Legislative Update

Judge Orders DOE to Revise Adminstrator Contract Regulations

For Board Member of Year, A Tradition of Service

Governor Appoints NJSBA Counsel to School Employees' Health Benefits Commission

Networking Opportunities at Workshop

Workshop Room Rate Drop

Schools Harness the Sun

NJSBA Meets with Legislators

Report Shows Continued Trend Toward Safe Schools

New Jersey’s Teachers are Highly Qualified

NJSBA At Your Service: Legislative Day

NJSBA Board of Directors, Audit Committee to Meet

Calendar

Click here for a pdf version of this issue of School Board Notes

On Monday, Sept. 15, the Assembly Housing and Local Government Committee sent three bills that affect local school district operations to the full Assembly. 

• Shared service grants A-2853 (Roberts, Scalera), which represents an NJSBA goal, would allow the use of state aid to fund start-up costs for shared-services projects among school districts and municipalities.  A 2007 Rutgers-Newark study, funded by NJSBA, called for elimination of statutory and regulatory impediments to shared services.  A-2853 would make it easier for school districts and other local units to share services by extending eligibility for shared service funding to start-up costs, which are financed through the issuance of debt or capital lease agreements. 

• Lifting bidding restrictions A557 (Dancer), supported by NJSBA, would allow local governments, including school boards, to give a bidder a reasonable amount of time to submit its state-required business registration.  Under current law, if a business mistakenly omits its business registration from its proposal, the school district must reject the bid. 

• Five-year financial plans A-2552 (Lampitt, Moriarty, Chiappone), requires counties, municipalities, fire districts and boards of education to cooperatively develop and implement five-year financial plans.  While NJSBA strongly supports the principle of school-municipal cooperation, the Association’s chief lobbyist, Mike Vrancik, expressed serious concerns that the legislation, as now written, could not work in the “real world.” 

He commented that the bill’s extensive requirements would create an additional administrative burden at a time when local school districts want to continue holding the line on administrative costs.  In addition, state aid to education has not been consistent for the past seven years; that situation represents a major obstacle to long-range planning and could result in the constant rewriting of financial plans by school districts and local governments. 

Vrancik offered to work with the bill’s sponsors on amendments that would retain the goal of the legislation, but would be more practical in application. 

Teacher Loan Redemption  Also on Monday, the Assembly Higher Education Committee released NJSBA-supported legislation, A-591 (Malone, Voss), that would create the Technology Education Teacher Loan Redemption Program.  Under the proposal, a participant would redeem 20 percent of eligible student loan expenses for each year of service as a certified technology education teacher in a New Jersey public school.  Participants would have to reside in New Jersey.

“Educators report that the number of applicants for advertised technology education teacher positions has been dropping and that school districts have discontinued technology programs when certified technology education teachers retire,” reads the committee statement.