New Jersey’s largest teachers union along with its administrator associations added their powerful voices to the growing calls for a remote-only reopening of schools in the fall while the pandemic remains ongoing.
Senate President Steve Sweeney fought off a surprisingly tough challenge from his Republican opponent, funded by NJEA money. New Jersey voters went to the polls yesterday and turned their attention to all 120 seats in the Legislature, ending a busy election season that was rife with special interest spending, political attack ads and controversial mailers, as… Read the rest of this entry »
New Jersey’s public pension and health-benefit system is a looming disaster that threatens the future of the state. According to my research and a recent report by WNYC – under new, more realistic accounting standards, the total amount of the state’s unfunded public-pension and retiree healthcare liabilities is $253 billion. The state budget is… Read the rest of this entry »
TRENTON — A group of Newark parents has lost a legal battle to overhaul the way public school teachers in the state are laid-off — dealing another blow to education reform groups that have tried to dismantle similar protections across the country. In New Jersey, school districts must lay off teachers based on seniority, regardless of… Read the rest of this entry »
Senior citizen accosted by Democratic legislators’ staffers
Downey, Sweeny and Houghtaling. photo via facebook from a previous meeting
Senate President Steve Sweeney held a meeting with public officials and education stakeholders at the Freehold legislative office of Assembly Members Eric Houghtaling and Joann Downey this morning to discuss the school funding bill the three legislators are sponsoring.
Houghtaling told MMM about the meeting this morning during a phone call regarding former Assemblywoman Mary Pat Angelini’s call for him and Downey to join Sweeney in demanding that the U.S. Attorney and NJ Attorney General investigate the NJEA’s alleged extortion of Sweeney. Houghtaling repeatedly said that the Freehold meeting is “non-poltical.”
So why was Senator Jennifer Beck, a Republican excluded? Members of the Freehold Borough Council were invited. The state senator representing Freehold was not invited? That sounds like a political meeting with only Democrats invited. Beck’s spokesman Mike Hughes told MMM that the senator was not invited to the meeting in Freehold.
Hougtaling and Downey’s spokeman denies hearing of Sweeney’s call for a criminal investigation into NJEA
Mary Pat Angelini
Still smarting from her shocking loss last November, former Assemblywoman Mary Pat Angelini yesterday issued a statement calling on the Democrats who unseated her to join Senate President Steve Sweeney in his demand that the U.S. Attorney and N.J. Attorney General investigate the teachers union for extortion.
The Democrat leader of the State Senate accused the NJEA of extorition eariler this week after Democrat County Chairmen and other power brokers told him that NJEA leaders told them that the union would withhold campaign contributions to Democrats unless Sweeney allowed a vote in the Senate on an amendment to the State Constitution that would compel specified contributions to the teacher’s pension fund every year.
Angelini said that Assembly Members Eric Houghtaling and Joann Downey would not have defeated her if not for the “vicious lies” the NJEA broadcast about her and the non-profit drug abuse prevention organization she runs during the final days of the 2015 election campaign.
Governor Chris Christie is back on the Town Hall circuit…now he is calling them forums…as he meets New Jersey voters on Tuesday in Wall Township to promote the school funding formula that he announced last week.
The “Fairness Formula Forum” will take place in the Wall branch of the Monmouth County Library, 2700 Allaire Rd., Tuesday afternoon at 3:30 p.m. The doors open at 2:15 p.m and seating his first come first served. RSVPs are encouraged for planning purposes to FairnessForum.Wall@NJ.Gov.
Christie is saying that he wants a referendum in 2017 to amend the State Constitution so that State education funding is distributed equally to all school age children throughout the New Jersey. He says that the State would contribute $6,500 per student. Currently roughly 75% of State funding goes to 31 school districts, formerly referred to Abbott districts for the landmark Abbott vs Burke NJ Supreme Court decision that mandated that the State subsidize poor and urban districts.
Gov. Chris Christie may claim in places like New Hampshire and Iowa that he has tamed New Jersey’s public employee unions, but you wouldn’t have known it from the smile on the face of one union’s leader. “We had a terrific week,” said Wendell Steinhauer, president of the New Jersey Education Association, as his union gathered… Read the rest of this entry »
TRENTON — Republican members of the state Assembly Budget Committee on Wednesday criticized New Jersey’s largest public worker union of taking the easy road by shutting down pension talks and demanding full funding without offering any alternatives. The assemblymen, in a brief news conference following a budget hearing on Department of Education funding, leveled accusations of… Read the rest of this entry »
