Re:Goodbye, New York, California and Illinois – Hello where?
by jdhn on Friday January 17, 2020 @10:08PM
(#22081961)
As a former resident of New Jersey, I'm aware of Abbott districts, and trying to place the blame them for NJ's high property taxes is absurd. It's not a separate tax, it's simply redistributing school funds from existing tax income. As for the amounts of funding the districts get, here's what it says in the wiki article:
Abbott district students received 22% more per pupil (at $20,859) vs. non-Abbott districts (at $17,051) in 2011.
That is a HUGE amount of money being spent regardless of district classification. As for the pension problem, please do not underestimate the ability of the NJ government to kick that can down the road as hard as they can. I firmly believe that they will do anything they can to not solve it until it's too late.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbott_district
It’s a tax to try and equalize resources for all schools, and is very progressive in sense. Other states let poor areas have poor funding for schools, whereas NJ requires richer areas to send funding to poorer areas to try to give the poor children a chance. I actually think this is an admirable goal of NJ.
NJ also has one of the worst unfunded defined benefit pension problems, which is obviously not so admirable, and will continue to contribute to rising taxes of all kinds and decrease in government services in NJ for the next 30 years.