Evan Scott is a lifelong New Jersey resident, a veteran, and a retired military service member. He holds a bachelor’s degree in education and was elected to his hometown’s Board of Education in 1988. Now living in Evesham Township, NJ, he continues to advocate for fair and transparent school funding.

In Trenton, the Governor has already introduced the FY2026 state budget, and lawmakers are now turning to the critical task of reviewing and negotiating its contents. Billions of dollars for school districts are on the table. But amid the spreadsheets and talking points, there’s a glaring legal requirement that’s being quietly ignored—a requirement that, if followed, could save districts like mine from fiscal crisis. It’s time to talk about the Geographic Cost Adjustment (GCA).

Under New Jersey’s School Funding Reform Act (SFRA), the GCA is a multiplier used to adjust a school district’s “adequacy budget”—essentially, the amount it takes to provide a thorough and efficient education in that community. The GCA recognizes that it costs more to hire teachers in Essex County than in Sussex, more to maintain a school in Bergen than in Cape May. Or at least it used to.

The GCA was last updated in 2014, using wage data from 2005 to 2010. That’s right: districts in 2025 are being funded based on cost assumptions from before smartphones had touchscreens. This is more than an oversight—it’s a violation of state law. N.J.S.A. 18A:7F-51(a) mandates that the GCA be revised every five years in accordance with updated census data. It has been over a decade.

The consequences are stark. In Burlington County, where I live, the GCA has remained frozen at 0.9848. That outdated figure falsely suggests our schools cost less to operate than the state average. But in the real world, labor markets, housing prices, and post-COVID demographics have all shifted. Educators in my district face higher costs, but the state refuses to acknowledge it.

Take Evesham Township, for example. Our community is projected to receive no Equalization Aid this year. Why? Because the formula assumes we’re wealthy enough to shoulder the full cost of education. The calculation uses aggregate income—the total earnings of all residents—regardless of how unevenly that wealth is distributed. A few high-income households can skew the numbers dramatically, pushing up our Local Fair Share while ignoring the flat or modest wages of most residents.

Meanwhile, the GCA relies on median income to define costs. So we’re judged as rich (aggregate), but paid as poor (median). This mismatch between how New Jersey defines a community’s wealth and its educational costs is not just inconsistent—it’s structurally unjust.

If the GCA had been updated—even modestly—it would have made a difference. According to district-level estimates which I modeled using current ACS data, Evesham would have received over $2.7 million more between 2019 and 2026 with a GCA adjusted to 0.99. That might not sound like much in Trenton, but in Evesham, that’s programs, teachers, buses—children’s lives.

And it gets worse. Like many districts, Evesham was also hit by cuts from Senate Bill 2 (S2), which reallocated state aid based on the SFRA’s “Local Fair Share” calculation. Evesham lost about $7 million under S2. So not only did the state cut our aid, it refused to update the cost model that might have offset those cuts.

The result? A projected $7 million budget deficit in 2025–26. To close it, the district is considering devastating measures: outsourcing transportation, increasing walking zones, raising class sizes, cutting team teaching time, slashing health benefits for paraprofessionals, eliminating elementary extracurriculars—and still falling short. Eighty-three positions are on the line. Imagine sitting in on our most recent BOE meeting and seeing these slides:

Let’s be clear: these are not abstract numbers. These are the working conditions of educators. These are the school experiences of our children.

State leaders have a choice. They can continue to hide behind outdated models and legal neglect. Or they can fulfill their obligations—both legal and moral—to update the GCA, recognize the true costs of education, and stop punishing communities for demographic shifts beyond their control.

New Jersey’s school funding system is built on an illusion of fairness. But the gap between illusion and reality grows wider every year the GCA remains frozen.

Fix it. Because failure to act isn’t just irresponsible—it’s inequitable.