School districts across New York are constrained from fully exploiting a potential source of revenue to help offset pressure on local taxes. The revenue source in question is commercial advertising--including signs, sponsorships and facility naming rights, especially for athletic facilities. Experience in other states suggests New York school…

New Jersey's School Funding Reform Act (SFRA) is a "weighted" funding formula, designed to deliver adequate funding based on the unique student needs in every school district across the state. The SFRA included key elements to address long-standing racial and socio-economic disparities in New Jersey's public school system, most notably…

This study will examine the decision-making process used to construct privatized student housing as well as the factors that contribute to that process among public four-year institutions in New Jersey. A growing number of public universities are exploring ways to develop successful public private partnerships (P3s) in an effort to improve…

While sparse literature exists investigating the impact of the Great Recession on various sectors of the economy, there is virtually no research that studies the effect of the Great Recession, or past recessions, on schools. This paper starts to fill the void. Studying school funding during the recession is of paramount importance because schools…

The vast majority of public employees--including teachers--are enrolled in defined-benefit pension plans. These plans are usually the product of state legislation that determines eligibility, benefit formulas, employer and employee contributions, and how payments will be calculated when an employee retires or leaves the system. Once an employee…

Local boards of education in New Jersey are authorized by law to withhold increments of staff members in certain circumstances. The purpose of this publication is to provide an analysis and summary of decisions involving a board's exercise of this authority, and it is intended to serve as a guide and a reference tool to be used in determining when…

This document is the second in a series of reports that measures progress to-date in making New Jersey's school finance system fairer to students and taxpayers alike. It examines change in the distribution of revenues and expenditures between 1975-76 and 1978-79, the equity of these distributions, how budget caps influenced these shifts, and the…