State education leaders were in the hot seat today testifying at the state house before the Assembly Budget Committee.

As lawmakers grapple with balancing a budget that on one hand increases state aid to schools by nearly $1,000,000,000, but also cuts funding to more than 100 districts.

As senior correspondent Joanna Gagis reports.

Several legislators are proposing fixes to the problems in their own districts, but it's unclear if any offer a permanent fix.

With this milestone comes an infusion of $908 million in K-12 formula aid and a preschool funding increase of $124 million.

Acting Education Commissioner Kevin Dehmer addressed the Assembly Budget Committee in a hearing today to explain Governor Murphy's proposed education budget that finalized a seven year phasing of the S2 school funding formula.

This additional funding will bring our total K-12 formula aid to nearly 11.7 billion, and our total funding for preschool will surpass 1.2 billion.

This direct support to our schools now exceeds 24% of the entire state budget.

The plan will once again fully fund the state pension system, allocates four and a half million to literacy programs, 800,000 for afterschool and summer programs for at risk students, nearly 2 million for AP and college credit courses, and 15 million to expand mental health services for schools.

But formal based on legislators minds today was that funding formula that's increased funding to 460 districts left 140 of them facing budget cuts.

Do you think that the property value is a fair way to gauge a local property taxpayers ability to pay for funding of schools.

Using property values?

Yes, property taxes are a vital part of funding our schools.

It's one of the three components we've got local property taxes, state state support and federal support.

Dehmer explaining that the costs of educating a student are also calculated into the formula, along with the community's ability to pay and declining enrollment, something that the department says is part of the explanation for some of the 140 districts losing funding.

But some are losing double digit percentages year over year.

My district concerned this losing 880 some odd thousand, which is, I believe, roughly 18%.

You know, I got from their school board.

You know, they're down 20 kids from last year.

I was just trying to understand, like how we got there to this point where they're staring down the barrel of an 18% reduction.

It's looking at the school community and the costs associated with running schools for that number of students that have these types of of needs.

The other side is, okay, how do we share that cost between the state and local peace?

That's a question several lawmakers are trying to answer.

A number of bills have been proposed that offer stopgap funding to those districts facing cuts.

One proposed by Democrats in the sixth and 16th districts appropriates nearly 71 and a half million that districts can apply for another bill from Senators Bucco and O'scanlon would restore 200 million in funding to losing districts.

And a companion bill from Republicans in District nine would limit the cut a district could face to no more than 1% of the year prior.

But it all boils down to this question for Assemblyman Al Balis.

Why are we doing all this?

Why are we having to do supplemental bills?

Why are we having to, you know, extend these deadlines?

You guys proposed a budget.

Right.

You can ask to is a piece of it, but you can also add other stuff into it to figure out how to fund these districts.

If anybody the legislature or were to choose to move forward with those, then we would obviously work to implement those.

This is the school funding formula that we have on the books.

It's the statutory formula we're carrying out.

And now for the first time ever, fully funding it.

So even though this proposed budget has fully funded the formula, we could end up seeing a patchwork of funding models going to some districts, leaving this process for them as clunky and uncertain as it's ever been.

In Trenton, I'm Joanna Gagis NJ Spotlight News.