Katie Katz is the Executive Director of Teach NJ, a nonpartisan, grassroots movement devoted to advocating for equitable funding for New Jersey’s nonpublic schools. A third generation New Jersey resident, Katie lives in Teaneck with her husband and three children.

Ashley is a mother who does everything we say we want parents to do. She attended college and graduate school in New Jersey, she works hard as a mental health clinician, and she has built her life around her daughter. And still, every year, she has to find a way to find enough money for tuition so her third-grader can stay at Our Lady of Mount Carmel School in Asbury Park.

Ashley is a single, educated, working mom, part of the proud Haitian-American community that has helped shape this stretch of the Jersey Shore. Year after year, she scrapes together the tuition, because she has decided that the environment at that school, with its values, its attention, and its sense of belonging, is worth the sacrifice.

What she may not realize is that in making that choice, she is also saving her neighbors money.

As New Jersey leaders debate affordability and accountability, those concerns are especially urgent in a state with the nation’s highest property taxes. Against that backdrop, one of the state’s most effective tools for managing education costs continues to receive surprisingly little attention: the very schools that families like hers choose.

A newly released study from the Teach Coalition’s Research Institute found that New Jersey’s nonpublic schools generated an estimated $2.92 billion in savings for public school districts during the 2022–2023 school year alone, using a deliberately conservative method that excluded major fixed costs such as facilities and administration. About 160,000 children attend nonpublic schools across the state, thereby easing enrollment pressure on public systems and reducing costs borne by local districts and taxpayers. That $2.92 billion is equivalent to roughly 7.2 percent of what public districts spend statewide.

The warning signs are already visible. A decade ago, New Jersey had 238 Catholic schools serving roughly 71,000 students. Today, that number has fallen to 183 schools serving about 50,000, a decline of nearly a third. Those students do not disappear. They enter public school systems that must absorb additional enrollment, staffing, classroom space, and services. The result is an estimated $1 billion in additional annual public education costs before facilities and long-term infrastructure are even considered.

Strong public schools are essential to New Jersey’s future and educate the overwhelming majority of children across the state. Nonpublic schools complement that system and ease the load on districts. Those two facts are not in tension, and the state has made real progress in recognizing the partnership through investments in school security, ancillary services, and its first-in-the-nation STEM reimbursement program. Measured against the billions in annual savings nonpublic schools provide, those investments remain relatively modest.

Yet support for nonpublic schools is still too often treated as politically contentious rather than fiscally practical. That framing ignores a basic reality: when nonpublic schools stay strong, New Jersey’s public systems face less financial and operational strain.

Nowhere is the gap between what these schools provide and what the state invests more urgent than in security. Students face the same threats regardless of which school they attend, yet funding disparities remain. While public school security funding has risen to more than $312 per pupil, nonpublic school security aid has remained flat for the last four budget cycles at $205 per pupil. State law requires the funding cap for nonpublic school security funding to increase annually with inflation, yet the state has failed to comply. At the same time, antisemitic incidents in New Jersey have surged, and security costs at many faith-based schools have risen dramatically. The result is a growing gap at the very moment schools are being asked to do more to keep children safe. 

New Jersey’s STEM reimbursement program is another high-return investment. The program expands access to certified STEM teachers, helps address educator shortages, provides public school teachers with additional compensation opportunities, and reaches thousands of students at a fraction of what the state would otherwise spend. Fully funding it for the coming year is exactly the kind of low-cost, high-return decision responsible budgeting looks like.

Every student educated in a nonpublic school represents one less seat local taxpayers must fund, a reality that matters in every conversation about affordability and property-tax relief. In a state where every budget debate eventually comes back to affordability, the roughly $2.9 billion that nonpublic schools save each year is not a fact policymakers can afford to ignore. Preserving a strong nonpublic school sector is not charity, and it is not politics. It is prudent fiscal policy, and it helps keep educational options available for hardworking families like Ashley, who is doing everything she can to give her daughter the school that fits her best.