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New Jersey’s fiercest budget debate this year is over education spending — and Newark is at the center of the conversation.
At a heated state Assembly budget hearing on Wednesday, Republican lawmakers’ questioning returned repeatedly to the state’s largest school district. Statewide, Republicans have taken issue with Newark’s spending on everything from an AI surveillance system to COVID relief funds for tutoring, and a controversial lease for a new elementary school.
GOP Assemblymember Gerry Scharfenberger, who represents Monmouth County, said at Wednesday’s hearing “we need way better accountability,” and audits that run through budgets with a “fine-toothed comb” for urban districts like Newark. Assemblymember Al Barlas, who represents parts of Bergen, Essex, and Passaic counties, said for the millions being spent in Newark, “we should all be offended by the fact that these kids are not graduating and are not reading” at grade level.
Republican lawmakers have targeted Newark and other urban school districts partially in response to state funding cuts that have hit suburban schools particularly hard.
But Assembly Budget Chair Eliana Pintor Marin, who represents Newark and served on the city’s Public Schools Advisory Board, said the focus on Newark is reductive and pits school districts against each other rather than aiming at the real issue — reforming a school funding formula that lawmakers agree isn’t working for everyone.
“I’m just tired of it,” Pintor Marin said Wednesday of the outsized attention paid to Newark schools by lawmakers who don’t represent the city. “It’s enough already.”
Pintor Marin said Newark is still recovering from the deep school funding cuts enacted under former Republican Gov. Chris Christie. The district has gone through state control, been federally audited for spending COVID relief funds, and has had a state monitor in place through the district’s transition back to local control.
In short, Pintor Marin said, Republicans’ calls for more state and federal oversight of Newark schools are “ridiculous.”
She noted the way the state funds education is tied directly to the number of students enrolled in each district and the cost to educate them. Newark’s enrollment is up, she said, and it educates a greater population of English learners and those with disabilities so state funding should increase accordingly.
Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s proposed budget includes two new state Department of Education positions specifically for oversight and accountability of school districts, state Education Commissioner Lily Laux said at the hearing.
Assemblymember Alexander “Avi” Schnall, who represents parts of Monmouth and Ocean counties, pointed to the Lakewood School District’s multiple state monitors as evidence that increased state oversight does not equate to improvement.
Over the last 12 years, Schnall said Lakewood has had 11 state-appointed monitors, with four currently stationed in the district.
Those monitors “have not made much of a difference,” he said. “If anything the fiscal deficit has grown by a lot.”
Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.
