A Call for Action: Montclair Public Schools Need Their Fair Share of PILOT Funds
It’s time to end the annual and entirely predictable round of teacher RIF (reduction in force) layoffs at the Montclair Public Schools. This is a structural problem, so no matter how many teachers the district ultimate reinstates this summer, schools will face yet another round of cuts the following May. This threatens the long-term health and quality of our school system.
It’s easy to fall down the rabbit hole of spending caps, health-insurance rates, and who spends too much money and on what. But the signal-to-noise ratio is critically important it comes to calling leaders to account. Montclair citizens have a chance to push for positive change right away, by focusing on two high-impact, specific actions within the authority of our locally elected leaders:
The Township Council has to stop keeping all of the PILOT dollars.
See this Letter to the Editor in the Montclair Local and this great substack, and:
Email your councilperson (addresses below) to say: In their current form, PILOTs unfairly shortchange schools, we need to share our resources across our entire community, we welcome development but the benefits of that growth must be fairly shared with Montclair’s youngest citizens. The council can help right this wrong now by allocating PILOT funds to the public school district, which Montclair voters have demonstrated they strongly support.
Email/call the folks running for the New Jersey Legislature. It’s legislative primary season and Montclair has a competitive race! We are in a newly redrawn District 27 that has pitted two powerful Democratic incumbents against one another. Tell the candidates that the fair distribution of PILOT dollars to public schools is a critical issue in Montclair and their leadership on this issue will decide how you vote on June 6. (A bill requiring towns to share PILOT money with schools, S59, was unanimously approved in committee in 2019 but never made it to the floor for a full vote.) Montclair is generally seen as a reliable ATM of Democratic votes and money so this could highlight this issue at the state level if enough folks push for it.
The Board of Education has to require teachers to announce their retirements earlier in the year.
The school district budget timeline is set by the state, so that is not something the BOE controls. Here’s what they can change: teacher layoff notices must be sent by May 15, but retiring teachers in Montclair don’t have to announce their retirements until after that.
This calendar mismatch contributes to the district sending layoff notices to untenured teachers each spring and then hopefully hiring some or all back through “breakage,” or the amount of budgeted money freed up by retiring teachers. It’s destabilizing and forces teachers we need out the door for no good reason amid field-wide shortages that have made crucial positions really hard to refill, like sciences and foreign languages. This is especially hurting Montclair High School, which every kid enrolled in MPS will eventually attend.
Plenty of districts require teachers to announce their retirements by May 1, or earlier. Why not Montclair? If you agree:
Email the BOE and ask them to work with the MEA to fix the calendar. Dr. Ponds said we have to “break the cycle of budgetary trauma” in May 2022. Yet here we are again. Moving retirement notification dates earlier would be a meaningful step toward building a more stable, predictable future for school leaders and early-career educators. It would give principals the chance to carefully build and nurture instructional staff school-wide without wasting time and effort on chaotic and wholly unnecessary churn.
Looking Ahead
Montclair apparently has 13 PILOT agreements and we’re stuck with many of these deals for the next few decades. So beyond just demanding that the Township Council do the right thing today, it’s important to enshrine that into official policy going forward. The way to do that is by voter approval. Vote Montclair got the elected board question on the ballot in 2022 and it was approved four-to-one. Perhaps our community can do the same with this issue in 2023? Keep asking questions, be ready to sign a petition and pledge your support for a ballot question, and most importantly - stay tuned, including by subscribing to this fantastic substack!
Township Council:
Mayor Sean Spiller: sspiller@montclairnjusa.org
Bill Hurlock: whurlock@montclairnjusa.org
Bob Russo: rrusso@montclairnjusa.org
Peter Yacobellis: pyacobellis@montclairnjusa.org
Robin Schlager: rschlager@montclairnjusa.org
Lori Price-Abrams: lpriceabrams@montclairnjus.org
David Cummings: dcummings@montclairnjusa.org
Legislative Primary Candidates in District 27 (Montclair is no longer District 34):
Sen. Richard Codey: SENCODEY@NJLEG.ORG and (973) 535-5017
Sen. Nia Gill (our current state senator): can be contacted via this form or at (973) 509-0388
Assemblyman John McKeon: AsmMcKeon@NJLeg.Org or (973) 377-1606
Alixon Collazos-Gill (lives in Montclair, is Brendan Gill’s spouse): info@alixoncollazosgill.com or (973) 477-5309
Eve Robinson: reachable via https://twitter.com/misseverobinson?lang=en
Board of Education:
President Alison Silverstein: asilverstein@montclair.k12.nj.us
Crystal Hopkins: chopkins@montclair.k12.nj.us
Yvonne Bouknight: ybouknight@montclair.k12.nj.us
Melanie Deysher: mdeysher@montclair.k12.nj.us
Phaedra Dunn: pdunn@montclair.k12.nj.us
Brian Fleischer: bfleischer@montclair.k12.nj.us
Monk Inyang: minyang@montclair.k12.nj.us
Eric Scherzer: escherzer@montclair.k12.nj.us
Kathryn Weller-Demming: kwellerdemming@montclair.k12.nj.us