A peculiarity of NJ's political and economic landscape is that schools are funded exclusively through property taxes. And in order to make things 'fair' and thanks to something called 'Abbott Districts', the state takes money from some school systems and gives the money to others. They do this at the command of the courts who controversially ruled that they, not the legislature, should be the arbiter of what is 'fair' when it comes to school funding.
In dollar terms this has always meant that vast sums of money are taken from the suburbs where the property taxes are highest, and given to the school systems in Camden, Newark and Paterson. Once there, the political insiders in those areas either steal, lose, or waste as much of it as they possibly can. No one in America can squander money like a Camden School superintendent. And thanks to the Abbott districts, they had some real money to do it with.
And while the Abbott money flowed into union coffers and the hands of corrupt officials almost as quickly as school officials flowed into the state's prisons, the education of children in those areas remained substandard. Their testing scores continued to be dismal when compared to the suburbs that funded them, and the student population in general and showed no correlation to the money spent by command of the courts. In other words - it didn't help at all.
Last year when Christie was trying to keep the ship of state from going under, he slashed state education support - including some of the spending that the state is supposed to do as the grand arbiter of the Abbott wealth redistribution. And in spite of the fact that it helped education not at all, and that school officials in the Abbott districts are being sent to jail almost as quickly as State Legislators - a progressive group is still suing the state, trying to compel them to hand over the suburban cash.
So here, on day one of 2011, we have the first of what will probably seem like an endless set of standoffs in the courts. On one side we have progressives whose sense of entitlement to money earned by others, (in NJ anyway) has always been supported by the courts. On the other side we have the straight talking governor of America's most fiscally troubled state who has promised to do the hard things to fix the budget.
Expect the press to come down on the side of the poor downtrodden 'underprivileged', whose NJEA officials are forced to get by with a poolside condo in the Caribbean instead of one on the beach side. They will wail and moan that it's 'unfair' and demand that the suburban taxpayers be forced by the courts to hand over 'their fair share' of what someone else wants. If you watch the local media, there will be little doubt that it's the greedy suburban taxpayers (who want to fund their own schools for their own kids) who are the villains here.
The real question though is whether the State Supreme court believes in unicorns. If so, they will promise one to each and every child (and NJEA member) in Camden, Newark and Paterson - the same as they always have. And to pay for those unicorns, the state government will have to cut things that they are REALLY supposed to be doing to fill the funding gap. If the progressives win this one Christie will have to cut police, courts and other 'essential' services. If he doesn't win this one, (and the courts have no incentive to let him) then that's when the REAL pain will begin.
This will not be the last battle of it's kind we'll be seeing. Remember, bankruptcy is settled in the courts as well.
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