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8-24-10 Education Issues in the News Today
Star Ledger ‘N.J. expects to hear on federal Race to the Top application’
Statehouse Bureau ‘NJ schools face tough call on state funding offer for repairing buildings'



njspotlight.com 'Christie Pay Caps Bedevil Back-to-School Hires' Millburn brings aboard two new administrators while struggling with unofficial salary caps and new rules regarding tenure


Star Ledger  8-24-10 ‘N.J. expects to hear on federal Race to the Top application’

Lisa Fleisher/Statehouse Bureau
TRENTON — New Jersey expects to hear today whether it will receive up to $400 million from the competitive federal education grant program known as Race to the Top.

"I haven’t gotten a wink and a nod, or a shake of the head, either way from Washington," Gov. Chris Christie said. "So we’ll wait ’til (today at) noon to find out whether we’re one of the winners. I think New Jersey deserves to be one, but we’ll see how it goes."

The state did not make the finals in the first round earlier this year. This time, it is one of 19 applicants battling for money through the program designed to spur nation-wide reforms outlined by the Obama administration.

Last month U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said he expects 10 to 15 states to be awarded grants.

"I’m anxious to see what’s going to happen," Christie said. "Remember, it’s not just about the money, because if we’re able to get that money [today], if we’re one of the winners, we have to also do the reforms that we’ve promised to do of our K-12 education system. So the prospect of both of those excite me."

New Jersey is also in line to receive a separate injection of $268 million for education from a stimulus bill President Obama signed earlier this month. The funding could go to school districts to help pay salaries and benefits of staff, from principals to teachers to janitors and cafeteria workers. The state must choose by Sept. 9 whether to use a state or federal funding formula. Education Commissioner Bret Schundler said last week the administration was leaning toward sticking with the state formula.

"I want to make sure that the money is used to make sure we deal with the problems that we have here in New Jersey ... and not just frivolously spent," Christie said. Once the state distributes the stimulus funds, it does not have power over how the districts spend that money, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

Christie said he doesn’t think the money will be a "measurable help" to the economy.

The New Jersey Education Association, the state’s dominant teachers union, has pushed Christie to get the application in as soon as possible. Several states have already submitted applications.

"It’s unconscionable that he is stalling and waiting so long to get the application in," NJEA spokesman Steve Baker said. "He should have been first in line to get this money into our state and into our schools and get our people back to work."

Staff writer Jeanette Rundquist contributed to this report.

Star Ledger 8-24-10 ‘NJ schools face tough call on state funding offer for repairing buildings

The Star-Ledger Continuous News Desk
School districts are divided on whether they can afford to accept their portion of $270 million in capital grants that Gov. Chris Christie could make available to repair buildings, according to a report on NorthJersey.com.

Districts face the challenge of paying for their projects upfront before being reimbursed, the report said. Cuts in education make that considerably more difficult for many of the 177 districts statewide eligible for the funding.

njspotlight.com 'Christie Pay Caps Bedevil Back-to-School Hires'

Millburn brings aboard two new administrators while struggling with unofficial salary caps and new rules regarding tenure...

It comes from just one district and it’s not even a school superintendent hire, but Gov. Chris Christie’s controversial new caps on administrative pay are already starting to bring some twists and turns to back-to-school hiring.

And that’s even before the caps are formally approved.

The example comes from Millburn, where its board of education on Tuesday voted to hire a new assistant superintendent and a business administrator, critical but not unusual hires for any district as it enters a new school year.

What was unusual were the new restrictions, with the district saying it was told to keep salaries at roughly $150,000 -- below the rate of at least four lower-ranked employees in the district.

Memo from the Front Office

District’s superintendent James Crisfield said he was informed by the state’s county office that these jobs were to be posted for no more than 85 percent of the effective cap for a superintendent, which for a district like Millburn is $177,500.

“We actually could have gone up to $150,850, but stuck with $150,000,” Crisfield said.

What also affected the new hires is that they would be untenured and left prey to new salary caps until they reach the required three years in the district.

Tenured positions below them -- such as athletic director, principal and assistant principal -- do not fall under the caps. That means those employees can leapfrog past the new hires, since state law -- backed by a recent legal ruling -- prohibit the state cutting the pay of tenured positions.

“I’m trying to do what any business leader would do, and structure the pay so that it makes sense vertically,” Crisfield said. “But because of the all the uncertainty and how having tenure now has this massive advantage, we even had a couple of candidates withdraw before we had a chance to interview them.”

Nothing In Writing

The uncertainty comes from the fact that the new restrictions aren’t in state regulations as yet, with nothing in writing to even reference. Christie and state Education Commissioner Bret Schundler announced the caps in June, with the plan of posting them for public hearings in the fall and an effective date in December.

But they have yet to be posted and an effective date has not been set. In the meantime, the state’s county superintendents have been told to use them as guidelines for new contracts as part of their existing review powers.

A spokesman for Schundler yesterday said he would not comment on a specific and local situation like Millburn’s, but that the impact on lower-level jobs is something that the administration foresaw as part of the transition to lower pay for administrators in general.

“It’s true that these tenured positions would make more than the capped salaries for a period of time,” said spokesman Alan Guenther. “We’ve acknowledged that situation for some time.”

In Millburn, Crisfield said he was reluctant to speak on the subject, saying he didn’t want to sound like he was just trying to protect his own salary. He is already signed in a five-year contract at $219,500 a year, he said, and subsequently grandfathered from the new caps.

Still, Crisfield said it wasn’t about his salary, but the larger issue of how one pays different people in an organization.

“This is public money, and I understand we’re not the same as a business,” he said. “But setting up a compensation structure, nobody would do it this way.”