Whether you agree or not with the recent budget cuts for schools in New Jersey here are some facts to consider. Many already know the facts and have heard it before but here are links to a couple of great articles on the subject with highlights and comments. I thought I knew a lot but they were still enlightening.
Viva Christie - This piece discusses the fact that two thirds of the states budgets were voted down last week which hasn’t happened since 1976. It also brings up the fact that Christie only cut the budgets by 5%. He also agreed to restore the aid to any district where the teachers agreed to a pay freeze (not cut) and pay 1.5% of their salary for their benefits. While the rest of the country is suffering a bad economy and high unemployment less than 24 of the state’s 591 “active” school districts have agreed to it. Is it really about the children as the teachers’ union says? Or is it about their money? There is a link that lists various school information, most notably the teachers’ “Mean Salaries”:
Mean Salaries** (2008-09) | |
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Administrators and Supervisors | $112,565 |
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Classroom Teachers | $57,465 |
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Educational Support Services | $70,296 |
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District Superintendents | $158,400 |
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Principals | $113,769 |
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Do you think there’s a reason they used “Mean” when referencing teachers’ salaries instead of “Median”? Seriously, there is a difference since mean indicates the average which is not always a reliable number since the average can be skewed by abnormally high or low numbers. The median is normally the preferred number to report. By the way the little “**” next to it references a footnote that indicates this is the first year these salaries are being reported. I wonder why they’ve never been reported before?
The author mentions the Stimulus and how it brought money into NJ and saved teachers’ jobs but what it really did was put off these tough decisions for another year. The author relays a great memory about a northern NJ school district that was having a contract standoff: “I remember walking past the town’s high school and seeing a glistening Mercedes CL500 coupe sitting in the teacher’s lot with a ‘SETTLE NOW’ sign in its windshield.” This is not representative of all teachers but it does lead into the next article.
Bringing Thunder-ous change to New Jersey – This piece starts out discussing a bridge between Morrisville and Trenton. It talks about the bridge being crowded in the afternoon as NJ state workers head home to their 3% income tax in Pennsylvania, while New Jersey’s top rate is 9%. He calls it a lesson in economics that NJ has failed. Then he gives the details of the $2.2 Billion deficit Christie inherited from Corzine and the projected $10 Billion shortfall for next year. Remember that NJ is required by our constitution to have a balanced budget. He mentions the $70 Billion in wealth that has left NJ in the past 4 years and the 115 tax increases imposed over the last 8 years. I wonder if there is a correlation between increased taxes (NJ has the highest tax burden in the country) and the “rich” leaving? The author answers that with the comment that “wealth goes where it is welcome and stays where it is well-treated.” Obviously that’s not New Jersey.
The fact that really got to me in this article was this one [emphasis mine]:
Christie notes that the $550,000 salary of the executive director of the teachers union is larger than the total cuts proposed for 190 of the state's 605 school districts.
What I find interesting about this is that the Obama Administration feels that it is appropriate to issue pay guidelines to companies that have received federal bailout money. This was in response to the “outrage over lucrative pay provided to executives of bailed-out companies while the public struggles with stagnant wages and high unemployment”. Should the NJ teachers’ union be considered a “company” that was bailed out with federal money (a.k.a. Stimulus)? And if so, where’s the outrage that the head of their union is making over a half million dollars while teachers struggle “with stagnant wages and high unemployment”. I forgot, the teachers refused to take a pay freeze so they do not have to worry about “stagnant wages” and it’s only a small handful that will have to deal with unemployment (in my opinion it’s the newer and better ones). This leads me to believe that as long as it is a union boss it is okay to pay an executive an exorbitant amount. Can you say hypocrisy?
While the teachers complain to our children about cutting programs (like band) and losing their jobs, the union executive is doing pretty good and I’m sure there are others. Where is their outrage? When will they decide to take back their union like some of us are planning on doing with our government in November? Instead of encouraging kids to “cut classes and go to the football field to protest his [Christie’s] policies” and showing “students a union-made video critical of him [Christie]” maybe they should be paying more attention to their own union and the millions of dollars they’re spending to combat the cuts.
The author closes with:
[Christie] has joined the struggle that will dominate the nation's domestic policymaking in this decade -- to break the ruinous collaboration between elected officials and unionized state and local workers whose affections the officials purchase with taxpayers' money.
I think Christie is doing exactly what he was elected to do. You can go to the NJEA’s website and send him and your state representatives a note of encouragement (just don’t use their sample letter):
If you’d prefer to call:
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