Fair Funding For Montclair

I recently compared the Montclair school district to Milburn and Cedar Grove. In each case, I found relative inequities in funding for Montclair. Friends suggested, if you want it to be meaningful, it needs to be broader. 

So I compared Montclair and Essex County to every school district in New Jersey. Montclair and Essex County appear to face serious inequities in terms of state funding in Special Education per student, especially. 

State Special Education funding comes in two forms: Extraordinary Aid, and Categorical Special Education Aid. Take these two line items for any district in New Jersey, divide them by the number of Special Education (SpED*) pupils in the district, and you know the per pupil funding for special education in the district. 

You would expect per pupil funding to be broadly similar across districts. Why should any one district have more intense funding requirements per a pupil than another? Yes, some may have very serious special needs to address, but If you assume a normal distribution, those are likely to be balanced by less intense needs of others in the district. Moreover, we should assume the basic equity of each Special Education pupil among school districts in the eyes of the state.

These would be fine assumptions, but they are not confirmed by the data. 

I compared Special Education per pupil funding for each district in New Jersey to the average of every district in New Jersey. The difference between the individual rate and the state-average provides the dollar amount each district is, on a relative basis, over or under funded, per pupil. Take that difference, multiply it by the number of SpED students in the district, and you arrive at the funding deficit or surplus for each district, on a relative basis.

The top decile of districts by Special Education funding per pupil serves 12,096 SpED pupils, which is 6% of all NJ SpED pupils. The aggregate surplus across those districts is $108m. The bottom decile serves 12,180 SpED pupils. The aggregate deficit is $46.5m.

We can then consider state funding for each county. Use the same methodology and aggregate the disparities specific to each district into a single figure for each county. Among the twenty-one counties in New Jersey, Essex County is last in funding. The aggregate deficit is $17.9m.

Finally, Montclair. The aggregate deficit for State Special Education funding in Montclair is $432.7k.

District management and board oversight failed our town. Seeking a state monitor feels like our way to send a message, throw the bums out, bring some discipline and accountability to the district.

But this only answers one question. To whom do we want our district to be accountable? The community or its creditor? Choosing a state monitor means our district is accountable to the priorities of its creditor, not to the equities of its community. The difference entails our most important question: what is our district accountable for?

We can start with addressing what appear to be serious, persistent inequities in state funding.

*SpED is the designated abbreviation for Special Education in New Jersey