Phil Murphy, Governor of New Jersey, speaks during a news conference in Trenton, New Jersey, U.S., on Monday, March 16, 2020.
New Jersey’s 2022-23 state aid distribution is another big step towards state aid fairness.
Thanks to the addition of $650 million of new K-12 operating aid plus $186 million in redistributed Adjustment Aid, underaided districts will gain $836 million. Their deficit will shrink from $1.2 billion in 2021-22 to only $618 million for 2022-23.
The net deficit, i.e. deficit minus surplus, is only $386 million.
Below is my analysis of 2022-23 state aid and education spending, organized in the following way:
As usual, I’ve put all the data available on a spreadsheet: 2022-23 NJ State Aid.
Likewise, the surplus for the overaided districts will shrink from $362 million in 2021-22 to $232 million in 2022-23. Since 2017-18, New Jersey has redistributed $687 million.
| Amount Redistributed | |
| 2022-23 | $186 million |
| 2021-22 | $193 million |
| 2020-21 | $155 million |
| 2019-20 | $90 million |
| 2018-19 | $32 million |
| 2017-18 | $31 million |
Without state aid redistribution, the deficit would be $1.3 billion.
Because S2 calls for a 76% reduction of Adjustment Aid in 2023-24, this means that at least $176 million in Adjustment Aid will be redistributed in 2023-24, which, combined with the state aid increases we’ve seen in the last few years, brings 100% state aid for all districts within reach.
Counting vo-techs and non-operating districts, there are 391 underaided districts with a total enrollment of 961,649, or 74% of the total.
In total dollars, the district with the largest deficit is Newark, at -$98,901,597, or -$1,799 pp. Newark’s state aid has risen from $742 million in 2017-18 to $1 billion in 2022-23, but its deficit was originally so large ($146 million) and its Adequacy Budget has grown so much, that the deficit has not yet been eliminated despite getting $258 million in additional state aid.
The districts with the largest deficits per pupil are Cumberland County Vo-Tech at -$3,109 pp and Atlantic City at -$3,057 pp. Cumberland County Vo-Tech and Atlantic City are the only two districts with per pupil deficits over $3,000 per pupil. Their deficits are large, but in 2017-18 Atlantic City and Bound Brook had deficits of over $8000 per student.
The second reason this year’s deficit decreased so much is that the triannual Education Adequacy Report’s inflationary adjustment stopped in June 2021. Hence, SFRA’s Base Payment per pupil barely budged, from only $12,177 per student to $12,451 per student. (see at right)
Since New Jersey’s projected enrollment fell from 1,316,864 in 2021-22 to 1,304,773, the statewide Adequacy Budget did not increase very much despite the inflationary adjustment.
The 201 overaided districts have 343,124 students, or 26% of the total. Their $232 million surplus is the smallest it has ever been.
Asbury Park’s state aid loss merits attention: In 2019-20 Asbury Park’s surplus was $22.9 million, or $11,026 per student. Now it is only $7 million, or $3,653 per student. Asbury Park’s K-12 state aid per student has fallen from $25,000 per student (it was the highest spending K-12 district in the US), to only $15,176 per student.
Jersey City’s aid loss merits attention too. In 2018-19 its surplus peaked at $171 million, or $5542 per student. Now it is only $56 million, or $1,903 per student. In total K-12 opex aid, Jersey CIty’s aid has gone from $419 million to $185 million, a loss of $234 million.
Jersey City has actually lost more than $115 million, but it has a constant growth in tax base which converts its Equalization Aid to Adjustment Aid, which is then phased-out per the process laid out in S2. In 2022-23 Jersey City will still be eligible for $82 million in Adjustment Aid.
The redistribution of state aid for 2022-23 was not something I was sure would happen after the Biden administration, acting on a vicious Education Law Center complaint, interpreted a provision in the ARP to prohibit state aid cuts to high-poverty districts (which Hoboken and Jersey City technically are), but apparently the Murphy administration has found a way to continue aid redistribution.
New Jersey’s budget for FY2023 is going to be $49 billion, of which $19.16 billion, or 39%, is considered school aid (see page 58). That ~40% percentage has been constant for the last decade, although it’s worth noting that in 2001 education spending was only 31% of the budget.
On the other hand, education spending actually exceeds the income tax’s $18.15 haul due to education getting money from the lottery and a half cent of the sales tax. Education spending has come to be nearly synonymous with the Property Tax Relief Fund, although the new ANCHOR credit will represent a long-overdue increase for direct tax rebates.
K-12 opex aid is just $9.9 billion, so 52% of the total education spending. Here are some looks at the other major education spending categories.
Extraordinary Aid will be $400 million.
Below are the net changes year over year for the above categories. As you can see, the major debt categories of Teacher Pension And Annuity Fund, post-retirement healthcare, construction debt, and Pension Obligation Bonds did not require substantial increases and TPAF and Construction Debt service actually fell. This is a tremendous contrast to the past, when TPAF payments increased by over $400 million in some years.
New Jersey’s Local Fair Share grew from SFRA’s inception in 2008-09 when it was a 1.15% median and peaked in 2019-20 at 1.53%. The cause of the growth was that Adequacy Budgets grew faster than Equalization Aid, so the SFRA formula automatically adjusted to increase Local Fair Share. (Brick and Toms River repeatedly complained that their Local Fair Shares have increased despite loss of Equalized Valuation, but that has happened statewide).
Phil Murphy’s increase to Equalization Aid exceeds the growth of the statewide Adequacy Budget, hence Local Fair Share actually will fall 1.38%, with a low of 0.79% for Wildwood City and a high of 1.91% for Woodlynne (which peaked at 2.1% in 2019-20).
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