Think it’s bad now?
Brace yourselves, Save Jerseyans.
APP reported on Tuesday that the Murphy Administration is urging nearly half of the state’s school districts to raise school taxes in order to buoy a failed funding formula:
“Gov. Phil Murphy’s administration identified 281 of the state’s 590 operating school districts that were not taxing their residents enough to pay for schools and were not spending enough money to adequately educate their students. Those schools were recently notified that they may be eligible to exceed the state-mandated 2% cap on local taxy levy increases for the upcoming school year, if they had exhausted other avenues of balancing their budgets.
…
As an incentive for schools to raise local taxes this year to fill in the gap, the New Jersey Department of Education will give an additional boost of state aid to schools. The state aid will be worth 5% of the local taxes raised above the 2% tax cap.”
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New Jersey’s school districts have until May 19th to submit a certified school budget.
School taxes drive property taxes, and the average property tax bill eclipsed $10,000 for the first time in 2024. Murphy’s pressure exerted on suburban school districts to continue funding urban failure factories will catalyze more tax increases, service cuts and school closures over the coming year.
Here’s a clearer illustration of the problem: more than 8 of every 10 dollars in the Newark School Budget is from STATE AID. City taxes account for only 9% of the budget for the state’s largest municipality by population.
