Dear Governor Christie:
Your visit to Raritan Valley Community College on April 11, 2013 represents a valuable opportunity for dialogue on the critically important issues facing students and teachers in institutions of public higher education today. You have often publicly stated your appreciation for New Jersey’s public education system and have demonstrated this commitment in your support for the $750 million higher education bond issue. In the spirit of this action, we ask you now to consider further measures that we deem vital to the welfare of this and other New Jersey public colleges and universities. Please allow us to offer some details.
As originally envisioned, New Jersey community colleges were to be supported by an equal balance of state, county, and student tuition sources. This proportion of two-thirds public funding and one-third student tuition clearly reflected the founding vision that New Jersey’s public county colleges be primarily supported with public funds and only supplemented by tuition dollars. But with regard to community colleges, the state thus far has not carried its share of the burden and, each year it has shortchanged New Jersey’s community college students. In FY 2013 student tuition and fees at Raritan Valley Community College accounted for 60.8% of the operating budget while county support made up 26.7% and state funding made up only 11.9%. This, in spite of the fact that our students and those in other community colleges across the United States are the very ones whom President Obama has singled out in his American Education Initiative as being in dire need of “comprehensive, personalized services to help them plan their careers, stay in school, and graduate.” And it is not only students that benefit from a well-funded system of public higher education. One 2013 study found that for every dollar of public support to Raritan Valley Community College, taxpayers saw a return of $4.30 in the form of higher tax receipts and avoided costs.
If you genuinely support public higher education we ask that you lead us in an effort to restore public funding for institutions like ours, so that we can finally reflect the founding vision of balanced and robust commitment to our community and public access to higher education. Now more than ever, we need strong leadership from your office—from you as the Governor of our state. Now more than ever we cannot afford to sit by silently as state support for public employees’ health care and pensions are slashed while business and corporate taxes are lowered.
We are also deeply concerned about the state of tenure in higher education. Tenure contributes to academic excellence by protecting academic freedom and job security for teachers. Lamentably, however, you have acted to weaken tenure in higher education and effectively eliminated it in K-12 education, actions which stand in stark contrast to your vow to support and strengthen education. Equally concerning are your persistent efforts to drive a wedge between “the public” and public workers. You have claimed that “unions are trying to break the middle class in New Jersey,” declaring that your opponents “believe in teachers’ unions” while you “believe in teachers.” We are, at once, teachers, union members, and tax-paying members of our communities and our state. We are the middle class. And as such we must remind you that institutions of public education, supported and enriched by strong public unions, do not harm the public but in fact represent an invaluable public good.
Finally, as you visit our college today we would ask that you not use us as a platform belittling public employees and union members. We would ask, too, that you make no more declarations of support for public higher education. That is, not unless you simultaneously agree to take concrete steps to assure that our students and other students in New Jersey public colleges and universities receive the support they deserve and have worked so hard to obtain.
In support of Public Education,
Raritan Valley Community College Faculty Federation
AFT Local #2375
Contacts: AFT Local Union President Maria M. DeFilippis,
Esq.
Coordinator of Paralegal Studies
Raritan Valley Community College
P.O. Box 3300, Somerville, NJ 08876
(908) 526-1200 ext. 8239
History Prof. Carl Lindskoog
Instructor of History
Dept. of Humanities, Social Science and Education
Raritan Valley Community College
(908)526-1200 ext.8305