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Star Ledger ‘Millburn school board considers cutting kindergarten, busing, teachers, language classes’ ”Full-day kindergarten, busing, language classes and several full-time teachers and employees are on a preliminary chopping block in Millburn, where administrators at the blue-ribbon district face a $6.4 million budget shortfall. Among the initiatives being considered for cutbacks or outright elimination, trimming the kindergarten program from a full day to a half day would be the most far-reaching. That move, entailing the layoffs of 10 teachers, would save the district about $700,000…” And, ‘Braun: Gov. Christie releases limited N.J. schools data to spin, promote controversial policy’
nj.com ‘N.J. judge to begin hearing testimony on whether Gov. Christie was allowed to cut school aid’
Star Ledger ‘Millburn school board considers cutting kindergarten, busing, teachers, language classes’ …”Full-day kindergarten, busing, language classes and several full-time teachers and employees are on a preliminary chopping block in Millburn, where administrators at the blue-ribbon district face a $6.4 million budget shortfall. Among the initiatives being considered for cutbacks or outright elimination, trimming the kindergarten program from a full day to a half day would be the most far-reaching. That move, entailing the layoffs of 10 teachers, would save the district about $700,000…”
Published: Sunday, February 13, 2011, 7:45 AM, By Richard Khavkine/The Star-Ledger
MILLBURN — Full-day kindergarten, busing, language classes and several full-time teachers and employees are on a preliminary chopping block in Millburn, where administrators at the blue-ribbon district face a $6.4 million budget shortfall.
Among the initiatives being considered for cutbacks or outright elimination, trimming the kindergarten program from a full day to a half day would be the most far-reaching. That move, entailing the layoffs of 10 teachers, would save the district about $700,000.
The school board president, Michael Birnberg, whose three children attended kindergarten in Millburn, said the proposal would get a thorough airing before the budget is finalized next month.
"We certainly know that a full day is better than a half day," he said.
More than 300 children are projected to attend kindergarten in 2011-12, according to the district.
According to the district’s preliminary, $82 million spending plan, expenditures are projected to climb 8 percent, largely due to health care and pension costs.
"It’s very hard to make the budget work in that environment," said Superintendent James A. Crisfield. "Health benefits every year are going to crowd out other things in the budget that are important to teaching and learning."
Short Hills resident Micole Richter’s twin boys went to kindergarten at Glenwood School last year, and her youngest son would attend kindergarten in 2012-13. For her older sons, she said, the kindergarten experience was a rich one. "They were prepared for first grade," she said.
She wants her youngest to have the same opportunity, adding that the trend for districts nationwide is toward full days.
Richter said cutting into the full-day program could also be a hardship for some families, including hers. "It would severely impinge on our lives, because I’m trying to transition back to work," said Richter, a freelance publicist hoping to return to a full-time career. "That’s a factor."
Much of how the budget deliberations proceed depends on the tax increase the board is willing to float before voters in April. No increase in taxes means the budget must be trimmed by $7.8 million, while a 2 percent hike means bridging a $6.4 million shortfall, Crisfield said.
With teacher benefits and salaries comprising the lion’s share of the budget, Birnberg said, teachers’ and supervisors’ contracts, both expiring June 30, would help mold future budgets.
"Much of what we do rests on what that agreement gets," he said, adding he was hopeful the two unions and the district’s negotiating committee would arrive at satisfactory numbers for both sides.
ANOTHER POSSIBILITY
Courtesy busing is another of the district’s initiatives that could be chopped. Cutting that would save the district about $750,000. But with more than 1,600 of the district’s 4,900 students taking advantage of courtesy busing, one option is to allow families to pay for busing.
But Birnberg cautioned that instituting user fees, such as payments for extracurricular activities, could lead to a slippery slope.
"I do not want to create a have-and-have-not world in Millburn," he said.
Crisfield said he would propose other budget scenarios at tomorrow night’s school board hearing at Glenwood School. He declined to detail what would be on the reconfigured — but still preliminary — cut sheet, saying the board needed to digest his suggestions before they were made public.
Star Ledger ‘Braun: Gov. Christie releases limited N.J. schools data to spin, promote controversial policy’
Published: Monday, February 14, 2011, 7:10 AM Updated: Monday, February 14, 2011, 10:23 AM, By Bob Braun/Star-Ledger Columnist
TRENTON — Spin is a wonderful thing, a lie in a suit and tie with clean fingernails. Try this: High school students in New Jersey’s most economically depressed school districts — including cities like Newark, Paterson and Camden — outscored comparable students in the charter schools touted by Gov. Chris Christie as "miracle" solutions to urban education problems.
Also, statewide test scores at charter schools lagged far behind the vast majority of public schools, nearly 20 percentage points behind the statewide average. From a statewide perspective, they can’t be considered anything but failures.
True? Yes. Spin? Also, yes. True — because the average mean scores of the general population of 11th graders in what the state designates the "A," or poorest, districts are higher — 215 to 214.3 in language and 204.7 to 199.7 in math — than charters. True — because the average charter pass rate on grade school tests was 58.1 percent, compared to a state average of 76.1
Spin — because a few numbers are not a complete picture. They can’t honestly be used to draw any sweeping conclusions that urban public high schools are better than charter schools or that charter schools are failures.
But three weeks ago, the Christie administration released its own selective numbers to promote an opposite spin, contending charter schools "outperformed" conventional schools.
The difference is Christie runs the state and has access to all the numbers. Government, paid for by all taxpayers, should not spin numbers to promote a controversial policy.
This newspaper asked repeatedly for a more detailed comparison of charter and traditional schools. The deadline under the Open Public Records Act passed last week but the state granted itself an extension. Maybe the response will come this week. Or maybe not.
It will come eventually and, let’s hope, the response will not be spin.
What available data does show confirms studies throughout the nation: Some conventional schools are better than some charters, and vice-versa. Differences are insignificant.
"In the long run, we are going to find charter schools will do about the same as traditional publics, and that we have yet to find the silver bullet — if, indeed, we ever will," says Joseph DePierro, dean of Seton Hall’s College of Education and Human Services.
"There’s a marginal difference between charters and other poor schools, and it’s hard to know what to attribute that difference to, if it is a difference," says Bruce Baker, a Rutgers scholar. He says some of the difference could be attributable to the "selective" nature of student admissions at charters and attitudes of parents who bother to go through the admissions process.
Here are some numbers anyone can get from available data. The average passing rate of comparable students on all elementary school tests — with the scores of special education and limited English-speaking students removed — is 58.1 percent for charter schools and 54.7 percent for students in so-called "A" districts. A difference of 3.4 percentage points.
Charters, of course, exist in many different sorts of communities, including some of the wealthiest — Princeton, Englewood, North Brunswick and Teaneck. The "A" districts include only those communities with the lowest income and highest unemployment rates.
Chris Christie announces approval of 23 new charter schools in N.J. During a visit to the Robert Treat Academy Charter School in Newark, Gov. Chris Christie announce the state’s approval of 23 new charter schools — an increase by nearly a third of all the charter schools in the state. Christie praised high performing charter schools in urban and disadvantaged areas as providing a model for fixing chronically failing school districts and urged the creation of new kinds of charter schools. He also suggested the charter school movement had been stymied in the past by politicians beholden to special interests, including the state’s largest teachers union, the New Jersey Education Association, or NJEA. (Video by Nyier Abdou/The Star-Ledger) Watch video
The next step up on the state economic scale is the "B" district designation, a category that includes towns like Jersey City, Garfield, Plainfield, and Long Branch. Not exactly Short Hills. The average passing rate of comparable students for B districts is 61.1, three points higher than charters. Statewide, the average is 76.1 percent.
The average mean scores show the same pattern. For charters, it was 207.1 for all elementary school tests, compared to 203.5 for students in "A" districts. Again, a difference of little more than three points. The charters lagged behind every other type of district and the statewide average. For "B" districts, the average mean score was 212.5 and, for the state, 223.6.
Students in traditional school in "A" districts had higher passing rates than charter students in third, fourth, fifth, and 11th grade math. Charters had higher passing rates in other grades.
While the analysis accounts for disabled and language-limited students, factors Christie’s original numbers ignored, it does not account for income differences — and that’s what this newspaper asked the state to do. It could make a big difference in the comparable scores.
"There is a tendency to ‘spin’ the data," says DePierro. "Without valid data and objective interpretation, reform becomes based on ideology rather than science, and it fails."
nj.com ‘N.J. judge to begin hearing testimony on whether Gov. Christie was allowed to cut school aid’
Published: Monday, February 14, 2011, 7:53 AM Updated: Monday, February 14, 2011, 7:54 AM, By The Associated Press
Superior Court Judge Peter Doyne,a bove, will begin hearing testimony today about whether Gov. Chris Christie was within his constitutional rights last year when he cut aid to local schools by about $1 billion.
State Superior Court Judge Peter Doyne will begin hearing testimony today about whether Gov. Chris Christie was within his constitutional rights last year when he cut aid to local schools by about $1 billion.
Doyne was appointed by the State Supreme Court to help determine whether the cuts violated the state's obligation to fully fund a formula for distributing money to districts.
The Christie administration says the cuts, though painful, were needed to balance the budget.
The Education Law Center, a group that advocates for students, challenged the cuts.
