Monthly Archives: November 2011

RVCC, Watchung teachers unions struggle with contract negotiations

November 30, 2011

Contracts at RVCC, Warren remain unsettled

Maria DeFilippis

American Federation of Teachers Local 2375 President Maria DeFilippis speaks. / MARY IUVONE/FOR NJ PRESS MEDIA

BRANCHBURG— A labor dispute at a sleepy Central Jersey community college managed to gain the attention of some prominent Democratic politicians who attended a faculty and student rally Tuesday evening.

Assemblyman Jason O’Donnell, a Democrat from Hudson County representing the 31st District, spoke at the Raritan Valley Community College rally in solidarity with the faculty.

Also at the rally was Marie Corfield, an art teacher in the Flemington-Raritan district best known for her exchange with Gov. Chris Christie at his town halls last year in Raritan Township.

American Federation of Teachers Local 2375 President Maria DeFilippis said the rally maked the 152nd day the faculty has been working without a contract. Nearly 50 people attended the event inside the campus center.

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Life after the uprising: O’Donnell joins community college teachers’ battle for contract

November 30, 2011

By Max Pizarro

Jason O'Donnell

Asm. Jason O'Donnell

RARITAN – On the losing end of an intra-party leadership battle, Assemblyman Jason O’Donnell (D-31), Bayonne, proved there’s life after the rebellion tonight as he threw in with stymied community college teachers.

“If you want to pick on cops and firefighters, okay, I get it,” the career Bayonne firefighter told a basement crowd at Raritan Valley Community College where the teachers don’t have a contract.

“But you want to go after teachers? Are you kidding me?”

Stung by George Norcross-allied Democrats when he, state Assembly Majority Leader Joe Cryan (D-20), Union, and others tried to win leadership in the lower house more sympathetic to public sector unions, O’Donnell said he plans to take the megaphone of his office into the streets.

“Wherever labor needs me,” he told PolitickerNJ.com.

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Princeton Twp. Dem puts name forward in LD16

November 30, 2011

By Max Pizarro

Sue Nemeth

Sue Nemeth

Having championed consolidation locally in the storied Princetons case, Princeton Township Deputy Mayor Sue Nemeth now wants to expand her area of influence and run for the Assembly in LD 16.

“I’m definitely interested in running,” said Nemeth, who just won re-election to her local seat in a landslide.

A fundraiser for the Eagleton Institute for American Women in Politics for the past 20 years, Nemeth said she is a good fit for the newly configured 16th District.

She was raised in Somerset County, lived in Middlesex and now lives in Mercer.

“The Legislature is something I’ve had my eye on for some time,” Nemeth told PolitickerNJ.com.

A self-described moderate Democrat who successfully campaigned for consolidation of the Princetons and who focused on budget and financial issues in her first term, Nemeth would not have voted for public sector worker pensions and benefits cuts, she said.

“I believe in collective bargaining,” the former NJ Citizens Action organizer told PolitickerNJ.com. “I take offense to that (pensions and benefits cuts). There are lots of ways to scrub down the budget without targeting public workers.”

Note: Nemeth is a member of URA-AFT, 1766.

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Charter Schools Sue State, Claiming They’ve Been Shortchanged

November 30, 2011

Latest development only adds to the tensions between charters and the districts that host them
By John Mooney, November 30 in Education
A group of Jersey City charter schools have sued the Christie administration to correct what they say has been a stark underfunding of their schools, throwing a twist into the ongoing debate over how New Jersey’s charters are paid for.
The four charter schools — Learning Community, Golden Door, Soaring Heights, and Ethical Community charter — have petitioned acting education commissioner Chris Cerf to address what has been a longstanding disparity in the how Jersey City and several other districts’ charter schools are funded.

In the petition, the schools contend that they are put at a unique disadvantage because of Jersey City’s massive property tax abatements, which draw the school district additional state aid – called adjustment aid — that is not shared with the charters.

As a result, the charters receive less than the 90 percent of the district’s per-pupil costs, as mandated under the state’s charter school law. Other charter schools similarly affected are in Asbury Park, Hoboken, and Red Bank.

The case also points up the continuing and unresolved disputes in how New Jersey charter schools are funded in general, one that not only irks charter schools but also the districts that foot most of the bill.

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Bergen Community College accreditation ‘in jeopardy,’ commission says

November 29, 2011

BY LESLIE BRODY, STAFF WRITER
The Record

Bergen Community College has been warned its “accreditation may be in jeopardy,” according to an oversight group, the Middle States Commission on Higher Education.

FILE PHOTO Students walking around the campus of Bergen Community College in Paramus.

That body alerted the state’s largest community college that it failed to show evidence that assessments of student learning were used to strengthen teaching, allocate resources and make sure graduates had acquired necessary skills. The commission also sought more proof the college had spelled out strategies for meeting its goals and used data to judge its performance.

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North Bergen Retiree Authors ‘Teachers Under Attack’

November 28, 2011
Teachers Under Attack book

Teachers Under Attack, written by North Bergen Federation retiree Mike Spina.

Never in the history of the United States have teachers and public schools undergone so much criticism. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has been its poster boy for his scathing attacks on public school teachers and their union. Christie’s personal vendetta against the NJEA and his proposed reforms will radically change public education and not for the better. In Teachers Under Attack! retired teacher Mike Spina torpedoes Christie’s proposals by demonstrating education experts have proved them ineffective. Spina compiles all the arguments teachers can use to refute the Governor’s misstatements and shows the public they are being duped so Christie can achieve his political agenda of privatizing public schools.

For more information about the author or to purchase the book, visit http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/SKU-0091499050/default.aspx

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‘Dear Jenny: I Fired Your Mom and Put You to Work to Help You “Rise.” Love, Newt’

November 28, 2011

John Nichols

The picture is of elementary-school age girl mopping the hall in front of a row of lockers.

“Dear Jenny,” reads the accompanying text, “I fired your Mom and put you to work to help you ‘rise.’ Love, Newt.”

A postscript adds: “Hope you don’t miss your house, food and health care too much. You’ll thank me in 30 years, if you survive. Promise!”

The new ad campaign from the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees goes to the heart of the matter. Former House Speaker and—at least for this week—Republican presidential front-runner Newt Gingrich really does want to fire school janitors and hire kids to mop the halls, clean the restrooms and fix the boilers. Gingrich claims this switch-up will help elementary and high-school age children “begin the process of rising.”

The real point of the proposal is to destroy public-sector unions. And he is willing to end collective bargaining rights obtained during the New Deal era and in the years since, as well as child labor laws passed during the Progressive Era of a century ago, in order to achieve a political end.

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Super Committee cuts threaten higher education budget

November 28, 2011

By Matthew Matilsky / Staff Writer

After the Super Committee’s failure to make appropriate spending cuts, an unspecified amount of federal funding for higher education will be slashed during the 2012-2013 school year.

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the automatic spending cuts will reduce most non-defense discretionary spending, like federal student aid, by 7.8 percent in fiscal year 2013 alone, according to fastweb.com, a website that provides resources for paying for college.

The remaining $2.3 billion in annual federal student aid funding — excluding the Pell Grant — next fiscal year will see about $183 million in cuts to programs, like Federal Work-Study, SEOG and TEACH Grant programs, according to fastweb.com.

The potential cuts in January 2013 could also restructure student loans by eliminating the six-month grace period allowed before initial payments and reducing the funding for research grants, said Matt Cordeiro, Rutgers University Student Assembly president.

“This is a total and utter failure and a bad example of leadership,” said Cordeiro, a School of Arts and Sciences senior. “People prefer communism over the United States government right now. They’re sending the wrong message to kids.”

He said the specific consequences of the cuts are unclear but are likely to affect the 86 percent of undergraduate University students relying on financial aid and funding for research.

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Union fears privatization in Trenton schools unlikely to stop

November 28, 2011

By Matt Fair/The Times

Toby Sanders

Toby Sanders said outsourcing not only reduces the quality of service for students but also contributes to social and economic decline as higher paying jobs for city residents are given to out-of-towners paid cut-rate wages.

TRENTON – First they came for the district’s cafeteria workers, then for its security staff and bus drivers. Slowly, over the last three years, Trenton Public Schools has moved toward privatizing parts of its staff to cope with rising employee costs and reductions in state aid.

Union leaders fear the effort is unlikely to stop anytime soon.

District officials, including school board president Toby Sanders, say they’re under mounting pressure from the state to trim costs by any means possible.

“The strategy of the state is to privatize as many positions as possible in an effort to get out from paying benefits because the costs constantly escalate,” said Sanders, a frequent critic of outsourcing efforts. “Where they can privatize they are going to try to compel it.”

While the moves may be made with an eye toward saving money, union officials say the quality of the services being privatized are being dragged down.

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NJ has better things to invest in than corporate tax breaks

November 28, 2011

[...]
There is a better strategy to create jobs using scarce public resources. The state ought to be investing public funds in its people, not its corporations. It ought to be using tax money to finance projects that benefit the public and private enterprise.

For example, fully funding education would not only put thousands of teachers back to work, it also would maintain the standard of excellence New Jersey has established in its system of public education. And a teacher’s paycheck spends the same as Panasonic worker’s paycheck, especially when both are financed by tax dollars.

And if the state has the wherewithal to finance the construction of a casino, as it did this year with a $261 million Economic Redevelopment and Growth grant to the developers of the Revel casino in Atlantic City, why can’t it use other available resources to build schools?

The School Development Authority has $3.9 billion in untapped bonding capacity. There’s not so much difference in the state using that borrowing authority to build a school than there is in the state tapping 20 years of future tax revenues to finance the construction of a casino. Certainly, building schools would put just as many trade laborers to work and create just as many jobs for teachers as building casinos would add workers. But the school construction would benefit the public by replacing schools in the state that have been deemed unfit for students and boarded up.

This is not just about investing in schools and teachers. There are dozens of other such opportunities for public investment — green energy, road and bridge repairs, transit — that will allow the state to directly create jobs, in both the public and private sectors.

Any of those options would seem to be a better strategy than throwing money at corporations and hoping for good results.

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