Issue Position: Focus on Fixing our Public Education System to Serve Every Child

Issue Position

Support for Effective Funding of Education.

Green/Stender/Kennedy need to answer to the school children of New Jersey for their ongoing school funding scheme; which only serves to enrich democratic insiders and yet fails to improve the quality of education for New Jersey children.

There are thousands of public schools in New Jersey, including some that have been awarded as among the best in America.

But too many of our students trapped in chronically failing school districts are not educated well enough to graduate or reach their full potential, despite the fact that those schools annually spend upwards of $35,000 in property tax dollars per pupil.

I support Senate Republican efforts that aim for every New Jersey student to graduate high school on time, career or college ready. We can achieve this goal when chronically failing schools are eliminated, school districts compete to be better than each other and students have the option to attend the public, charter, vocational, technical or arts school that best suits their needs.

Specific legislation that I would support:

* Establish a state aid program for public charter schools to expand and improve opportunities for students.
* Provide K-12 students with a tuition allowance to attend the school that is right for them; Establishes the "New Jersey Parental Rights and Property Tax Reduction Act," which devotes any savings from allowance agreements among families, public schools and the state Department of Education to property tax relief and more tuition allowances.
* Provide additional State school aid to public school districts that target expenditures towards classroom instruction or support services.
* Modify the state school funding formula for efficiency and fairness by factoring the number of children who attend schools, the adequacy of schools and other public assistance programs, in accordance with recommendations of the state Education Funding Report and Educational Adequacy Report.
* Establish three regional superintendents of schools and eliminate the position of executive county superintendent of schools.
* Ease property tax burdens by creating the Task Force on School District Regionalization; New Jersey has more than 600 school districts, some of which do not even educate any children, that eat up the most of everyone's property tax bill.

The best way we can help our children is to make sure that they are prepared for the future. If we do not change the fundamental structure of our public education system in New Jersey, our children will suffer the economic and non-competitive consequences for the foreseeable future.

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