BoE Officials: Lack of Race to the Top Funding Won't Hurt Hoboken

New Jersey Governor Christopher Christie and the New Jersey Department of Education's failure to secure federal "Race to the Top" funds for public schools will not affect Hoboken, said Interim Superintendent Peter Carter yesterday.

"We have a budget here," said Carter. "We passed our budget. We are moving forward." The city passed its $57.9 million school budget, which already includes $2.3 million from the federal government as well as $7.9 million from state sources, in April.

The state apparently lost out on the funding, which would have amounted to some $400 million, because of a clerical error on the application. After negotiations broke down with the state teachers' union over the wording of the document, incorrect information was added about recent increases in education spending. That mistake, originally reported here by the Star-Ledger, cost the state five points in the evaluation and New Jersey lost out to Ohio by 3.5 points.

Board of Education President Rose Marie Markle, said Hoboken was not expecting any additional government funds this year. "We didn't sit back and say, 'We're going to get this money,'" she said. Markle added that it is unfortunate the state didn't get the funding. "I am sure lots of districts could have used it," she said.

In Christie's June 1 letter accompanying the state's application to the U.S. Department of Education for the funding, he praised New Jersey's public schools but also wrote, "Still, given the money that New Jersey taxpayers spend on public education – we are currently the second highest state in per-pupil spending – student achievement is not what it should be."

The city outspent the state's average for the total comparative cost per pupil – that's the cost of classroom instruction, support services, administration, operations and maintenance, food services, and extracurricular expenditures divided by the average daily enrollment – by $6,800 or more during the 2008-2009, 2007-2008, and 2006-2007 academic years, according to the New Jersey Department of Education. Last year, the city spent $21,845 per student, $2,626 less than the year before, and for the coming year, the city has allotted $20,054 for each student, according to the 2010-2011 school budget. State figures have not been released yet.

Though it is unclear exactly how the extra "Race to the Top" money would have been divided among individual towns, Christie also outlined his objectives in the letter. He stated that the state would put more of an emphasis on teacher and principal performance, devise a plan for merit-based pay and tenure, and create a computerized system for tracking student achievement. Christie wrote, "Please know that my Administration is committed to implementing these initiatives regardless of whether or not this application is successful."

New Jersey's application was not successful. The state was among 46 other states and the District of Columbia to apply for the funding. New Jersey made it to the list of 19 finalists but failed to be one of the winners announced earlier this week. Its final score was just three points behind the last-place winner, Ohio.

Other states that received between $75 million and $700 million each were the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, and Rhode Island. This was the second phase of the "Race to the Top" program. Delaware and Tennessee won funding in the first round. The U.S. Department of Education released a statement saying there may be a third phase next year.

According to the department, the decision on the winners in the latest round was based on the quality of the application and the funds available. New Jersey's most notable error was its inclusion of budgetary information regarding incorrect school years. The mistake is said to have cost New Jersey's public schools hundreds of millions of dollars.