Teacher protests across U.S. won’t happen here, governor says

TRENTON » Teachers in Arizona, Colorado and elsewhere across the country have marched in a push for more funding, but in New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy is proposing about $283 million in new school aid and says that kind of pushback won’t happen on his watch.

The protests and strikes stem from teachers’ calls for higher pay and more resources and have in some states resulted in concessions from Republican officials who had been reluctant to raise taxes to finance greater funding.

But New Jersey has among the highest paid teachers in the country and elected Murphy, a progressive Democrat, whose core campaign pledge was boosting state aid to schools. The higher aid is also a window into how Murphy aims to address one of the state’s biggest issues: skyhigh property taxes.

Murphy won election with help the state’s biggest teacher’s union and has pointed to the protests in other states this week in a speech to mark his 100th day in office.

“As long as I’m here and we’re here, that ain’t gonna happen in New Jersey. You have my word,” he said.

A closer look at New Jersey’s school funding, which is emerging as a key issue as the Democrat-led Legislature considers Murphy’s $37.4 billion budget proposal: the state’s school funding formula.

Murphy campaigned on the issue and cast the payment as an obligation that the state must meet to make it more competitive as well as “stronger and fairer.”

He’s proposed financing that and costs through tax hikes, including on incomes over $1 million and raising the sales tax from 6.625 percent to 7 percent.