Month: November 2011

AFTNJ NewsHigher Ed NewsLabor NewsMediaNewsPress Clips

RVCC, Watchung teachers unions struggle with contract negotiations

Contracts at RVCC, Warren remain unsettled

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.…

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AFTNJ NewsHigher Ed NewsLabor NewsMediaNewsPress Clips

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

By Max Pizarro

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.…

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AFTNJ NewsNewsPolitical Education

Princeton Twp. Dem puts name forward in LD16

By Max Pizarro

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.…

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NewsPre-K to 12 News

Charter Schools Sue State, Claiming They’ve Been Shortchanged

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.…

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Higher Ed NewsNews

Bergen Community College accreditation ‘in jeopardy,’ commission says

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.

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.…

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AFTNJ News

North Bergen Retiree Authors ‘Teachers Under Attack’

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.…

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NewsPolitical Education

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

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.…

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Higher Ed NewsNews

Super Committee cuts threaten higher education budget

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,…

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Pre-K to 12 News

Union fears privatization in Trenton schools unlikely to stop

By Matt Fair/The Times

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.…

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News

NJ has better things to invest in than corporate tax breaks

[…] 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.…

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AFTNJ NewsHigher Ed NewsMediaNewsPress Clips

OPRA helps protect NJ schools from scandals like Penn State’s

By Lucye Millerand

We reel in disbelief over the tragic events at Penn State. We ask ourselves what can be done to prevent a repetition of such grossly unethical conduct — the alleged crimes and the abject failure of accountability at Penn State. Sunshine is the most powerful disinfectant, and access to university records by the public, media, community organizations and other government institutions is a deterrent to this sort of infection.…

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Higher Ed NewsNews

College Staffing Grew in 2010, Most Heavily Among Part-Timers

The number of college faculty members and administrators edged up by 2.6 percent in 2010, to nearly 3.9 million, with growth coming disproportionately at for-profit colleges and among part-time workers, according to a federal report Tuesday. The annual report examines staffing levels and salaries at postsecondary institutions that qualify to award federal financial aid, and the key findings of this year’s report generally continue the trends of recent years.…

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Higher Ed News

Fallout From Penn State

By Allie Grasgreen

Unfavorable public attitudes about the way Pennsylvania State University officials handled a scandal alleging sex abuse of children may be influencing their overall judgment of college athletic programs and the institutions that house them, according to a new poll.

Forty percent of poll respondents said that, if they had a child preparing to go to college, they would be either likely (23 percent) or very likely (17 percent) to discourage him or her from choosing a Division I institution “that places a strong emphasis on sports.”…

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AFTNJ NewsFarahiHigher Ed NewsMediaNewsPress Clips

The Kean mutiny: Faculty fights back

Teachers upset over direction of school, soaring debt; point finger at university president

By Cheryl Hehl, Staff Writer

UNION — There has been a lot of change at Kean University since Dawood Farahi took over as president in 2003, including soaring debt that went from $48 million to $350 million in just six years and faculty that gave their leader an 83 percent no confidence vote in fall of 2010.…

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