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Welcome to Laurie Goodman's blog. I use this space to share news and opinions about education and schools in Ridgewood, the state of New Jersey and the nation, in addition to other issues I'm personally interested in. I invite you to share your thoughts, feelings, questions or opinions, too, by posting comments on any blog entry. Please observe basic courtesy -- keep your comments focused on issues, no personal attacks or bullying, please. Contact me directly at: lauriegood@mac.com

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Christie promises even more state regs for schools.

Governor-elect Christie in today's Bergen Record:

“I refused during the campaign to come up with some type of slick, packaged proposal that people were going to say, ‘Oh, wow, that’s a miracle, there’s going to be no pain involved.’”

Instead, Christie’s plan for reducing property taxes targets government spending in general. The hundreds of town councils and schools districts in New Jersey where most of the money generated by local property taxes is spent are going to be held more accountable, he said.


We're going to be held more accountable? School districts already have accountability regulations that stretch from here into eternity. Piles and piles of paperwork. Micromanaging rules about what kind of paper we can print our newsletters on. So the strategy is no "magic" plan (or any specific plan), but massive amounts of "accountability regulations." This ought to be interesting...

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hopefully it is just confined to the Abbot districts. Why were the 2009 REA contract negations keep behind such a veil, when that expense makes up a huge portion of the budget?

Laurie said...

Do you mean the 2008 REA contract negotiations? That's when the most recent contract was negotiated and ratified by the REA. It will expire 6/30/11.

By "veil" do you mean that the negotiations were kept confidential during the negotiation process? Of course we are required to keep those negotiations confidential until the contract is ratified.

Once the contract was ratified by the REA, the contract was made public. You can read it today by going to the District website at www.ridgewood.k12.nj.us Under District Administration click "Board of Education then click "District Budget" (toward the bottom) then click "Teacher Contract 2008.pdf"

Joseph Alvaro said...

Charter and vouchers are coming. Watch as Cory Booker and Chris Christie push them trough for kids in urban districts.