N.J. must spend an additional $500M on school funding next year, state Supreme Court decides

[WestVirginiaRebel]

nj.com:

TRENTON — The state must spend an additional $500 million on public education in poor districts next year, the New Jersey Supreme Court ordered today.

The complex decision does not boost funding statewide, as education advocates had requested, and may avoid creating a gaping hole in a proposed budget of $29.4 billion. The 3-2 ruling revealed sharp disagreements among the five justices who heard the case and issued a total of four opinions.

Justices could have ordered up to $1.7 billion in additional statewide education spending. Today's ruling gives Gov. Chris Christie and lawmakers some room to maneuver as they work to balance the state's budget by July 1. Christie had argued that the state's current fiscal woes made it impossible to spend the full amount required by the funding formula approved by the court in 2009.

Still, the majority opinion written by Associate Justice Jaynee LaVecchia said Christie's cuts to education spending have been "consequential and significant" and must be rolled back.

The court's decision stems from a legal battle over whether Christie’s cuts to education spending last year were unconstitutional.

The Newark-based Education Law Center, which brought the lawsuit against the state, argued that the cuts violated the state's constitutional requirement to provide a "thorough and efficient system of free public schools." In response, the Christie administration said the state doesn't have enough money to spend more on schools and argued that the court should not inject itself into the budget-making process.

The court’s hotly anticipated decision caps the latest round of the historic and controversial school funding case Abbott v. Burke, which has routed billions of dollars to the state’s neediest students over the past 40 years in an effort to equalize spending between New Jersey’s poorest and wealthiest districts. Conservatives including Christie have fiercely criticized the court's actions over the years, saying justices have mistakenly treated more funding as a cure-all for poor districts' education woes.
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The court seems to want to set itself up as both the legislative and executive branch of the state government.