Survey: Almost All
NJ School Districts Expect Layoffs

Nearly 93 percent of New Jersey’s school districts expect to lay off staff this year– with the large majority of those districts looking at teaching staff reductions – due to state aid cuts in the coming school year, according to an NJSBA survey.

NJSBA conducted the survey to gauge the impact of the governor’s proposed $820 million in cuts to state school aid for the 2010-2011 school year. State funding for every school district would be reduced, with most incurring aid reductions equal to 5 percent of their total operating budgets – far greater than many school officials expected.

Three hundred twenty-three of the state’s 588 school districts responded to NJSBA’s survey. The survey found:

• 92.8 percent will lay off staff, with 85.4 percent of districts indicating that teachers will be affected.
• 59.7 percent of districts say the staffing reductions will translate into education program cuts, with art, music, language courses and electives cited most frequently, along with gifted-and-talented programs.
• 66.7 percent of responding districts will cut extracurricular activities such as clubs, sports and band.
• 83 percent said state aid reductions will result in higher property taxes.

School boards are using several strategies to address the aid cuts and preserve school programming.

Reopen Contracts Almost all boards that currently are not in negotiations have been discussing the reopening of contracts, with the goal of a wage freeze or other adjustment to compensation, NJSBA’s survey indicates. These districts, which are reflected by the 64 percent of survey respondents discussing the topic, are those that would have to reopen negotiations in order to implement a wage freeze. Other local school districts – more than one-third of the state total – were already in negotiations for new contracts when NJSBA called on the state teachers’ union to urge its local affiliates to reopen contracts with the goal of a wage freeze. NJSBA believes the salary freeze should involve all employees, including administrators.

In almost all cases, survey respondents said that the school board, not the union, had initiated the discussion. 

Activity Fees To preserve extracurricular offerings, 31.5 percent of the responding districts say they plan to charge parents “activity fees” for students’ participation in clubs and sports. Approximately 20 New Jersey districts already charge such fees. (Students whose families cannot afford to pay the fees are not excluded from activities.) In 2006, the National Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association reported that 35 percent of schools across the country were charging fees to participate in sports programs.

Subcontracting Services 34.5 percent of school districts are considering subcontracting services, or expanding the number of services currently privatized. A fall 2009 survey by NJSBA showed that 84.2 percent of responding school districts have fully privatized some services. Services cited most frequently were transportation, cafeteria operations, and maintenance.

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