NEW Jersey taxpayers must feel like punching bags.
Yesterday, their sales tax went up 17 percent – $1,750 instead of $1,500 for a $25,000 car, for example – thanks to the recent budget deal. In October, the tax will start hitting more items.
Some folks will see lower property-tax rebates.
And in case that pummeling wasn’t sufficient, Gov. Jon Corzine shut down the government for six days – depriving Jerseyans of state beaches, parks, motor-vehicle services, casino operations and more.
Plus, property taxes are set to continue skyrocketing.
And taxpayers won’t even save a nickel from the days that furloughed state employees didn’t work: Corzine says they’ll all be paid as if they had worked. Great.
All this is par for the course in a state where pols freely spend $31 billion a year statewide and billions more locally without giving a hoot about the services they’re buying.
Outraged parents filed a class-action lawsuit Thursday, claiming kids are being cheated out of the education they’re entitled to under the state’s constitution.
The same claim has led Jersey’s courts, over the last 30 years, to order greater funding for failing school districts.
But these parents – and the school-choice advocates fighting with them – say that order isn’t working. Shipping more money to failing schools makes no sense, they argue – and has certainly done little good. They want the funding to go directly to the students and the families, to be used at more successful schools of their choosing.
Their claims are indisputable. After 30 years – and tens of billions of taxpayer dollars – the results are abysmal. Taxpayers have gotten almost nothing for their money at many of the districts that got court-mandated funding.
This has deprived students, which is the plaintiffs’ main gripe. But it has also cheated taxpayers who forked over the cash on behalf of poor kids, only to see it flushed away.
The parents and school-choice groups believe that kids at these schools will do better elsewhere. Plus, the mere threat that they’ll leave, and take their funding with them, may finally prompt their current schools to shape up.
They may be right. But what’s clear is that when the state spends money but gets little discernible return, something ought to give, whether for the sake of the intended beneficiaries – or of those actually footing the bill.
Consider: Newark’s schools will spend more than $900 million this year on about 45,000 kids. That’s about $20,000 a head (though official calculations are a bit lower) – or almost 2½ times the national average of about $8,300.
Top private day schools (Newark Academy in nearby Livingston or the Pingry School in tony Short Hills) charge only slightly more than that.
So, certainly, there is no shortage of funding for schools in Jersey’s biggest city.
And where does all the green stuff come from? Mostly from taxpayers outside Newark; less than 10 percent comes from local taxes.
Yet, for their generosity, Newark’s benefactors are rewarded with a measly 2,000 high-school graduates a year. And while “only” a few hundred drop out, at least half of those 2,000 diplomas are bogus – given to kids who failed the standard exit exam (a test better suited for eighth-graders) three or more times but were passed on anyway based on Special Review Assessments.
In other words, for $900 million a year, New Jersey taxpayers get about 1,000 “real” diplomas a year – $900,000 per sheepskin.
It’s fair to ask: Where, exactly, is all the money going?
Well, for starters, teachers in Newark average somewhere near $78,000 a year. (Nice, huh? A $99 palm tree in front of the blackboard might produce similar results.)
Camden is another tale of woe: Local taxes cover just 2 percent of the city’s $200 million or so in yearly school costs; other taxpayers pick up the rest. Yet most kids who go through Camden’s schools come out lacking even the most minimum academic skills.
On the other hand, the city leads the entire nation in murders.
Taxpayers have a right to be furious about such a gross abuse of their money.
And now, this year, they are to be socked again with yet higher taxes.
Garden Staters sure must be a tough breed to withstand hits like these.
