More than 500 people attended a Lakewood Board of Education meeting Monday night to voice opposition to last week’s announcement that 32 school employees face layoffs.
Speakers decried the loss of 11 elementary school teachers, a dozen secretaries, a social worker, a psychologist, a nurse and a number of guidance counselors. Those employees received notices Wednesday that their jobs could be terminated starting Jan. 25 although some jobs could last until March in order to cover a budget shortfall.
(Read more on the Asbury Park Press website by clicking HERE)
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8 Responses
Budget shortfall ? Lets start by lowering the school administrators salary from the current $325,000 a year….
Teachers whether working for Board of Ed or other organizations should not be terminated mid-year. There are no other job options available at that time. Of course, only speaking of terminations due to budget constraints.
Leaving aside the suffering of the people that are actually laid off (which I do not want to minimize), let’s look at the bigger picture here. The AP article is amazing for that.
1) Board of Ed still cannot figure out what the shortfall actually IS.
2) 11 elementary teachers laid off, and THAT apparently outraged the 500 people that showed up to protest.
3) “We want to be successful, so give us a chance to do that;” “We have no help. We feel we’re being let down;” “We’re not going to let them discourage us. We are going to take back our school system.” — those were some of the comments. So if not for these 11 teachers (or even 32 people laid off altogether), the system would have been great, providing them chance to be successful? The shootings of 2 months ago certainly indicated level of THAT success.
Do we even need comments on this? Most people that showed up to protest probably do not pay income OR property taxes. Everything just has to come to them — for free, otherwise it is “unfair”. They apparently do horrible job parenting, and some of their children are members of gangs. No amount of staff in PS would probably change this. But try to take anything they are ENTITLED to away from them — and hear this…
As a Lakewood resident who witnessed the scene at the meeting last night it warrants notice the fact that once again the APP presents a one-sided skewed report. At the meeting the local head of the NAACP stated that the meeting was ended early on Friday because board members had to head home for Shabbos. If their holiday is more important than the schools they shouldn’t be on the board. This ludicrous statement garnered a huge round of applause from the crowd. Somehow this fails to time and time again make it into the APP article. The entire meeting continued in this manner with comments laced with anti-semitism towards the frum board members being spewed forth the entire night.
Another thing that the APP conveniently failed to mention was the response of the board attorney to the claim of disparity in the special ed funding. In short the state mandates how much each special ed student receives, not local politicians or anyone else. If they report the claim why wouldn’t they report the answer? The answer to that is clear for all to see.
Get this; on January 18, 2007 the Township requested a resolution authorizing $86,699.65 to purchase 75 Dell computers for “who knows what”. That makes it about $1,156 per computer. Check out the Dells site and you will see a decently built machine in the $400 range. I bet if you where struggling to open an office/business which has a need for basic computing you would be spending closer to $400. 500 people screaming cause it aint their money, simple as that!
There’s one question I can’t seem to understand. In lakewood, the frum are about 45-50% of the population. We all know that most of that are younger ages, hence still in school. Even if you were to argue that there are just as many school age children that attend public school, the following question still remains unanswered: the % of children in public school vs private school is more like 90% to 10% (respectively) whereas in Lakewood, it’s at minimum split 50-50. If out taxes are so high, shouldn’t theirs be much higher?
Yeah, I know we get funding, but that doesn’t account for the disparity.
Another question is how much do other townships spend per child in their school system vs Lakewood’s amount. Does anybody know this?
While it is true that there is a lot of waste going on in public education, like buying 75 $1200 Dell computers, there is another side to the coin. Lakewood P.S. have less and less kids each year. Less kids means less staff. It also should mean less property taxes. The 75 computers was a one time wasting of funds of about 50,000. The cuts that are proposed will save Lakewood well over $1,000,000 a year
East Ramapo School District (Monsey, Spring Valley)
total school sge children ~25,000
Private school Kids ~16,000
Public school Kids ~ 9,000
budget ~$185M
some goes to the private schools, I have not been able to get that amount – mostly in the area of transportation. for argument, ~$25M
$160,000,000 / 9,000 = ~$18,000 per kid