As many of you know, I have litigated for change in the school funding formula for over a decade. B’zchus ha’rabbim the Court has found that our district is underfunded, effectively making Lakewood what is called an Abbott district. I urge all citizens to vote for the Fixing the Formula candidates for the Lakewood Board of Education on the top three rows of the school board section of the ballot.
Fixing the formula will IY”H stabilize our public finances into the next century. Fixing the formula will bring more funding to help all the students in the district and alleviate transportation costs. Fixing the formula will enable us to build an infrastructure of opportunity and an engine of growth for all of Lakewood.
By way of example, currently, Newark with 54,000 K-12 students receives $944 million in state equalization aid. Lakewood, with roughly the same number of students, receives $15 million in state equalization aid. The discrepancy is because the funding formula does not count the tremendous amount of nonpublic school students for whom the district is mandated to provide transportation and special education services, costing about $100 million a year.
To make up for the shortage in aid, last year the BOE borrowed from the state $100 million, increasing our total debt to $300 million. To put that in perspective, since our entire school tax levy is just $100 million, the encumbrance upon every taxable property in Lakewood is three times the school tax of a single year. There is no end in sight to this mess.
Why does who serves on the BOE matter? The BOE takes care of a $400 million budget. Most of your local taxes go to the BOE.
The “Fixing the Formula” candidates support our court victory. There is still work that must be done as the litigation continues.
Please vote for Avrohom Schubert, Mordechai Lang, and Eli Eisenbach, dedicated to fixing the school funding formula and working for the students and taxpayers.
Aaron Lang
Educator/Attorney at Law
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