For Release: March 3, 2005
NEWS ADVISORY
The New Jersey Department of Education today provided the state's 616 school districts with information regarding the amounts of state aid they can anticipate in their 2005-2006 budgets.
The state aid totals can be found on the DOE web site at http://www.nj.gov/njded/stateaid/0506/
Assistant Commissioner Richard Rosenberg will host a call-in
conference call for reporters today at
The following is the text of the letter that accompanied the aid notices to the state's 31 Abbott districts:
| TO: | Abbott Superintendents Abbott |
| FROM: | Gordon MacInnes, Assistant Commissioner Division of Abbott Implementation |
| SUBJECT: | FY06 Budget |
At this point,
you should have received your district's state aid notification as required by N.J.S.A.
18A:7F-5. Given Acting Governor Codey's
budget recommendations for FY06, it may be helpful to put the changes to the
Abbott budget process in context.
In November, the
Commissioner's regulations established the presumptive budget protocol as the
standard for reviewing district budgets for FY06. At the time, this was
accepted as an achievable goal and the department has worked with Abbott
districts subsequently to encourage presumptive budget submissions.
Unfortunately, there is no reasonable prospect that the funds required to
support presumptive budgets can be generated this year.
In order to
address the huge shortfall in state revenues and the inherited structural
deficit, the Governor has recommended a State Budget that reduces FY05 spending
by more than a billion dollars. In fact,
the recommended budget is lower than FY04-05 by more than 2%, the largest
decrease in the last 30 years. School formula aid has been frozen
Statewide. However, to maintain parity
and preschool programs, the Governor has recommended an increase of $59 million
for the Abbott districts. Thus, Abbott
districts will receive education opportunity aid sufficient to fund the greater
of FY06 parity or the combination of FY05 education opportunity aid and
discretionary education opportunity aid.
The small increase in FY06 education opportunity aid will be used to
fund priorities such as the approved incremental costs of new facilities. If your district qualifies for this
additional educational opportunity aid, you will be notified in the next
several days.
Notwithstanding
the additional funding recommended for the Abbott districts, it is clear that
the State will not be able to fund Abbott district budgets as intended. To this
end, the State intends to seek permission from the New Jersey Supreme Court to
suspend those funding protocols for FY06.
Thus, while you should retain your work and analysis towards a
presumptive budget, you should not anticipate the receipt of DEOA for
FY06. You are encouraged to consider
increasing your local levy to support any increased spending over FY05. Finally, to the extent your district submits
a budget with growth beyond CPI inflation of 3.01%, you will be required to
submit the documentation specified in the Department's
We understand
that this unexpected and sudden change to the budget process will require
additional work to identify further spending reductions or increased revenues
beyond State aid prior to transmission of your budget. The staff from the Division of Abbott
implementation is available to work with you to answer questions about the
budget process and provide assistance in identifying areas for reallocation and
reduction in these difficult budget times.
The following is the text of the letter that accompanied the aid notices to non-Abbott districts.
| TO: | Chief School Administrators |
| FROM: | Richard
Rosenberg |
| SUBJECT: |