Zoom Call with Nia Gill Monday, May 22 @7 pm
Our campaign is about finding non-tax revenue sources for Montclair schools. Tonight is our opportunity to learn more about state funding for school districts.
We are meeting Nia Gill, our state senator, who knows much about state funding for schools. Come armed with questions. Eve Robinson, who served in Montclair’s BOE, will also be on the call. She is running for the assembly.
Tonight at 7 pm, on Zoom. https://us06web.zoom.us/j/84694072076?pwd=VUNVbFJaaEVhbzFnM2RrTlRqRmlxQT0
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Meeting ID: 846 9407 2076
Passcode: 982058
Please invite your teens to the call. It will be a learning experience!
A little background on state aid. New Jersey has two types of districts those considered wealthy (like Montclair), and Abbot districts, which are considered poor. The state has a complicated funding formula that I don’t fully understand, but it takes into consideration the property values in a school district. However, the legislature always appropriates less funding for education than it would be required to fund its formula fully. Yes, that is the same state that gives nearly unlimited tax breaks to wealthy developers, and yes, we should be outraged about this. However, that is the deal we have. Given the short allocation, the state needs to allocate the education aid resources the legislature gives it, and it must allocate to Abbot districts first because these districts have been assigned a more significant share of the pie to reduce educational inequalities between rich and poor communities.
Montclair, a comparatively affluent district, does not receive much state aid, and our funding remains pretty much flat from year to year, which means that these resources don’t help us deal with rising costs. When you look at the state aid in our school budget (p.1), you will see that the state aid appears to be allocated for specific uses such as transportation aid, special ed aid, etc. However, those line names help the state decide how much to give. State aid goes into the MPS operating budget and gets comingled with other funds. It’s unrestricted.
Nia Gill is up for reelection on June 6th. I say “reelection” because our legislative primaries decide the election. There will be a November election, but our district is overwhelmingly Democratic. So, if you want to cast a vote that matters for the state legislature, you must vote in the Democratic primary on June 6th (or vote by mail before June 6th, or vote early in person).
Nia Gill’s campaign arranged this call, but please join even if you don’t vote in Democratic primaries or have already voted. This is not a meeting to help you decide whether to vote for Gill. Instead, it is an opportunity to ask questions of this woman who has served in the New Jersey legislature since 1994 and has been our senator since 2002. She has a wealth of information about how things work in Trenton, why we get so little state aid, and what can be done about it.