New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, on a break from campaigning for Donald Trump for president, announced in June a proposal to rip up the formula for distributing $9 billion in state aid and replace it with one-size-fits-all funding: $6,599 for each student, whether the student is struggling in an impoverished neighborhood of Newark or thriving in the leafy suburbs of Summit.

The results would be catastrophic for the poorest communities in New Jersey, according to John McEntee Jr., the president of the Paterson Education Association. “You’re going to have a nuclear bomb drop on schools in Paterson, Camden and Newark,” he said.

Christie’s proposal would upend decades of hard-fought gains in funding equity for the poorest school districts in New Jersey, which are sharply segregated by race and income. The state’s public schools are funded by a combination of state, local and federal aid. On average, the state provides 42 percent of all school aid, but poorer districts get more aid than wealthier ones: State aid accounts for as much as 83 percent of school funding in Newark and as little as 12.7 percent in Summit, where 85 percent of school funding comes from local taxes.

Under Christie’s proposal, Newark would suffer a dramatic reversal of fortune. According to an analysis by NJ Spotlight, per-pupil state funding would drop by 69 percent, from about $21,000 to $14,500. Summit would see per-pupil funding soar, from $405 to $6,095 — more than 1,500 percent, enabling Summit homeowners to obtain property tax relief.

The governor’s plan faces a high hurdle: He needs support from Democrats who control the state Legislature to place a constitutional amendment on the ballot in 2017. Still, his proposal has great resonance in a state that has among the highest property taxes in the country.

In July, Christie held a town hall meeting to sell his proposal at a senior center in suburban Fair Lawn, where nearly 85 percent of the residents are white and where the median household income is $96,000. Christie told the senior citizens they were “getting shafted every year, over and over again,” according to The Star-Ledger. He exhorted them to grab the property tax relief afforded by his “fairness formula” that would bring them and their schools a windfall.

New Jersey has long set the standard for educational equity thanks to lawsuits brought by the Education Law Center. In Abbott v. Burke rulings in the 1980s, the New Jersey Supreme Court called for funding that would provide “a thorough and efficient education” for children in 31 of the state’s poorest school districts. In the years that followed those rulings, those Abbott districts received a surge of state funding, much of it to alleviate child poverty.

“The ruling included a list of supplemental programs, an acknowledgment of what kids in poor districts need to be successful, including prekindergarten and wraparound services such as health clinics, food pantries and parent-engagement efforts,” said Danielle Farrie, the research director at the Education Law Center.

That understanding of how poverty shapes a child’s early years and capacity for learning has informed and inspired community schools nationwide, including the UFT’s 28 Community Learning Schools.

A new funding formula in 2008, enacted when Jon Corzine was governor, provided additional funding for poor students throughout the state whether or not they resided in Abbott districts. The new formula took into account property taxes, income level, enrollment and students who required special education, were at-risk or had limited English proficiency.

Christie, who became governor in 2010, stopped fully funding the new formula. Steve Baker, the director of communications for the New Jersey Education Association, calculates that Christie underfunded it by $1 billion a year. According to the Education Law Center, low-wealth districts now have $3,263 less per pupil in total school funding than high-wealth districts.

Baker said Christie’s proposal is tantamount to robbing from the poor to give to the rich. “It’s about shifting resources from cities like Camden to ease property taxes in wealthier communities,” he said. “It would be a huge net decrease for public education.”

John Yinger, the director of the Education Finance and Accountability Program at the Maxwell School, Syracuse University, noted that almost every state in the nation adjusted its school aid formula to account for wealth and at-risk students. Of Christie’s plan, he said, “It’s absolutely a retrograde proposal.”