Democratic legislators hammered acting Education Commissioner Christopher Cerf on funding cuts to public and parochial schools and adult education, and how the aid reduction has forced towns to increase taxes to help make up the difference.
"The governor's $1 billion school aid cut drove up property taxes across the state to record high levels and led to new school-activity taxes, and taxpayers still won't be better off under the governor's new plan," Assemblyman Louis D. Greenwald (D., Camden), chairman of the budget committee, said in a statement Tuesday.
By dramatically cutting aid to districts last year, New Jersey essentially "abandoned" the court-mandated formula for school funding, Greenwald argued at the hearing.
The state Supreme Court is reviewing how to proceed after a court-appointed special master recently ruled that the cuts deprived students - particularly those in poorer districts - of a "thorough and efficient education," as required by law. The court could force Christie to fork over as much as $1.6 billion to schools.
If that were to happen, it could upend the governor's proposed budget for fiscal 2012 and could lead to funding cuts to municipalities, hospitals, and universities, Christie warned the several hundred people at the town meeting.
In Trenton, Cerf added that cutting full-day kindergarten in poor districts would save much of the money, but that the move would be a "tragedy."
Christie made an effort to separate teachers - most of whom he said were "good, hardworking, caring people who want the best for the students" - from their unions, which he called "moneyed special interests who benefit personally from the system at the expense of the children."
