By Matt Rooney
New Jersey politicians have spent decades promising property tax relief, Save Jerseyans. They’ve created commissions, mailed rebate checks, tweaked school funding formulas, and held countless press conferences.
Yet New Jersey homeowners still pay the highest property taxes in America.
Maybe the problem isn’t that Trenton hasn’t tried enough.
Maybe it’s that Trenton refuses to confront the biggest driver of local property taxes: the government education monopoly.
School choice isn’t simply about giving parents alternatives. In New Jersey, it could become one of the most effective long-term property tax reforms available.
Here’s why.
The average New Jersey homeowner pays more than $10,000 annually in property taxes, and in many suburban communities, the bill is considerably higher. Roughly 50% to 70% of those property tax dollars support K-12 education through local school districts. If you’re serious about lowering property taxes, that’s where the conversation has to begin.
Meanwhile, New Jersey continues to spend at record levels.
According to the New Jersey Department of Education’s 2025 Taxpayers’ Guide to Education Spending, the average budgetary cost per pupil is now $21,199 statewide. Many districts spend $25,000, $30,000, or even more than $40,000 per student each year.
Now imagine New Jersey adopted an Education Savings Account (ESA) program worth $10,000 for participating students.
A student who leaves the public system would cost taxpayers roughly $11,000 less than the statewide average.
Multiply that by just 10,000 participating students, and taxpayers would avoid approximately $112 million in annual education spending.
If participation eventually reached 50,000 students—less than four percent of New Jersey’s roughly 1.4 million public school students—the potential reduction in education costs approaches $560 million annually. That’s real money—not another Trenton gimmick or temporary rebate.
Critics immediately respond that districts can’t reduce costs because many expenses are “fixed.”
Fair enough—for the first few students.
But over time, declining enrollment allows districts to eliminate vacant teaching positions through attrition, consolidate classrooms, reduce transportation routes, postpone construction projects, and trim administrative overhead. That’s exactly how every other organization adjusts when demand changes.
The alternative is what New Jersey has now: spending more money every year regardless of enrollment or academic performance.
Competition matters.
Today, most school districts enjoy something no private organization ever could: a captive customer base.
Families pay enormous property taxes whether they’re satisfied or not.
School choice changes those incentives.
When funding follows students, districts suddenly have a reason to improve academics, respond to parents, control costs, and justify spending decisions. Schools that consistently deliver outstanding results will continue attracting families. Schools that don’t will finally face consequences other than asking taxpayers for another increase.
The education establishment insists school choice “takes money away” from public schools.
No.
It takes away monopoly power.
There’s an important distinction.
New Jersey’s public education system isn’t underfunded.
It’s extraordinarily well-funded.
Nationally, average public school spending reached $17,619 per pupil in 2024. New Jersey’s average exceeds that figure by more than $3,500 per student, placing it among the nation’s highest spenders.
Yet despite spending levels that would make many states blush, families continue expressing frustration over academic outcomes, classroom discipline, curriculum disputes, and bureaucratic decision-making.
The answer from Trenton is always the same:
Spend more.
Ask homeowners for more.
Raise property taxes again.
School choice offers a different approach.
Instead of measuring success by how much government spends, measure it by how well children learn.
Instead of protecting bureaucracies, empower parents.
Instead of treating taxpayers like an unlimited ATM, encourage schools to compete for students by delivering better education at a lower cost.
Will school choice erase every dollar of New Jersey’s crushing property tax burden?
Of course not.
Pension obligations, health care costs, and Trenton’s own appetite for spending all contribute to the problem.
But education is the single largest component of most local property tax bills, and introducing meaningful competition into that system represents one of the few reforms capable of bending the cost curve over time.
That’s precisely why teachers’ unions fight it so fiercely.
This debate has never really been about children.
It’s about preserving a monopoly that costs New Jersey families billions of dollars every year while demanding even more.
Trenton has spent decades trying to make New Jersey’s property tax crisis more affordable.
Maybe it’s finally time to make government itself less expensive?
