Submitted by mooseLimbsCatLicks t3_xvejx3 in jerseycity
Comments
jonhuang t1_ir0m5g8 wrote
I feel like the core issue is between Education Matters (the teacher's union, status quo) and Change for Children (property developers, reformers). Both groups do want good education--it's important for both keeping constituents happy and property values. But education matters puts its emphasis in getting the city to pay its fair share, while change for children emphasizes fiscal responsibility.
mooseLimbsCatLicks OP t1_ir0oaix wrote
Which is just budget differences… not education policies
keepseeing444 t1_ir3egfg wrote
For all you newbies Education Matters is backed by JCEA. You asked why are my taxes and rents keep going up? Nobody is asking for accountability and better performance on a near $1B budget because when you have the union push in their favored candidates there is no true oversight. For the record 8 out of 9 current board members are backed by JCEA. That’s worse than Team Fulop set up in city hall. Lone exception being Alexander Hamilton, who I’ve seen on zoom meetings as the lone dissenting voice in a roomful of union’s cronies. He’s sadly outnumbered and frankly we need more board members like him and less Velasquez. Here are the current board members:
Gerald Lyons - JCEA backed
Gina Verdibello - JCEA backed
Natalia Ioffe - JCEA backed
Younas Barkouch - JCEA backed
Paula Jones-Watson - JCEA backed
Lorenzo Richardson - JCEA backed
LeKendrick Shaw - JCEA backed
Noemi Velazquez - JCEA backed
Alexander Hamilton - NOT JCEA backed
Marcus_Analyticus t1_ir3icbu wrote
He's got a great name too
Yr9012 t1_irc06tn wrote
Very good information. Alexander Hamilton seems to a good candidate. On the ballot, I see he is backed by Change for Children
Marcus_Analyticus t1_ir24tdg wrote
"Velazquez said she would advocate for better wages for teachers and against 'high-priced' curricula."
Does this mean cut robotics, science, and art to pay for teacher bonuses?
keepseeing444 t1_ir3cxpy wrote
Velasquez is backed by JCEA and she’s voted for budget increase every fucking year she’s been on the board without once questioning accountability. If you like how the schools are run keep voting for her.
reputationStan t1_ir7g4sv wrote
what are the teacher bonuses?
cC2Panda t1_ir0v53p wrote
EDIT: well turns out that Change for Children hasn't updated any of their social media presence and the top searches for the group are all from 2021, so I was looking at the groups candidates last year and short of the article above and the Hudson Reporter listing candidate I have no other information than whats in the post above about the candidates. Feel free to read what the group was about last year, otherwise the only information we have is basically this extremely limited article.
Information on Change for Children 2021:
Went to the insta for each of the Change for Children candidates and they all seem to reword the same 3 things.
First is budget transparency. Which I'm honestly skeptical of from any politician.
Second is "benchmarking" to "remove programs that were 'not productive or effective'" which I assume means more standardized testing.
Third a platitude about "holding the administration accountable".
Individually there is some stuff that would get killed by unions day one by fucking with teachers pay.
Halley mentions updating technology and having faculty training.
Ervin seems do have no concrete things in her bullet list of wants.
The takeaway for me is that Change for Children talks mostly about transparency and budget reform but doesn't actually go into detail about how they intend to do that. Personnel budget transparency sounds fine but the lack detail on the rest.
My 2 cents, the only one I'd consider is Halley. Baez is basically getting into union busting territory which I don't like, Ervin has no concrete goals, and Halley at least gives a few tangible goals(on their insta campaign).
All said none of the BoE groups thrill me but if I have to choose between LeFrak PAC backed(that was fun to say) candidates or union backed I'll stick with the unions. LeFrak family are billionaire donors to republican campaigns so anyone he stands behind talking about budgets and fiscal responsibility I have to question.
mooseLimbsCatLicks OP t1_ir0xxz8 wrote
My take on the LeFrak backing is... They have an incentive to make schools better, which is that it makes their luxury housing more attractive if the schools are actually good. The shitty schools causes people to move out of their apartments. So trying to actually improve the schools makes sense.
The other team (education matters) has clearly shown that the main driver of their policies is not improvement of childrens' educations. Their incentive seems to be to keep the teachers and unions happy, which of course is important, but is not the same as improving the educational standards of our schools.
I will vote again for the Change for Children over the Education Matters slate.
JCwhatimsayin t1_ir1aime wrote
I guess this would make sense as an alignment of interests if LeFrak had thousands of 3-4 bedroom dwellings in the pipeline or on existing rent rolls. I don't think that's the case. I think their primary incentive is to keep taxes low and appeal to single and couple buyers and investors. For their primary buyers with kids (if any), subsidizing private schools is a much cheaper and more precision-guided strategy than actually trying to make the public school system better.
reputationStan t1_ir7gj74 wrote
hmm, idk why you're downvoted. you present a good argument. if there were larger apartments, families would be inclined to stay (if the prices were reasonable as well).
upvoted since you were -2.
cC2Panda t1_ir11yv4 wrote
Aside from not wanting to risk their lives over COVID before we rolled out vaccines, what makes you think that children's educations aren't their primary goal? They might be inefficient with the budget which is a different conversations but what specific examples non-COVID related do you think the BOE doesn't care for children?
I don't know if we as a city would allow it, but from the words of Baez talking about removing funding from low performing programs and freezing teachers pay it really sounds like some No Child Left Behind bullshit that saw money moved from poor low performing areas and given to wealthier areas. My mother worked for low income public schools for about 25 years and I can tell you that policies that reward test taking make it so that teachers focus on teaching to the test rather than actually educating children effectively.
mooseLimbsCatLicks OP t1_ir1b13d wrote
I understand people wanting to protect themselves of course. But it must be acknowledged that this was at the expense of children's educations. Remote schooling was ineffective and this was both obvious before and during remote schooling, and proven with test scores after the fact. And remote school ended in JC public schools WELL after covid vaccine was available, and well after private schools and other public schools opened.
There was a whole range of workers deemed essential workers who were required to report in person to their jobs since they are deemed essential to society. These included people who stack boxes and sandwich makers. I believe in person teachers are much more essential than sandwich makers. Teaching in person and in person school for children was obviously better for kids than remote BS that was extended for way too long. It was very disappointing to see the refusal to reopen the schools and repeated excuses. And worse, they have never acknowledged their mistakes, which raises the question if they will repeat the same mistakes in the future...
cC2Panda t1_ir1h64v wrote
It's worth noting that places that opened up early like Florida had very similar drops in reading comprehension and math. COVID had a significant impact regardless of closures, and a June study in Florida showed that 3rd grade reading levels in Florida are stagnant for the last 2 years despite having been mostly in person since early 2021.
On top of all that what do you think the BOE would have done to force the teachers union to go in last year? Do you think they would have threatened to fire hundreds of staff and replace them when the number of open positions was already much higher than the people to fill them? The teachers unions here have a lot of power and so the teachers made a decision regardless of the BOE and I don't think the BOE really had any recourse.
Regardless, schools are back open so it's a moot point moving forward until we have our next pandemic(hopefully not in our lifetime) and you literally didn't answer my question. I said aside from COVID related issues what are your examples of the BOE/unions not caring about children?
mooseLimbsCatLicks OP t1_ir1jr2e wrote
Your question translates to: "Asides from the recent disastrous, unnecessarily prolonged remote education experiment that you specifically mentioned, what are other examples of BOE not caring". Its a silly question because for me the COVID handling was outrageous and disqualifying on its own. I guess I could think of some. Horrible food options. Horrible bussing options. They didnt raise the school tax levy for years, only deciding to do so when it was an emergency since the state withdrew their funding (which was inevitable). And the pandemic is still ongoing. Who is to say they wont decide to close schools again for a winter peak. Nobody knows because they haven't said anything.
cC2Panda t1_ir1xgl6 wrote
>They didnt raise the school tax levy for years, only deciding to do so when it was an emergency since the state withdrew their funding (which was inevitable)
You know that because we didn't have full autonomy from the State Abbott districts until 2017 we had limited authority on changing taxes for schooling. Because the state funding was a function of a % of local spending they limited the BOE ability to increase funding unilaterally.
> Who is to say they wont decide to close schools again for a winter peak. Nobody knows because they haven't said anything.
Even during the Omicron outbreak in 2021 we only went remote for 5 days, so I severely doubt that quadruple vaxxed teachers are gonna shutdown. I mean just compare the general environment now compared to any other point since March 2020 and it's fair to say that the majority of people are basically done trying to mitigate anything short of getting vaccinated.
Not to try to sound like I'm making excuses for everything I'm sure there are tons of things to be fixed but I don't know enough about the finer points, like schools lunch quality or busing. I'm just EXTREMELY skeptical of anyone who comes in talking about fiscal responsibility with no concrete plan and funding from a LeFrak PAC.
If any of the three running had actual tangible actions for how they intend to make the system more efficient that isn't freezing teacher pay and "removing programs"(literally no more detail than that), I could consider them, but as it is 90% platitudes and Republican PAC funding take them out of contention for me.
mooseLimbsCatLicks OP t1_ir28rg9 wrote
No the school board retained the power to increase the school tax levy. It is an independent power granted to them, independent from the city budget. It just didn’t do it for many many years until the state announced it was withdrawing . Probably since they were allied with the mayor at that time and didn’t want to increase taxes. Think the days of the dishonorable sudhan thomas. They have an allowable increase of a few percent per year (don’t remember the number). When the state announced their cuts few years ago I read up a lot on civic JC’s blog. They only started doing that when it became a big commotion. So instead of being proactive, they fell behind and had a much larger deficit than they would have.
jcskunk t1_ir1t973 wrote
>Halley. Baez
Lol, you're so confused. Those names aren't even running.
cC2Panda t1_ir1zbmy wrote
Lol, I tried doing research on Change for Children and all that came up was last years candidates and the article above. They literally haven't updated their online presence which is why i got confused. Same concerns for both groups though.
Added an edit at the top.
reputationStan t1_ir7ger9 wrote
upvoted since you were -1.
VanWorst t1_ir0pr1x wrote
> “I know it has not always been pleasant for those who are not in the trenches,” Noemi Velasquez said
Uhh... Is that supposed to mean they're in LUXURY TRENCHES?
Yr9012 t1_irc00cg wrote
Thank you for sharing!
AcerbicLeslieKnope t1_ir1zev3 wrote
Change for Children lost me when they sent a mailer that very purposely was made to look like official election mail from the County Clerk. Really scuzzy move.
JCwhatimsayin t1_ir5dieb wrote
I mean, I don't support Change for Children and think they are scuzzy, but I wish you had cited better reasons to oppose them than a misleadingly designed campaign mailer!
AcerbicLeslieKnope t1_ir61y7i wrote
When you don’t really have a platform it doesn’t take much to decide you’re not interested in giving them support, and I have very little tolerance for shadiness, so ¯_(ツ)_/¯ . My usual strategy for BOE is to “ticket-split” if you can call it that. I think avoiding a block is probably the best hope for preventing a runaway BOE.
mooseLimbsCatLicks OP t1_ir0f5dz wrote
Even articles that talk about school board issues don’t really give information. Most of this is just platitudes. Not one mention of the irresponsible extended covid school closures that lasted a full year, making JC a severe outlier, and really stunting childrens’ educations.