Corzine Chooses Flight Over Fight:
The Star-Ledger reports today that Corzine has rolled over during negotiations with NJEA over health care plans. Here's the lede:
To avoid a legal fight with New Jersey's largest teachers union, the Corzine administration has agreed to spend as much as $20 million to allow thousands of its members to keep seeing doctors enrolled in an expensive health plan the state abolished last year.
Fort Lee Installment:
Lots of ink spraying on Fort Lee public schools, where faculty and/or administrators have apparently been raising or deleting grades on high school seniors' transcripts for the last 6 years. 300+ angry residents are crowding into board meetings, High School Principal Jay Berman has been suspended, and the district will mail letters to colleges and universities alerting them to potential fraud. NorthJersey has a good summary.
And Peter Applebome of the New York Times says this is the district's raison d'etre.
Appellate Court okays School Uniforms
NJSBA Teases Out Public Sentiment on Teacher Salaries:
Ray Pinney, blogger for NJSBA, wonders whether the public is getting fed up with the disconnect between the downward trend of the economy and the seemingly inalterable upward trend in teachers' salaries:
Maybe I am wrong about the public sentiment moving away from teachers and other public employees. But when our political leaders talk about shared sacrifices, those who feel they are sacrificing have little patience for anyone they believe is not sacrificing. I have been around long enough to know that many board members agree strongly with this sentiment and feel that one of the problems in education is the strength of the NJEA and a negotiation process that favors unions more than management. They may also start to feel emboldened to take a hard stand in negotiations, since they believe that for first time, legislators and the general public will not be supporting the teachers.
N.J. Has Two School Systems
says Derrell Bradford, deputy director of E3 (Excellent Education for Everyone) in Newark, a nonprofit group that advocates school choice. Here's his withering piece in the Trenton Times about the inequities inherent in NJ's public school system:
The governor, and those who serve him in the state Department of Education, maintain two education systems in this state. One you attend if you are white and live in the suburbs and another you attend if you are poor, minority and live in a city. You may succeed if you attend school in the former, but you will almost certainly fail if you attend school in the latter.
SFRA vs. Abbott Update:
John Mooney of the New Jersey section of the New York Times has an update today on the Abbott vs. School Funding Reform Act case before Judge Peter Doyne. Word is that a decision will be handed down on April 10th.