500 Students in a One-Room School: Fallout of New Jersey’s Funding Woes
“The issue for Freehold Borough — and about two-thirds of New Jersey’s 586 school districts — is the state’s nine-year-old formula for paying for public schools. Adopted by the State Legislature in 2008, it calculates how much each district needs to ensure that students receive a ‘thorough and efficient’ education, regardless of income, as New Jersey law requires. The formula directs extra dollars to districts with children who are learning English, students with disabilities and those living in poverty. But hundreds of towns, including Freehold Borough, where 75 percent of the schoolchildren are Latino, have not gotten their full share of funding under the formula since 2010. This year, for instance, the district was due $23 million, Mr. Tomazic said. It got $9 million.”