EDUCATION SPENDING IS NOT PROPORTIONAL TO SUCCESS.
By Grace Cangemi
The Asbury Park shuffle continues, and taxpayers and students are continuing to bear the brunt. As some districts struggle to hold the line on spending and improve achievement, the worst performing district in the county has again established itself as the highest spending.
This month, the Asbury Park school district outshone all the others in Monmouth County. First, it shuffled school principals. After all, Antonio Lewis, the twice-suspended former superintendent needs a job. So says the court system. And thus the middle school principal, Howard Mednick, who had, in the opinion of many, been making positive changes there, has been moved to the Thurgood Marshall Elementary School to make room for Mr. Lewis to head the middle school because it seems that settlements and pension are apparently not enough for this guy. Regardless of his suspensions and track record, Mr. Lewis has retained his tenure rights (God help me, tenure is a right? But that’s a whole other discussion) and needs to be placed somewhere. Somehow, working the system is not the lesson I would want my child to learn from her school principal. And that’s the least of it.
In most other districts, if a school board spends money, they need to raise money through property tax levies. Not in Asbury Park, where Abbott dollars flow freely. After all, Asbury Park once again spent more per student than any other district in Monmouth County, according the state’s annual school report card, released this week. Last year, Asbury Park spent an average of over $24,000 per student. The state average for a similar district was $13,833. So what did Asbury Park get for the extra $10,000? Not achievement.
For $24,000 on average per student, the Asbury Park school system managed to attain the lowest average SAT scores in Monmouth County, an average of 1101 out of a possible 2400 points. How can we allow this to go on, year after year? How many more students will fail to achieve and how many districts will go broke sending money out of their own towns to subsidize this failure?
One can’t help but recognize, after years of similar spending and achievement reviews, that throwing money at the problem has never made a dent in it. SPENDING IS NOT PROPORTIONAL TO SUCCESS.
In Red Bank, our teachers and administrators did not ask for a raise last year. They stayed under the four percent cap. They felt that pain of the taxpayer and did a good job of holding the line. This meant real sacrifice. Our middle school had to cancel athletic programs. Parents have jumped in to keep these programs going, increasing the level of community involvement and putting their time where our money used to be. Good for them. And yet these same taxpayers are sending dollars, through Abbott, to Asbury Park. And while our schools improve and parental involvement is on an upswing, Asbury Park continues to fall well below average.
Shame on all of the folks who still don’t get it – SPENDING IS NOT PROPORTIONAL TO SUCCESS. We can not buy our way out of failure and we can not afford to keep losing kids to a system that is a proven failure.
More from my site
N.J. teachers layoffs must be based on seniority, not performance, judge rules
REPUBLICANS CANGEMI, MIZZI TO RUN FOR RED BANK COUNCIL
Patriot Guard Riders Sheild Families of Fallen Troops from Westboro Baptist Protesters
Three Asbury Park Men Charged in Red Bank Teacher’s Murder
Monmouth Vocational Schools Ranked Best in New Jersey
SALON CONCRETE HOSTS ‘HELP FOR HAIYAN’
Cory Booker – The Man With The Shovel
Saturday, January 3 in Monmouth County
Pivotal Questions Await Answers as School Bells Ring in New Jersey
NJ’s Supreme Injustice
Ha! The nerve of you, Grace! The gall!
Red Bank is the REASON Asbury Park is an Abbott District!
Learn a little history before you write. Go look at the Department of Education ruling from 1996 that took all the wealthy white kids from Asbury Park and bused them to Red Bank, creating a poor district in Asbury Park where one didn’t exist before.
Send those kids back and Asbury won’t be an Abbott the next day.
I challenge you to a debate on this issue. I’ll pay an entrance fee to debate you on this issue.
I’ll let you have the Superintendents from both districts and the Commissioner of Education on your side for support.
By the end of the debate, you’ll say “You know what Asbury Park, just keep the money and stay and Abbott District.”
That’s what all white people do when then debate me on this issue.
The challenge is dropped. Set it up Art. Let me expose the hypocrisy of those who complain about the Asbury Park school district.
Come on, Tommy. You usually nail this argument. This time you blew it.
The white kids going to RB didn’t keep Asbury an Abbott district. Doesn’t matter where those white kids go to school, thier property tax dollars stay in Asbury.
Or are you saying that Asbury needs white kids to keep up on achievement tests? That sounds fairly racist 😉
The white kids weren’t in Asbury, they were in the surrounding towns. So your argument fails – no tax dollars “stayed in Asbury.”
Grace Cangemi is for busing!
I’d alert the Press, but the Asbury Park Press couldn’t care less about the issue.
If they came from a regional district, property tax dollars were still being sent to Asbury whether the kids attend or not. You are the expert: It just occurred to me: do “sending district” tax dollars follow the kids to RB, or do the tax dollars still go to Asbury?
I seem to recall that is want the 1996 decision was all about?
The money went to Red Bank with the kids.
A district becomes Abbott based upon the incomes of the families that attend the schools.
When they bused the rich families from Avon, Interlaken, Allenhurst, etc out of Asbury to Red Bank, they created the “poor only” district you have in Asbury Park today.
So Grace wants to get rid of Asbury as an Abbott District? She can do it in one day: Send those students Red Bank has back to Asbury Park. Asbury Park will lose its Abbott funding overnight.
Now watch Grace say no. Hypocritically say no.
And watch the people in Asbury Park say no. They’d rather have the $90 million a year to waste than have the kids back.
It’s called “segregation hush money.”
Now watch Monmouth County have a state created segregated school no different than what we had pre-Brown v Board of Education throughout the South.
Now watch no one give a damn.
So since no one wants to change (only pretend they do like Grace) let me say this to the rest of New Jersey as a proud Asbury Parker:
Keep sending that money. Raise your taxes if you have to. All of you go get a second job if you have to so that you can keep sending Asbury Park your money.
I promise to sit in an easy chair, smoke a cigar while I count your money, then waste it.
And don’t be late with your (now mine) money. I’ll sue you in the Supreme Court and win if you are late, and make you pay my lawyer fees to boot.
Oh and while you’re working that second job, I’ll be surfing.
God Bless America.
I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that this discussion died so fast, and that there was no response from Grace.
Whenever I set forth the facts about how Asbury Park became a poor district and why it stays that way, it becomes clear that everyone has dirty hands.
And then no one wants to talk about it anymore.
I’ve been doing this for years. Same result everytime.
For further reading… Tommy D on this issue before:
http://moremonmouthmusings.blogspot.com/2008/11/asbury-park-muscle-flex-and-rise-of.html
On a different note, that really nice young man from that terrible website that sells your personal information, recently donated ONE HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS! to one school district, Newark. IF that nice young man had donated $100,000,000 to Asbury Park, the “ohhh that sounds like a lot of” money would run out after educating 4100 or so students for one year. I think I had read there are about 2100 students in the district? So next time someone uses a big number, like $100,000,000 on you, think about what that number really means…. Am I correct to think $24,000/student should mean even paying a teacher $60K/yr you should have 3 students per teacher, with money to spare? I mean, I guess there is cost for the structures themselves, let’s say 4 students per teacher… with money to spare?
I’d really like to know Tommy, where, exactly, is everyone else’s (not mine, I live in an Abbott) money going anyway? I mean, why can’t $90m get the job done? How much money do you think it really takes to educate a child in AP to a satisfactory level? I think maybe that was Grace’s point/question too?
And, if I can be a bit absurd for one second here…. suppose I’m 3 (that’s when the public school system starts right?), and it costs $25,000/yr to educate me for 18 years… maybe I’d rather just take the $450,000 in cash, collect some interest for 18 years, so figure my total even at 2% interest should be around $600,000 and then maybe pops could teach me the family trade of scanning groceries or making burgers because a min-wage job would be more than enough for an under-achiever like me who has no ambitions in life and I could settle for living in a $600,000 house and just using my low-income job to cover the expenses… or I should change that, I’d buy the $300,000 house and blow the rest on fancy cars. 🙂
Sorry I let you down there, JR. I was off line. I’m back. First off, maybe you should look at the numbers for the Red Bank Middle School before you decide that our district is populated by rich white kids.
I agree with JR on one thing – the way in which Abbott was handled didn’t do Asbury Park schools any favors. But how does that make Abbott right? I’m suggesting that whole Abbott system has been a failure, marked by lots of spending, poor oversite, and a lack of significant progress in helping students achieve success. And most importantly, I can’t understand how anyone is okay with spending $24,000 per student, particularly when the results have been so consistently poor. I don’t see how Justified Right can justify that.
I didn’t figure Justified Right for the kind of guy who wants to see subsidies for failure. Everybody – taxpayers, parents, and, most of all, students, deserves more bang for their buck than they’ve been getting in Asbury Park.
Spot on as usual Mr. Hogan. No doubt there is HUGE waste in the AP school district. $90 million budger and our graduating senior class is about 90 students.
The point I make (the one I always make) is that that NO ONE TRULY WANTS TO STOP IT!
Not the white districts who no longer have to come to AP because of it.
Not the black district who gets to waste $90 million each year.
Hypocrites abound.
Grace read slowly.
It’s not me justifying the existence of Asbury Park as an Abbott – it’s you.
Your district, Red Bank, created it with he Department of Education ruling in 1996 (you probably don’t even know what I’m talking about, so you shouldn’t be publically opining on the matter).
Your district, Red Bank, could have stopped it at any time.
Your district didn’t.
You are like the kid who killed his parents and now complains that he’s an orphan.
The State could end Asbury as an Abbott district IN ONE DAY! ONE DAY!!!!!
And I will bet, right now, that Grace Cangemi and everyone else in Red Bank (and Belmar, and and Avon, and Bradely, and Interlaken, and Allenhurst, and Deal) would be agaist it.
So don’t project your support of the Asbury Park Abbott district on me Grace. You created it, now you pay for it.
Tom, the difficulty I’m having is, even if EVERYONE wanted to send the white kids back to AP, end the Abbott district designation/funding — then, and correct me if I’m wrong — the school district will end up with LESS money, and MORE students, right? Wouldn’t it seem to follow that the quality of education would just get worse?
Or is the assumption/expectation that we should understand that quality may get (somehow) worse but at least it wouldn’t be a money pit for tax dollars? You think the “rich” white families would just opt for a private school over their local public school if the option to go to Red Bank wasn’t there anyway? Again, in that case, we get rid of the public funding to AP and those “rich” white kids will continue to get a “better than AP” education.
Let me also ask what may sound like a REALLY dumb question…. what is the cost/legal possibility to just dissolve the whole AP school district and just bus ALL of the students to surrounding districts? Is it legally an option even or it would need to be done in courts at an expense that makes it worth while to turn a blind eye? Is the problem in AP really the administration/board, does the physical building lack educating materials, or is the problem with the students/families? Does anyone actually understand or know WHY the district consistently fails?
Like I said before, it just seems like at nearly $25K/student for little to no results, there has to be a better option – and just adding more students to a broken district doesn’t seem like the best idea.
Jim,
All great questions.
As to the first, I believe ultimately in empirical data over speculation.
When the Asbury Park school district ran with it’s geograpghically correct sending districts, it was a good school. We graduated them to the Ivy League. We also weren’t broke. For 60 years we educated the poor kids in the federal housing practically for free, costing AP millions yearly (something the suburban whiners never thank us for. Without us they’d have to take them. They can see Abbott money as paying us back for all those years as far as I’m concerned).
With the money from the other towns replacing the Abbott money and some auditing and belt tightening, AP will operate fine if those towns come back.
But that won’t happen. Bigotry abounds and fear of the unknown makes the suburbs tremble. I’ve seen it in Pop Warner, with some parents skipping the games in Asbury Park, as if there is something to fear. Like what? My 70 year old sweet Irish mother who still lives there?
So that brings us to your next point, which is something I advocate: Close AP High School.
If you took the kids from AP High School and split them up into the 7 surrounding High Schools, guess how many students each grade would have to absorb – 15.
An extra 15 students per grade won’t hurt anyone. We will get rid of an enormously expensive Abbott high school.
But here is the important point: Every student will have a much better learing experience, and we will end the ugliness of a 21st Century state sponsored and created segregated high school.
But it won’t happen. The suburbs think those kids are terrible when the aren’t. They’re just kids. 15 of them won’t hurt anyone. And the folks in AP won’t want to lose all that beautiful Abbott money to waste on God knows what every year.
It’s stuck. And all the Grace Cangemi’s can give it all the lip service in the world, but no one, and I mean no one, cares to change it, even when they are told how to do it so easily.
[…] secret whenever a debate over education funding breaks out. Read Tommy’s words here and here. Read the […]
[…] open secret whenever a debate over education funding breaks out. Read Tommy’s words here and here. Read the […]