Politics & Government

Fort Lee Schools Get Additional Increase in State Aid for 2011-2012

Christie announces $850 million for public schools in new budget; Fort Lee gets more than $1.1 million over last year.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said Tuesday the Fort Lee School District will receive an additional $565,959 on top of the $951,643 he said it would receive in February, giving the district $1,131,919 more state said than it had in 2010-11.

Fort Lee will get $1,517,602 from the state overall for 2011-12 compared to the $385,683 it had last year.

Christie said the money is part of an extra $850 million being pumped into New Jersey's public schools into the state's Fiscal Year 2012 Budget. There will be a $250 million increase for all school districts, as well as an additional $450 million for Abbot districts. Non-Abbotts will get an additional $150 million.

Find out what's happening in Fort Leewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

“This year, New Jersey increased state aid to school districts by $850 million over last year, restoring every dollar of the cuts we were forced to make last year and increasing aid by an additional $30 million," Christie said. "We are keeping faith with our commitment to New Jersey’s children and families, spending more money per pupil on New Jersey’s students than almost any other state in the country. Now is the time to complement the dollars spent with real education reform to bring a focus on student learning, accountability and results.”

Fort Lee Board of Education president Arthur Levine told Patch the school district hasn’t yet received “firm guidance” on use of the additional funds.

Find out what's happening in Fort Leewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

“We don’t know what we’re going to be able to use those funds for at this moment or when we can use them,” Levine said. “But any additional funding that we do get allows us to continue to maintain the programs that we have.”

The approximately $1.5 million total state aid is still significantly less than the roughly $3.2 million Fort Lee received from the state as recently as the 2009-2010 budget year.

Fort Lee Superintendent of Schools Raymond Bandlow could not be reached for comment Tuesday but said in early March after the governor’s initial announcement of increased aid, “Now they’ve restored a piece of it.”

“We like it better going that way than going the other way, but it’s nowhere near what it was,” Bandlow said at the time. “[It’s] helpful, but it’s nowhere near the hole that it put us in.”

The county and school district allocation lists are available on the State of New Jersey Department of Education's website.


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