Sauickie: Your Children’s Schools are Being Destroyed. Democrats Know It, and They Continue to Let It Happen

Asm. Sauckies takes Trenton Democrats to task for failing our schools and our kids.

There is no longer any excuse.

No confusion. No complexity. No politics.

After eight years, the Democrats in charge in Trenton know exactly what New Jersey’s school funding formula is doing, and they are choosing not to fix it. Your children are paying the price.

When the S2 school funding formula was passed in 2018, it was sold as a fair and responsible way to allocate state aid. It was sponsored by leading Democrats, specifically now Senate Majority Leader and Newark legislator Teresa Ruiz, and signed into law with promises of equity. What it actually did was trigger a massive redistribution of funding that has hollowed out dozens of school districts—particularly in rural, suburban, and shore communities, while locking in long-term instability.

As an example, Toms River now gets less than $2,000 per student in state aid while Newark is approaching $35,000.

And here’s the part no one can ignore anymore: we’ve now had eight years to fix it.

Assemblyman Alex Sauickie speaks at a rally. (Credit: Assemblyman Alex Sauickie on Facebook)

For eight years, school districts have warned Trenton exactly what would happen. Parents have shown up, year after year, demanding answers.

Superintendents and boards of education have laid out the numbers in plain terms: the math does not work. Legislators, myself included, have introduced legislation to stabilize funding, reform the formula, and prevent the worst of the damage.

Still, nothing meaningful has changed.

Across New Jersey, districts have been forced into decisions no community should have to make. Teachers have been laid off. Class sizes have grown. Programs have been cut. Extracurriculars have been eliminated. Schools have closed entirely. These are not hypothetical outcomes, they are happening right now, and they have been happening since Ruiz and her colleagues put S2 in motion.

In communities from Jackson to Jefferson, West Milford to Washington, and others across the state, the cumulative impact of S2 has meant tens of millions of dollars stripped from suburban and urban schools. The result is not efficiency. It is erosion. It is the slow dismantling of public education in places that have done nothing wrong except follow the rules and plan responsibly.

And yet, just this past month, the current administration made it clear: there will be no fix this year.

After nearly a decade of damage, after repeated warnings, legislative proposals, and real consequences for real families, the answer is still “not now.”

Why?

Because this isn’t a mistake. It’s a policy choice. And yes, it’s a political choice. It was from the start.

The architects of S2 understood exactly what they were doing. They phased the formula in over multiple years to soften the immediate impact while ensuring the long-term shift would take hold. They knew certain districts would lose millions annually. They knew local taxpayers would be forced to make up the difference or watch their schools decline. And they knew that once those changes were fully implemented, reversing them would become politically and financially difficult.

That is exactly where we are today.

(Credit: Shutterstock)

We were told this was about fairness. But there is nothing fair about a system where your tax dollars are redirected away from your community, your schools, your schoolchildren, and are told to do more with less, while your children lose opportunities year after year.

State aid is not a gift, it is your money being returned to educate your children. Under S2, that basic principle was abandoned. As an example, while Jackson’s parents contribute $70 million annually in income taxes and get $22 million back in state aid, Newark whose residents contribute $44 million in income tax is expected to get almost $1.4 BILLION in state aid this year. That’s not only the most state aid in NJ, that’s in the top 10 in the entire country for one school district!

There have been solutions. There have been proposals to cap losses, stabilize aid, and modernize the formula to reflect real-world conditions. Those ideas have not failed because they lack merit. They have failed because addressing the problem would require acknowledging that the system itself is flawed.

And that is the truth Trenton continues to avoid.

So we are left with a reality that is as frustrating as it is undeniable: the continued decline of these school districts is not happening because it cannot be fixed. It is happening because it is not being fixed.

That distinction matters.

Because if something is broken and ignored, that is negligence. But if something is known to be broken, repeatedly highlighted, and still left in place, that becomes intentional.

How many more schools need to close? How many more teachers need to leave? How many more programs need to disappear before the people in charge decide enough is enough?

For the families I represent—and for families across New Jersey—that point has already been reached.

Your children deserve better.

And it is time for the people who caused this to stop pretending otherwise, take responsibility, and let the rest of us finally fix it.

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Assemblyman Alex Sauickie represents thirteen municipalities across Monmouth, Middlesex, Ocean, and Burlington counties in the New Jersey General Assembly. Follow him on Facebook (@AssemblymanAlex), Instagram (@AssemblymanAlex), X (@AlexSauickie) or visit AssemblymanAlex.com.

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