News | American Federation of Teachers New Jersey, AFL-CIO

Toward a More Perfect Student Unionism: Lessons From the Maple Spring

May 18, 2012

By Biola Jeje and Isabelle Nastasia

Activists from CUNY hold forth on what the US student movement needs now.

We students have become morbid about our future. On campuses nationwide, it has become commonplace to see activists holding mock funerals for public higher education. At Brooklyn College at the City University of New York, we too held a funeral procession: out on the quad, in front of a coffin filled to the brim with diplomas, students were able to stand up in front of their peers and share what the death of higher education meant to them. One student, bravely holding back tears, shared how her troubles with financial aid, in addition to the death of her father, had made it impossible for her to continue her degree this semester.

For the majority of us seeking degrees, higher education is indeed dying a slow and painful death. Too little considered, however, is the role we as students are playing in its demise. The combination of tuition hikes, a lack of democratic governance in our schools, ballooning student debt, and the intimate relationship between our financial institutions and our academic ones are certainly killing higher education – but what is killing the student movement is our own complacency with these policies. While here in America, students on many campuses have limited themselves to mourning, elsewhere in the world they have taken to the streets – and there is much we can learn from their activism, in order to better our own.

More>>

Council Voice: More than 1,000 Protest for Higher Education

May 17, 2012

May 2012 Voice

Despite the fact that CWA recently settled their contract (subject to member ratification), we are not optimistic that the State and the presidents are willing to start to move to contract settlement and give us important contract language contained in the new CWA agreement. This is even more apparent because of the Rutgers settlement several months ago that contained salary language that the State and presidents proposed to us that we cannot agree to. However, negotiations are continuing and may drag on into the summer months or beyond. Please continue to spread the bitter truth to your colleagues, especially those who think their administration is their friend. Talk to your local President. They are the ones who are behind most of these demands, and if they claim they are not, then they can urge the State to drop them. Continue pushing them to do what it will take to get a fair and decent contract for everyone.

Also in this issue:

Communicating and Mobilizing for our Contract and for the Future
Montclair Adjunct Faculty Local 6025 Celebrates Union Solidarity

Full issue>>

Rutgers-Newark law school alumni oppose merger

May 17, 2012

The alumni association of the Rutgers School of Law-Newark is now on record against the proposed merger of Rutgers-Camden and Rowan universities.

The association, which represents several thousand alumni, made public a letter to Rutgers’ governing boards today. It questions the provenance of the original proposal — widely and rightly criticized as ill-conceived — as well as the rather fuzzy alterna-merger plan now making the political and media rounds.

Rutgers Rowan merger

“(T) he structure of Rutgers should not be decided behind closed doors by a small group that represents neither the University as a whole nor the public it serves,” the association writes (amen to that).

More>>

Ex-Stevens Institute of Technology president has netted more than $5M from school since resigning

May 17, 2012

By Kelly Heyboer/ The Star-Ledger

HOBOKEN — Stevens Institute of Technology’s former president has received more than $5 million from the university since he left in 2010 amid allegations of financial mismanagement at the school, campus officials said Wednesday.

Star-Ledger file photoHarold Raveché, then the president of Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, poses at the school in 2005.

The payout to Harold Raveché — which came shortly after Stevens made a deal with the state to settle a lawsuit over the Hoboken school’s financial and governance problems — included consulting fees, severance pay, retirement benefits and other cash.

More>>

Camden Opens New Chapter in Christie Education Reform Agenda

May 17, 2012

City to be first test of Urban Hope Act, as district grapples with its own low performance
By John Mooney

What with its size and Facebook fortune, Newark gets all the press. But Camden is quickly becoming ground zero south for the Christie administration’s push for education reform.

This week, the district will be the first to seek proposals from nonprofit organizations — with potential for-profit partners — to build and run new schools in the city under the recently enacted Urban Hope Act.

Meanwhile, the state continues to prepare for some sweeping changes in the district itself, with 23 of the 28 schools so low performing as to be deemed Priority Schools, and subject to overhauls of their staff, leadership and even curriculum.

All this comes as the local Board of Education on Tuesday completed the buyout of superintendent Bessie Lefra Young after five years on the job, and announced it would launch a search for a new leader.

More>>

Rutgers talks focus on boosting Newark

May 17, 2012

By Patricia Alex. Staff Writer. The Record.

Buoyed by deal making in South Jersey, political leaders in the northern part of the state are pushing for substantial changes in Governor Christie’s university reorganization plan, seeking more autonomy for Rutgers-Newark and a strengthening of the state’s beleaguered medical university in that city.

RECORD FILE PHOTO The University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in Newark.

Newark Mayor Cory Booker met with about a dozen Democratic legislators from North Jersey on Wednesday, including lawmakers from Bergen and Passaic counties, to outline an alternative to the Christie plan for Newark.

Christie has been mum about compromises being hashed out by the different groups in North and South Jersey, but sources said his representatives have been in on some of the talks, and it is believed the governor may have to compromise to have this deal done. And that compromise may come amid the one being negotiated by the same lawmakers over Christie’s call for a 10 percent income tax cut.

Sources familiar with the latest merger talks say the North Jersey legislators and other top officials in and around Newark have been working privately to come up with a plan similar to one worked out by South Jersey power brokers who are now seeking financial autonomy for Rutgers-Camden, which would work in partnership with Rowan University in Glassboro.

Many in Newark viewed Christie’s plan as a losing proposition for the state’s largest city. The governor has proposed the breakup of the Newark-based University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, with the most successful pieces of the school — including a medical school in New Brunswick — going to Rutgers University’s flagship in New Brunswick/Piscataway.

Booker and others balked at the idea of a diminished and financially unstable UMDNJ, and the mayor reportedly wants assurances that more than $600 million in debt carried by the school and University Hospital will be shored up before any plan moves forward.

“The debt is the big issue,” said Assemblywoman Connie Wagner, D-Paramus, who attended the meeting. “I’m from Bergen, why do I care? Because Newark is important to the economic recovery of North Jersey.”

The hospital is the largest charity-care provider in the state and among the biggest employers in Newark.

More>>

Hearings on Teacher Tenure Reform Delayed — For Now

May 16, 2012

Assembly and Senate committees wary to move as Christie warns he will veto ‘water-downed’ bill

By John Mooney

The drama over a teacher tenure reform in New Jersey continues to twist and turn, as legislators jockey for position and Gov. Chris Christie makes clear his opinion, if not his precise intentions.

Much of the latest guessing arose this week with the sudden postponement of education committee meetings on Monday in both the Senate and Assembly.

Each were expected to take up their respective versions of bills that would revamp how teachers gain and lose tenure protections, but the committee chairmen indicated yesterday they were not quite ready to take the next step.

Sen. Teresa Ruiz (D-Essex), chairwoman of the state’s Senate education committee, said she was still working through the final details of her bill that is expected to be the best chance for bipartisan consensus on tenure reform.

More>>

Rutgers-Camden, Rowan University, Closer to a Compromise

May 16, 2012

Autonomy and collaboration hallmarks of proposed relationship between two South Jersey schools

Rutgers Camden button

Legislators and university officials are getting nearer to a deal giving Rutgers-Camden more autonomy from its New Brunswick campus and bringing it closer to — but not making it a part of — Rowan University.

Sources with knowledge of the discussions said they are working to strike a compromise between the fully merged Rowan-Rutgers Camden recommended by a commission last January and supported by Gov. Chris Christie and the current structure of two separate schools, one of which is governed from afar. What’s envisioned is a system fairly unusual in higher education.

More>>

Sweeney: Rowan, Rutgers-Camden overhaul legislation coming soon

May 16, 2012

By James Osborne and Matt Katz, Inquirer Staff Writers

State Senate President Stephen Sweeney said Tuesday he was working on legislation to be ready June 1 for restructuring New Jersey’s public universities.

In an interview, he maintained that multiple options remained on the table, even as Rutgers officials suggested they were close to a deal that would keep Rutgers-Camden within the Rutgers university system.

“There’s a whole bunch of variations” of the legislation, but “I’m not going to throw that out until I find something that can work,” Sweeney, a Democrat, said after a groundbreaking ceremony for the Cooper Cancer Institute in Camden. “I’m strongly, firmly committed to finding a way to get this done.”

Gov. Christie has set a July 1 deadline for settling on a university-system overhaul plan. Sweeney’s legislation would represent a significant step forward.

More>>

Kean U. Faculty Votes No Confidence in Board

May 16, 2012

Faculty members and librarians at Kean University voted no confidence in the university’s Board of Trustees this week, with 94 percent of responding faculty members saying they had lost faith in the board. Professors have clashed with the university’s president, Dawood Farahi, for several years. Tensions came to a head early this year when the faculty accused Farahi of including false information on his résumé. After an investigation in which lawyers hired by the board found that Farahi had falsified some of the statements on earlier résumés, the board voted seven to four to keep Farahi in place, a decision that further angered faculty members. Professors voted no confidence in Farahi in 2010.

More>>