Stakeholders urge permanent SFRA fixes, additional school funding and higher nonpublic school nurse pay at budget hearing

Harrison Silver, a legislative advocate for the New Jersey School Boards Association, told the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee the governor’s FY2026 proposal makes some welcome, short‑term adjustments to how state education aid is distributed but urged making those changes permanent. “This budget reduces volatility by capping year‑over‑year district‑level reductions at 3%,” Silver said, and it shifts special education funding toward actual enrollment and uses multiyear averages of income and property wealth to calculate local fair share.

Several witnesses said those short‑term fixes do not solve longer term gaps. Sharon Kringle of the Education Law Center said the new Educational Adequacy Report updates base costs to reflect student mental health and special education but that extraordinary special education aid remains flat and last year reimbursed only about 62% of eligible high‑cost placements. “With no increase in extraordinary aid, districts will be pushed further behind,” Kringle said.

Superintendent Kwame Morton of Cherry Hill Schools described a local impact of the formula changes: Cherry Hill faced a nearly $4 million reduction in state aid this year, a nearly 10% cut in total aid that Morton said forced cuts of more than three dozen staff positions and school restructuring. Morton asked the Legislature to “ensure predictable funding pathways” and to reexamine reliance on single‑year property and income valuations as measures of community wealth.

Representatives of charter and nonpublic school interests also pressed for targeted restorations. Harry Lee of the New Jersey Public Charter Schools Association asked lawmakers to restore the emerging projects line for charter schools from $4 million back to $9 million and to capitalize a facilities loan program enacted last year but not yet funded. Mary McElroy and George Corlwell, speaking for the Archdiocese of Newark and the New Jersey Catholic Conference, asked the Legislature to raise nonpublic school nursing funding from $130 per pupil to $150 to address chronic nursing shortages; they described schools that lack consistent nursing coverage and cited the statutory limits and subcontracting practices that reduce hours reaching students.

Advocates for community schools and community school pilots also requested new and expanded support. Greg Stankiewicz of the New Jersey Community Schools Coalition asked for $3 million in the FYDP to expand community school coordinators and training; Rosie Grant of the Paterson Education Fund asked that funding for community schools be prioritized and that emergent SDA project funding be restored.

Committee members heard consistent cautions: witnesses repeatedly emphasized that proposed caps and the one‑year nature of some changes mean districts could face sharp swings in future years unless the Legislature pairs procedural fixes with a permanent formula update. Several presenters referred the committee to written testimony with line‑by‑line recommendations and asked for follow‑up engagement.

The testimony left clear priorities for negotiators: hold the governor’s funding increases that restore base adequacy where proposed, add or restore extraordinary special education funding, protect capital maintenance and emergent project lines for SDA and other districts, and provide the requested increase for nonpublic school nursing services.

The committee did not take votes at the hearing; witnesses asked the Legislature to adopt statutory or budget language changes during the trunkline negotiations ahead of final passage.