BettyLou DeCroce – on the issues

The things I stand for and fight for

I. Parental Rights in Education:

As a mother and grandmother, I want moms and dads and grandparents of school age children to have a say in what children learn in school. We pay school taxes. We pay the salaries of superintendent and principals. And we pay the salaries and costs incurred by the NJ Department of Education. They work for us. They cannot and should not be allowed to dictate to us what our children must learn in the classroom. They cannot be allowed to ram their woke agenda down our throats and then call us “domestic terrorists” when we object to what they are teaching our sons and daughters.

Among the things I will fight for in the NJ Assembly are:

• Curriculum transparency so every parent knows what their child is learning and reading. Curriculum’s must be posted online in every school district in the state.

• I also will fight for greater transparency from the state Education Department and the state Board of Education. There are 13 members on the board who are appointed by the Governor with the advice and consent of the New Jersey State Senate. In other words, they are appointed by Democrats. That must change; we need a bipartisan Board. I will introduce legislation to make the Board bipartisan.

• The State board must be more accessible. They meet at 9 am in Trenton. Who is available at 9 am to go to Trenton? I will author legislation that the State BOE meetings be held outside of Trenton, moved from county to county and at times that parents can conveniently attend.

II. I am an advocate for Fair School Funding

I was one of the first and most persistent critics of the way New Jersey school funding is allocated and how districts spend the taxpayers’ money. I asked for state audits of our biggest line item. No Democrats and few Republicans – even those calling themselves “Conservatives” wanted to take on that fight. I will.
The current education funding formula punishes small suburban districts, and doles out hundreds of millions to big, wasteful, underperforming urban districts. Do you know that the city of Passaic with a population of about 70,000 gets about $80 million MORE IN SCHOOL AID than all of Morris County gets (Population of over 500,000 ). Half of Passaic County’s school aid goes to Paterson ($495 million) while the City of Passaic received $272 million this year.

Fairer distributions of School Funding will help lower property taxes for everyone in District 26.
Republicans must fight to change the state education funding formula even if it means suing the state and taking our case to the U.S. Supreme Court. I will lead that fight.