It’s Time to Finally Tackle School Spending

Property taxes here in New Jersey continue to rise, even in the face of the recent spending cap put in place.  It is a commonly known fact that the chief complaint of residents is the high property taxes, even pushing many to leave the state all together to seek relief.

It is becoming increasingly clear that assistance from Trenton is an elusive fantasy, especially as the state house continues to find itself neck deep in huge deficits and resorting to one-time trust fund raids to balance the budget.  As a result, it is crucial that municipalities take the lead in reducing spending and as a result taxes.  The recent recession has brought increased scrutiny and an honest effort by many towns to reign in spending but unfortunately this often was done while wearing blinders.  Certain spending areas have been treated as proverbial sacred cows.

This special treatment often comes out of fear: fear of falling behind neighbors, fear losing value on their property, or even a fear of others. However, a well planned, creative solution could save millions while even improving service to the community.  There are small saving that could be found by teaming up with neighboring towns in the bidding of garbage contracts, making joint purchases, or even sharing service coverage in certain areas but these do not go far enough on their own.

There is, however, an 800-pound gorilla in the room, which no one has wanted to touch with a 16-foot long pole, education spending.  New Jersey, especially Bergen County, has a long history of what has become known as home rule.  Each small town has insisted on being a strong, self-sufficient, insular community, providing all municipal and educational services in-house.  There are significant benefits that can be found through moving away from this current model. 

You would be hard pressed to find a single parent who doesn’t want the best education for their child.  You would also be hard pressed to find a single parent who doesn’t see the property tax levy as excessive and burdensome.  It is time that these two, seemingly independent thoughts, are presented as one pressing but achievable goal. 

There are hundreds of, what I like to call, “overlap districts” spread throughout the state.  Overlap districts are districts that serve children for only a portion of their k-12 educations, whether it is a k-6/8 district or a regional high school.  An example, is the towns of River Vale and Oradell, each town has its own k-6 school districts but merge into a regional high school creating an overlap.  By rolling these two elementary school districts into the regional high school district, one comprehensive k-12 district will be created serving both towns and saving hundreds of thousands of dollars for local tax payers. Doing this across New Jersey in every overlap district could result in millions of dollars in administrative savings. 

As it stands today, there are 603 school districts representing the state’s 565 municipalities.  In Bergen County, there are 70 municipalities and 75 school districts with educational facilities. If all overlap districts were merged in the county, 29 small school districts would be eliminated. This means 29 fewer superintendents, 29 fewer Business Administrators, at an average cost of approximately $175,000 and $150,000 respectively, these reductions could save Bergen County taxpayers $9.5 Million annually in overlap administration costs.  This does not even begin to take into account additional potential savings from other overlap positions that could be eliminated, savings from a reduction in office space costs and even savings from an increase in purchasing power. 

New Jersey spends an average of $19,000 to educate every child; much of this money is gobbled up by administration costs that can be easily eliminated.  We owe it to our children to stop throwing more and more money at the problem but make sure that the money, we are already throwing at it, is being used in the most efficient way possible.  

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