By Vin Gopal

Everyone wants greater accountability when it comes to how their tax dollars are spent.

Last week, we introduced two bills that will enhance financial oversight and reporting to ensure fiscal stability of school districts. The first of these bills, S4717, establishes additional procedures for financial oversight and reporting for chief school administrators, school business administrators, boards of education, and school employees. These procedures will improve the financial management of school districts to ensure the short- and long-term fiscal stability of the district.

Under current law, the secretary of a board of education makes a monthly report from the district’s chief school administrator to the board. The report includes information on the monthly reconciliation of district bank account statements.

Our bill broadens the information to be included in the secretary’s monthly report to provide a more complete picture of the district’s fiscal situation. The additional requirements include a projected year-end surplus or deficit as well as identifying any structural operating deficits. The legislation also would require an analysis of budget-to-actual expenditures, and any multi-year contractual commitments, including salary and benefit obligations. All of this would be done with guidance from the state Commissioner of Education, who would establish standardized procedures for the reconciliation required.

The second bill introduced last week, S4716, expands the duties of executive county business officials to assist the executive county superintendent and establishes processes for the fiscal review of school districts by executive county superintendent of education and state education commissioner.

Currently, the law requires the state education commissioner to appoint an executive county business official to serve in the office of the executive county superintendent of schools for three years. Our bill would permit a county to hire multiple executive county business officials based on the number of municipalities the county serves. This bill also clarifies the credentials an individual who is appointed include an appropriate certificate issued by the State Board of Examiners. The appointee would also need to have experience in school finance, budget planning, and governmental accounting. 

The bill also expands the duties of the executive county business official to require, among other duties, more substantial oversight of the fiscal conditions of the schools in the county. The legislation would require the executive county business official to conduct fiscal reviews of each school district on a rolling basis. Each fiscal review would be submitted to the board of education, the superintendent of schools, the executive county superintendent, and the state commissioner of education. 

In addition to addressing these issues as chair of the Senate Education Committee, I will be working on them as a member of the newly created New Jersey Funding Steering Committee. The Steering Committee is part of a statewide effort to strengthen the school funding system and ensure every student has access to the opportunities, resources, and support they need to succeed.

The LD11 office attended the first meeting of the committee on Sept. 25 at The College of New Jersey, where we heard from top experts on school funding from around the country. Through a collaborative, stakeholder-driven process, NJDOE will work with families, educators, school leaders, legislators, advocates, and community partners to identify opportunities for improvement.

Taking advantage of their broad range of experience of best practices in education finance, as well as knowledge of current conditions, will enable New Jersey to address the inequities in the state’s school funding formula.

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