But it's not universal: Newark loses a relatively small $600,000 out of a nearly $1 billion budget, and Jersey City is slated to get a single dollar more.
Other districts in for significant cuts include Pemberton Township in Burlington County ($2.4 million), Winslow in Camden County ($896,000), and Washington Township in Gloucester County ($508,433).
In all, 95 districts would get less, from a cut of 13 percent down to minuscule dips.
But that is just the losers - a minority in a budget under which four out of five districts would get at least some increase.
"We see this as a good-news budget for an overwhelming number of districts," acting state Education Commissioner Chris Cerf said.
Much of it comes back to the complexities of the state aid formula under the School Funding Reform Act, a law Christie has long lambasted as too generous for so-called failing districts in cities such as Newark and Camden. He has all but ignored the formula the last two years, making steep across-the-board cuts two years ago and offering increases last year, many of them by order of the State Supreme Court in the latest Abbott v. Burke decision.
Christie is closely following at least the act's core principles in this budget, albeit with some significant and likely controversial changes that Cerf said would be phased in over five years.
The formula enacted under former Gov. Jon S. Corzine and approved by the State Supreme Court bases state aid on a complicated computation that determines a model range for spending and allots a certain amount of money per student, depending on their needs and the local districts' ability to pay.
Those different weights for different needs are critical to the math, as is how students are counted. Cerf is making changes in both those methods that would appear to provide less help than previously to districts with higher concentrations of poor and disadvantaged students.
