Dear [insert name of senator or assemblyperson]:

Senior citizens across the state are telling Governor Jim McGreevey that New Jersey homeowners need relief from our steadily rising property taxes. We agree with them.. While we endorse your efforts in that direction, we look to you for more effective leadership. The “Millionaire’s Tax” rebate won’t fix the overreliance on property taxes to support our schools. We continue to ask for a special legislative session that focuses on property tax reform.

We have an immediate concern: Bills introduced last week to enable Governor McGreevey’s proposed school spending cuts—S1701 and A99—will cripple our public school programs. As taxpayers, parents, administrators and supporters of the Garden State Coalition of Schools, we are very worried that provisions in this legislation will provide little real tax relief and further straitjacket our schools.

The following proposals (among others), to change the Comprehensive Education Improvement and Funding Act (CEIFA) could put school districts and the municipalities they serve at financial risk:

· Restricting flexibility for separate questions and punishing districts that cannot reduce administrative expenses without harming quality education. Imposing such arbitrary limits does not make sense. At their current growth rate, rising health-benefits costs will consume the district “caps”—even at the current 3% rate—within five years. A review of these restrictions shows that they are unworkable and undefined.

· Capping school revenue growth at 2.5% in 2005-2006 and eliminating or strictly limiting waivers (Spending Growth Limitation Allowances, or SGLAs) for such expenses as those required to open new schools. With an average 18% rise in health-care costs, spiraling energy prices, and double-digit hikes in other fixed costs such as insurance and utilities, asking districts to cap their growth at 2.5% will force them to cut teachers, ax programs, and watch their schools deteriorate.

· Reducing districts’ surplus funds from a legislatively allowable maximum of 6% to 3% of a district’s budget this fiscal year and 2% in 2005-2006. Property taxes, in fact, will automatically spike higher next year if the Governor’s plan in S1701/A99 to cut school districts’ rainy day funds is passed, leaving public schools and their communities again with an all-too common and painful choice: raise taxes next year to make up for this year’s lost revenue, or cut programs and teachers, increase class sizes, and further deplete New Jersey’s greatest resource—our education system. The bills leave no safety net for schools!

If you pass this anti-education legislation, you will send a loud and clear message to boroughs, towns, and cities across the state: “We don’t care about your schools.” We look to you to give “tools to our schools” that will help us deal with the rapidly rising expenses that are the main cost drivers of education: health care, special education, insurances, utilities, salary contracts, and federal mandates such as No Child Left Behind and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

Please, Governor/Assemblyman/Senator ____, support your public schools and your public’s concern in seeing that the education of our children—our future—is not further jeopardized.