Governor Christie will deliver his final budget address to the New Jersey legislature next week. Education and civil rights advocates hope it won't include his so-called 'fairness formula'.
Betsy Ginsburg with the Garden State Coalition of Schools hopes Christie abandons his proposal to provide the same amount of per pupil funding to all school districts.
"We believe that it is a misconceived band-aid solution for high suburban property taxes that will trigger a fatal educational hemorrhage in the state's poorest districts."
East Orange Mayor Lester Taylor says Christie’s proposal is draconian and would have devastating effects on minority and low-income families.
“New Jersey is one of the most affluent states in the country yet we are still in 2017 one of the most segregated states in the country. This proposed fairness formula will exacerbate that.”
If Christie budgets school aid based on his fairness formula, Thomas Puryear with the NAACP says advocates will do whatever they can legally to stop it.
"We're going to petition the school districts to take the appropriate steps to come forward to indicate they don't have adequate funds to do a thorough and efficient education."
Assembly Education Committee chairwoman Marlene Caride is hoping suggestions made at a series of hearings will help lawmakers reach a compromise to tweak the current school funding formula.
“I don’t think that we’re looking to dismantle this formula. We’re trying to find a way to be able to fund it with whatever money we can get out of the budget for it.”
Assemblyman Robert Auth says an election year might be the ideal time.
"If we're not careful, there will be enough people that are upset and they'll just change the entire composition of the legislature. So that might scare some of the political folk to get on the stick and start moving."
Some districts now spend more than the funding formula requires. Others struggle to meet their needs.