As I reported on yesterday (New Jersey Cuts Pension Contributions And Cuts Aid To Schools), the impact of the Governor’s plan to cut school aid by $820 million is already being discussed at just about all school boards across the state. School boards are already facing their own budget issues and they rely on the aid from the state to help offset some of the costs.
There are more than a handful of school systems around the state that should be shut down entirely for poor performance and wasteful spending at the tax payers expense. But, in many of the smaller towns and municipalities there are some good schools, and some good teachers. And it is likely that the smaller the community, the deeper the impact will be under Governor Christie’s planed budget cuts as it is the smaller towns that are experiencing more of a declining student population and revenues.
I already know of some school boards in my part of the state that are projecting upwards of 10% reduction in staffing should the budget cuts become reality. The layoff calculation is based on the NJ Department of Education 2009 stated number of teachers in the state, and that number is 112,933. The New Jersey Education Association (NJEA) states that their membership is 178,858 teachers, and this number includes support staff. As it is likely that the budget cuts will impact the support staff as well as the teachers I have simply taken the difference between the two in order to be conservative in my calculation. And I also estimate that the staffing cuts will range between 5% and 10%, so to keep things simple I used 7.5% as a middle of the road figure. Based on these conservative calculations it is that I estimate that upwards of 10,950 teachers and staff will be directly impacted in New Jersey.
Should the average staff reductions be closer to the 10% number then staff reductions could climb to 14,590.
This will likely be a very heated and contentious battle, and it is likely to end up in the courts.
Recent Posts:
- Economic Data and Earnings Schedule for July 27 2010
- Dallas Fed Manufacturing Index – Drops to Lowest Level Since July 2009
- Economic Data and Earnings Schedule for July 26, 2010
- Is The United States Worthy of a AAA Sovereign Rating?
- Crude Oil Market Summary 7/19/2010 to 07/23/2010
- Economic Data and Earnings Schedule for July 23, 2010
{ 3 comments }
At least, they are trying to cut costs….
“They are trying to cut costs”??? Do you not realize that this will be the downfall of education in NJ and that property taxes will increase due to these cuts? If he really wanted to cut costs, why did he eliminate the “Millionaire’s Tax”??? If we are all supposed to be in this together and sacrificing, then why not keep the “Millionaires Tax” and keep teachers employed???? Do you make $400,000.00 or more? If not, then you should really do a little research before posting your simple minded one liner.
New Jersey has the one of highest Property taxes in the US, I also heard that 90% of job creation in the last decade has been government, ITS TIME TO CUT,
Go after the POLICE AND OTHER GOVERNMNENT NEXT. 35-40% Governmnet reduction reduce property tax and cut those damn Entitlement programs GROW UP YOU LOSERS and stop complaining