Education Issues Will Help Shape Christie’s Second Term — and Political Future

Education Issues Will Help Shape Christie’s Second Term — and Political Future (via NJSpotlight)

After four years of political drama involving school reform and education policy in New Jersey, could Gov. Chris Christie’s second term be even more eventful? Three major speeches by the governor over the next two months are sure to highlight education…

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School Supplies Needed

The RAINE Foundation & ImmediateCare of Hazlet are asking for school supply donations to help the families effected by Hurricane Sandy.

The supplies needed will be for children in kindergarten through high school. Paper, pens, crayons, pencils, folders, and notebooks are a few of the examples of what is needed.

Please drop-off donations at Immediate Care Medical Walk-In of Hazlet in Airport Plaza Shopping Center – 732.264.5500

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Christie Vetos Sociological Strip Search Bill

file photo via nj.gov

Governor Chris Christie yesterday vetoed S454/A2421, the bill we’ve been fighting for years that would have allowed public schools to ask students intrusive personal questions about themselves and their family members without written parental consent.

In his veto message, Christie said:

This bill allows students of any age to participate in voluntary surveys, including those inquiring about sexual behavior and attitudes, if schools send prior written notice to their parents or guardians. The bill provides that the failure of a parent or guardian to respond to such notice shall be treated as affirmative approval of their child’s participation.

I recognize that surveys may help identify serious issues affecting students. However, this bill imprudently decreases parental involvement in a child’s educational development. I believe a parent or guardian’s legitimate interest to make an informed decision before their child is exposed to sensitive content outweighs the desire to make survey administration moreconvenient.

Accordingly, I herewith return Senate Bill No. 454 (FirstReprint) without my approval.

Thank you Governor Christie

Save Jersey has the news of the other bills Christie took action on yesterday.

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United Arab Emirates Donates $4.5 million to Hurricane Sandy Relief Fund

photo by Art Gallagher. Click on image for larger view.

Governor Chris Christie and First Lady Mary Pat Christie visited Highlands Elementary School this morning to accept a $4.5 million dollar gift to the Hurricane Sandy Relief Fund from the United Arab Emirates (UAE).  Ambassador to the United States Yousef Al Otaiba made the presentation and, along with the Christies, met with students of the school’s Summer Camp Program.

The UAE Embassy gift, made on behalf of the people of the UAE, will help address critical technology needs, such as infrastructure construction to increase internet bandwidth capacity, wiring and hardware for instructional areas, acquisition of mobile computing devices for faculty and students, and additional training for teachers and administrators.

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Casagrande’s bill will thwart “Piggish” school superintendents

Assemblywomen Caroline Casagrande, left, and Mary Pat Angelini, in Long Branch this morning for Mayor Schneider’s endorsement of Gov Christie

While touring  Oakwood School, a non-profit, non-sectarian New Jersey Private School for the Disabled that serves adolescents with Asperger/Autism in Tinton Falls last March, Assemblywoman Caroline Casagrande learned that the school’s enrollment had declined after the State instituted its cap on school superintendents’ salaries.

One of the exceptions to the superintendents’ salary cap are bonuses awarded for academic excellence. An administrator at Oakwood tipped Casagrande to the notion that superintendents could be keeping special needs students in their schools, to the academic and social detriment of the special needs and ‘normal’ students, in order to snag those $25,000 bonuses.

Freehold Regional High School District earned unwelcome notoriety for its largess with its previous superintendent, the phony Doctor H. James Wasser.  Wasser’s replacement Charles Sampson, has a clause in his contract rewarding him for reducing the number of special needs students assigned to out-of-district schools like Oakwood, according to a December 2012 article in the News Transcript, a weekly newspaper serving Colts Neck, Englishtown, Freehold Borough and Township, Manalapan and Marlboro.

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Christie’s Paterson Town Hall

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Let your voice be heard on New Jersey’s “Sociological Strip Search” bill

As we reported on Monday , the Assembly Education Committee approved a bill , A2421, that amends a 2001 law regarding surveys that schools can have students participate in.  The law as written and passed in 2001 requires that parents give their written consent prior to surveys being administered. The bill that amends the current law requires only parental notification. 

The proponents of the bill want to allow schools to employ a scamming tactic referred to as “negative consent.”  That’s the technique that telemarketers use when they offer you a product or service for “free” for 30 days.  If you don’t take affirmative action to cancel the “free trial” your credit card is charged monthly until you catch up with the scammers and cancel.

The current law allows students to be surveyed about the following topics, if their parents consent in writing:

(1) political affiliations;

(2) mental and psychological problems potentially embarrassing to the student or the student’s family;

(3) sexual behavior and attitudes;

(4) illegal, anti-social, self-incriminating and demeaning behavior;

(5) critical appraisals of other individuals with whom a respondent has a close family relationship;

(6) legally recognized privileged or analogous relationships, such as those of lawyers, physicians, and ministers;

(7) income, other than that required by law to determine eligibility for participation in a program or for receiving financial assistance under a program; or

(8) social security number.

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Banned from Facebook: The Machine: The Truth Behind Teachers’ Unions

MMM reader Peter Carroll reports that facebook has removed a link to this video from his facebook feed four times today.

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168 sick days over 14 years

David Chioda is retiring from the Marlboro Township Public Schools on Monday, according to an article in The Asbury Park Press.  For the last 14 years Chioda was the supervisor of math, science, math resources/basic skills math and world language.  His salary is $142,450.   Who knew that math, science, math resources/basic skills math and world language needs all that supervision?!

The Marlboro Board of Education has managed to find an expert in discrete mathematics to take over Chioda’s job for $115,000.

Chioda is being paid $9,795 for 168 unused sick days he accumulated without supervision over the last 14 years.  He’s getting another $4,303 for 7.25 in unused vacation days.  I wonder where he went on the .75 day vacation.

A $14,000 payout is discreet by the recent standards.  For that Marlboro taxpayers can be grateful. Chioda won’t be able to buy much of a boat with that.

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APP wants to know: Why no action on Lakewood?

Because The Asbury Park Press Is No Longer Relevant

The Asbury Park Press is outraged that Governor Chris Christie did not make the problems of the Lakewood school system a primary topic of his town hall meeting in Freehold yesterday.  The Neptune Nudniks are also upset that Congressman Chris Smith hasn’t returned their calls for comment or held a press conference about the Lakewood schools since the paper and pay site ran their series CHEATED about the problems in Lakewood schools last week.

Christie spent much, if not most, of his town hall meeting yesterday talking about education reform.  His focus was on tenure reform as a way to improve results in our failing urban schools and to stop paying “a Kings Ransom for failure” by flushing 15% of the state’s tax dollars into failing schools as New Jersey has done for decades.

If ever there was evidence that The Asbury Park Press has become irrelevant, it is their heavily promoted Cheated series, yesterday’s town hall meeting, combined with today’s rants by the Nudniks that Christie and Smith are not paying attention to them.

Why didn’t Christie talk about Lakewood yesterday to hundreds of residents in the APP’s coverage area?   Because no one asked him.  The governor was talking about education.  The APP had just finished a “special series” on the Lakewood schools.  Not one person in the audience of the town hall made the connection and asked the governor a question about Lakewood.

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