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NJ Spotlight--Fine Print: Annual OLS Quizzing of Christie Administration on Schools
Legislative staff probes charter funding and mysterious 2012 task force
What it is: The nonpartisan Office of Legislative Services annually completes a fiscal analysis of each state department’s budget, including a Q&A with the administration over issues it chooses. The OLS releases that back and forth to coincide with each department’s budget hearing before the Legislature. As state Education Commissioner David Hespe comes before the Assembly budget committee today, this is the written exchange with the state Department of Education this spring over a wide variety of topics, from how extra funds have gone to charter schools to why a 2012 task force on school-spending fraud has yet to issue a single report.
What it means: The exercise each year is certainly provocative, with the OLS asking probing questions that have been forwarded to them by individual legislators and staff. Sometimes the department is candid, other times less so, but the exercise at least puts the responses in writing. Still, whether it leads to much change is open to question, with today’s hearing proving to be the next test.
John Mooney | April 20, 2016
Star Ledger--What's the median salary for teachers in your district?
Teacher pay has been a controversial subject in New Jersey for years. Today, in some districts, median teacher salaries are approaching six figures.
The median teacher salary in New Jersey school districts ranges from a high of more than $95,000 to a low of about $41,000 this school year, according to new state data.
The pay data, released as part of the state's annual Taxpayer's Guide to Education Spending, shows the median salary in each school district and each charter school.
The median salary is the salary in the middle of the payroll, meaning that half of the teachers in a district make more than that figure and the other half make less. Unlike superintendent pay, New Jersey has no restrictions on teachers' salaries.
Northern Valley Regional, a regional high school district in Bergen County, has the highest median teacher salary, $95,418. East Newark Borough, a small district that doesn't have a high school, has the lowest, $40,922.
Stephen Stirling and Adam Clark | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
on April 20, 2016 at 7:22 AM, updated April 20, 2016 at 7:26 AM
Education Week--Court Sides With Transgender Student, Ed. Dept. Over School Restroom Access
In a decision that could have far-reaching implications for schools around the country, a federal appeals court has sided with a transgender student who sued his school after it prohibited him from using the boys' restroom because he was born a girl.
A district court judge in Virginia erred when it did not defer to the U.S. Department of Education's interpretation that Title IX applies to gender identity as well as biological sex, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit said in a 2-1 decision Tuesday.
By Evie Blad on April 19, 2016 2:17 PM | No comments
