Lily Laux is New Jersey’s new education commissioner. She’ll focused in part on school funding, the state’s teacher shortage, and school consolidation.
Laux indicated support for school consolidations — something Gov. Mikie Sherrill (D) backed compelling on the campaign trail — but said shared service agreements could be a better solution for some school boards.
Sen. Vin Gopal (D), the education chairman, has sought to require certain small school districts with falling enrollments to merge in a bid to reduce education costs.
Ventnor, Margate and Brigantine each have less than 500 enrolled students making them a target for consolidation.
Schools are the primary driver of property taxes in New Jersey. Last year, school taxes accounted for 52% of property taxes statewide.
Consolidation could help students as well as district coffers, Laux said.
Politics that have occasionally made teachers targets — like a fracas over sex education in 2022 — were unhelpful to keeping schools staffed, Laux said. She declined to say whether New Jersey should allow students to opt in to sex education courses rather than allowing them to opt out, saying those decisions are best left to lawmakers and the State Board of Education.
NJ education chief sails through confirmation hearing
Laux declined to give details on how New Jersey’s own system for funding its K-12 schools may change under NJ Gov Sherrill.
She likewise declined to guarantee that districts would be kept whole in Sherrill’s first budget proposal, saying she could make no promises before Sherrill presents it to the Legislature.
New Jersey’s school funding formula has increasingly become an area of focus for lawmakers, some of whom say state aid is distributed unequally. They argue that the phase-out of transitional state aid to districts left some with deficits spanning millions of dollars after years of successive cuts.
Others have argued that the funding formula does not accurately reflect the cost of student transportation and extraordinary special education.
by Nikita Biryukov, New Jersey Monitor
February 19, 2026
