Senator Teresa Ruiz, chair of the Senate Education Committee, had a question for Ed. Comm. Chris Cerf at yesterday’s Senate hearing on Hurricane Sandy’s impact on school calendars and budgets. In particular, according to NJ Spotlight, she expressed concern about the potential reduction of tax bases in shore towns because of reductions in property assessments and school enrollments. (For more on this, see my piece last week at WHYY’s Newsworks.)
Sen. Ruiz: “Who is going to fund that kind of revenue gap that will be created? In the short term we needed to start to think about it -- April (and annual budget decisions) is rolling around. But long term, the faces of districts could potentially change, where you could see some school districts go to smaller number of students when they don’t move back in or that revenue base simply doesn’t exist any more."
The conversation then turned to projected emergency aid from FEMA to help schools rebuild and the role of the Schools Development Authority, which Spotlight describes as "the long-beleaguered agency charged with building schools in the state’s neediest districts but widely criticized for its slow pace." Another topic worth exploring is the knee-jerk compulsion to exactly replicate pre-Sandy infrastructure. Isn't this an opportunity to examine the most efficient way to accommodate student needs in changing coastal areas? Are there opportunities for school consolidation?