Gov. Chris Christie visited Bordentown Regional High School Monday where he held a press conference promoting his budget plan that increases state aid to school districts by $213 million. He also said reforms must be enacted to ensure positive changes occur. Even though the Legislature hasn’t passed any of Christie’s agenda yet, Christie said he’s not discouraged.

Christie has four main topics on his education agenda — teacher tenure reform, merit pay, the Opportunity Scholarship Act (a form of private and parochial school vouchers) and expansion of charter schools in failing urban districts. Christie said others across the aisle are willing to address these topics in the current legislative session and is hopeful that change can take place.

Christie had declared 2011 the year of education reform during last year’s State of the State Address, but said Monday that other pressing issues took over. “I’ve learned about the pipeline through the Legislature,” he said. “If you put too much in there, it gets clogged. So last year turned out to be the year of pension and benefit reform, not the year of education.”

Some changes in education are evolving, including the new teacher evaluation program the state is trying to implement. Christie said he’s hearing good things about the evaluation, based 65 percent on classroom observation and 35 percent on student test scores.

NJToday Senior Political Correspondent Michael Aron files this report from Bordentown.

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