New Jersey’s gubernatorial candidates both want school districts to consolidate as a cost-saving maneuver, but they differ on whether the state should force districts to merge with their neighbors.
Rep. Mikie Sherrill, the Democratic gubernatorial nominee, said during Sunday’s gubernatorial debate that she would first incentivize mergers but added that compulsory consolidation was an option.
“I’d start by offering the carrot to help the areas that want to consolidate, but when there are areas that are not putting enough money into students, into educators, into the buildings, and then they are taking a lot of money in property taxes and from the state level, then we’ll have to start to look at compulsory movements,” Sherrill said.
Republican Jack Ciattarelli, a former assemblyman, likewise said he would seek to boost incentives and assistance to municipalities and school districts seeking mergers, but he pledged not to force them.
“I do not believe that our state government should force consolidation. That’s up to the locals,” he said. “But I’ll tell you what, if you do consolidate or you do regionalize, Governor Ciattarelli will help incentivize that to make it easier.”
Sherrill and Ciattarelli are vying to succeed Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat who cannot seek a third term in November.
Officials have long hailed school consolidation as a means of easing local property taxes by reducing duplicative administrative and facilities costs, but uptake has been slow.
New Jersey had 590 operating school districts during the 2024-2025 school year, according to state data, down from 599 in the 2020-2021 school year.
Under a $50,000 state grant, the schools in Cape May and West Cape May will look at consolidation, or the potential for more shared services.
The number of non-operating districts — districts that have a board of education but send all their students to schools in outlying districts — fell from 17 to 16 over that same time period. Sherrill signaled those districts could be the first merged if she wins the governor’s race.
“We have some school districts who have the whole administrative cost, all of the buildings, and yet they’re not even running a K-12 school system, so we do need to merge some of these school districts,” she said.
Schools consume a majority of local property taxes — 52% of all those collected in 2024, according to property tax tables published by the Department of Community Affairs — and the more than $15.1 billion in school aid approved in the current state budget accounted for more than a quarter of all spending approved in the annual appropriations bill for the current July-to-June fiscal year. That total includes more than $4 billion in combined special education, transportation, and other categories of aid separate from the state’s school funding formula.
Ciattarelli suggested school vouchers — which allow property tax dollars to follow a student to a private school, a public school outside their district, or a charter school — could be a fix for ailing districts.
“When a school system is failing — and there’s some reasonable metrics that tell us whether or not a school system is failing — there’s got to be choice,” he said. “That choice comes in the form of vouchers. That choice comes in the form of charter schools.”
Because vouchers typically draw from school district funding, they could cause funding to decline at in-district public schools as students seek education elsewhere.
New Jersey lawmakers have considered compelling school district mergers or shared service agreements, but to date, such mergers have been entirely voluntary.
Murphy, who has generally favored school mergers, last year said he was “not wild about compulsory” consolidation, cautioning that home rule, a constitutional framework that gives local governments broad authority over the administration of school and other municipal services, could limit forced mergers.
With classes back in session, students, teachers and staff in three Cape May County school districts are getting to know new superintendents.
A law he signed in 2022 created grants for districts to study whether consolidation was feasible, though only a handful of districts have explored such mergers since.
Cape May City Elementary School and West Cape May Elementary School are the latest to receive grants to explore a merger. Together, the two Cape May County schools have just 241 students.
This story first appeared on the New Jersey Monitor.
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