His "Fairness Formula" would drastically increase state school funding for 75% of New Jersey school districts, allowing those districts to proportionately lower their property taxes.


But conversely it would introduce draconian cuts to per-pupil state aid to the schools in New Jersey's poorest communities; Christie claims to want "fairness", but how is it fair to cut state aid by 78% in Camden?

State aid in 37 districts would be cut by more than 50% - guess where those districts are located?

"Despicable" is how New Jersey Education Association president Wendell Steinhauer described Christie's proposal, saying, "Governor Christie's proposal would result in a huge step backward to the days when poor families in economically challenged communities were left to fend for themselves."

To get a better sense of how Governor Christie's "Fairness Formula" would impact state funding to New Jersey schools, take a look at the numbers as posted in a chart on the NJ.com Webpage.

Most experts agree Christie's initiative has little chance of passing a Legislature with a Democratic majority, but as an ideological attack, maybe it's a feather in the cap Christie hopes to wear in Washington one day.

From his flipping on issues like gun control and abortion over the course of the 2016 presidential race, to his embrace of Donald Trump, Christie has been steadily trying to remake himself as something far to the right of the man who was twice elected as governor of New Jersey.

With his "Fairness Formula"proposal, which is anything but to students in the states poorest districts, perhaps his political and ideological metamorphosis is complete.

I can't help but wonder, was the popular moderate conservative who was elected governor a Democratic-leaning state an illusion? Or is it the man we see now?