One school district’s pain caused by Christie’s cuts to public education in New Jersey

Tuesday, 23 March 2010 20:53

BY MICHAEL MORRIS

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

COMMENTARY

On March 17th School Districts all over the state learned how much state aid they could expect from Trenton this year, some districts had all state aid withheld while others had little to no aid cut from their budgets.

In Middletown's case more than $7.2 million or roughly 34 percent has been cut from state aid, which is on top of the loss of over $2.8 million in surplus funds that Gov. Christie instructed the school system to use earlier in March to make up for the difference in aid that would not be coming to finish out the school year.

At the Board of Education's March 18th meeting, the Board was suppose to unveil its proposed budget for the upcoming school year but could not due to the latest announcement.

This latest round of announced cuts has helped Governor Christie pare $4 billion from his proposed budget.

Earlier in the month, the Board of Education had already announced the layoff of 36 teachers, 18 paraprofessionals, two administrators, four secretaries and four facilities staffers as a result of the aid cut, now what is the school district suppose to due about this latest announced aid cut that will amount to an $11 million hole in it's budget?

How many teachers, administrators and support staff will have to be let go? Will a school somewhere in the district have to be closed? If so, which one and what will that do to class sizes throughout the district. Class size averages about 22 kids per classroom right now, will class size increase to 35 or more per classroom?

How about after school programs and extra-curricular activities? Will sports programs be cut, what will Middletown do without football, soccer, wrestling, field hockey or other sports to keep the community and kids active, involved and engaged in school spirit, self-worth and education?

Gov. Christie doesn't seem to be all that concerned about how these cuts in aid will effect the education of Middletown students or students in other school districts. It seems that all he is concerned about is breaking the back of the NJEA and its members, with little regard for the collateral damage that he will cause in the process.

Christie has told school districts across the state that there should be no need to cut programs or teachers to balance their budgets, he has stated to them that in essence, all a school district needs to do is break existing teacher contracts by freezing pending contractual teacher salary increase and imposing higher health care co-pays on the union members. Which makes a lot of sense since Christie himself realized that he couldn't do the same thing to state workers in order to balance the state's budget, so how does he expect school districts to be any different?

It seems to me that by breaking the back of the teacher's unions in this state, Christie is going after the public education system in order to push his plans for Charter School vouchers and school choice.

If you undermined the trust that residents have in the education system, then parents will look for alternatives to public education.

Both he and his Education Secretary Bret Schundler, are advocates for Charter schools even though it has been shown that Charter schools often have worse track records at teaching our kids than public schools have.

Charter schools are in most cases for profit operations that do not always make the right decisions for children based on education standards, they make decisions that affect their bottom line and in so doing the quality of education suffers.

In the case of the New Covenant School in Albany New York, it fell short of a key benchmark in English, suffered from high student and teacher turnover and was not fiscally sound; it is now slated for closure by the state.

Is that what New Jerseyians really want for their kids education, a weakened public education system that will drive children to a possibly inferior Charter School? I don't think so, residents for the most part believe in the public school system and feel that it is an important institution that needs to be maintained.

The current system may not be perfect but neither are most Charter Schools that are more interested in their bottom line than the overall quality of their education.

I agree that something needs to be done to rein in education costs but demonizing teachers and the NJEA and pitting them against taxpayers in a fight against their local school boards is not the way to go and will have devastating effects on municipalities through out Monmouth County and the State.

As of this writing, the Middletown Board of Education is engaging in talks with it's union members and is holding around the clock budget meetings to discuss how it will balance the coming FY 2010/2011 school year budget. Middletown needed to present its budget to Trenton for approval on March 22nd before it can be offered to residents for approval on April 20th. We will know soon what the outcome of these meetings will be, in the mean time expect the worst but hope for the best.

Michael Morris is involved with the Democratic Party in New Jersey. He is the author of MiddletownMike.blogspot.com.

Last Updated ( Wednesday, 24 March 2010 09:19 )

Comments (7)

Not at my school, that's for certain. I'm a high school librarian and they eliminated my position just this week. You want students to learn 21st Century Skills? Well, I was the person teaching it. The school librarian is in the one position to make connections among curriculum, grade levels, and ability levels. Where else can any and all students and teachers walk through to share information? We are the ones that see it all. We are highly-skilled professionals that encourage reading, research skills, critical thinking, and information analysis, to name a few. We match new technologies with the importance of knowing how to find a book so that students can function in the real world with real information literacy abilities. We manage budgets, write reports, deal with discipline issues, collaborate with teachers and constantly promote our programs to administrators who don't have a clue as to what we do. Yet, we're expendable in schools. What values are we teaching our children?

As a teacher, I think its disgusting that the educational system has come to this. I also find it far more appalling that teachers' jobs are being cut, increasing most classrooms to around 40 students. Where are these children supposed to be sitting? There isn't even enough room in a classroom, nor will there be quality in the classroom or one on one attention. The point of education is learning, if immense cuts are made, sports and extracurricular activities should be cut first before learning should be compromised. So much for No Child Left Behind...let's just leave them all behind. What happened to Christie's promise to aid education and support teachers??? FYI- Teachers do the job b/c it is satisfying, not for the money. If we wanted money we would have chosen other professions.

"New Jersey Teachers United Against Governor Chris Christie's Pay Freeze," I joined this group on Facebook and the administrator changed my rights so that i can not publish any of my opinions. Just like the NJEA trying to control every move. NJEA why are you doing with the 130 million dollars a year in Union Dues. Just think who ever get laid off gets free health care from NJ CARE and a $600.00 check a week for a year or so. Now you cant complain. Here are suggestions instead of lay offs: Cut salaries, consolidate school districts, pay more into benefits, mandatory retirement after 25 years, reduction of benefits, etc Corporate amercia calls it restructuring Why are you not going back to Board of Ed's, Mayors, Councils and asking them, why did they keep approving all the contracts in the past years? They know it was going to keep raising taxes.

Comments (2)

A friend suggested that we do away with county level superintedents, county level credentialing, and count offices all together. There are so many duplicate offices, city level, county and state level.

We are told how great of teachers we are. We don't do it for the money, OBVIOUSLY. We chose this profession because we CARE. WE CARE and want to make a difference, as trite as that may sound. Why are we the first to get hit? Speaking unselfishly now, what about the kids? How will your children feel when they have to walk into a classroom of 40 kids each day? Your child won't have the time or space to embrace the classroom and the subject he/she is supposed to be learning. School won't be fun. It will be suffocating. Who wants that? Don't take our jobs away. They are too important, and we work too hard to be told we are being let go. It isn't right. Again, we don't do it for the money. We do this job because if we can make one kid "get it," that day, we did something right..and there is no better feeling. What makes you feel better, Governor Christie? Why don't you try walking into a classroom and giving a lesson on human moral. You would be just awesome.

Comments (1)

Let's consolidate the school boards to county school boards rather than towns and use the money we save from that FAT to keep the teachers and schools in place. Then move to four regional school boards in the next ten years to cut all that administration. My kids attend Catholic school. I like the choice. Charter schools that are well run should be an option for a family that may not want to enroll in Catholic school. I say cut some of the admin. I would love to know the admin to student ratio of all school related administrators/teachers/board members of the state. Shrink government and school boards. Nice article Mike.

I can tell you what they plan to cut- closing Middle School Libraries, cutting Elementary computer, Spanish and guidance teachers. 72 teachers will lose their jobs because of this. Meanwhile, sports and activities aren't being touched. I am disgusted.

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One school district’s pain caused by Christie’s cuts to public education in New Jersey

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