No Black Friday Holiday for NJ State Workers

NJ state workers were permitted to trade another holiday for Black Friday, but not anymore according to Chris Christie.
Someone will have to explain to me how this saves money because as far as I can tell from all the news articles the net days off is unchanged.
I can, however, think of some ways it will cost the state money:
- people will take sick
- people will take vacation
- people will go to work and not spend money in stores that generate tax revenue.

Chris Christie is wrong when it comes to Racing to the Top

I don't believe Chris Christie ever thought New Jersey could possibly receive any money from the Race to the Top program.  I'm pretty sure that is why he purposefully submitted an application that wouldn't be picked.  Unfortunately for Chris Christie, while we didn't get any money, the outcome wasn't exactly what he had in mind. 

Let's recount how many times things went wrong.  First Chris Christie sent Bret Schundler to create an application with the approval of the NJEA.  I don't think Christie ever thought the NJEA and Schundler could come to an agreement, a condition of the application process, and was looking to use the expected stalemate for his own political agenda.  Fortunately for NJ, but unfortunately for Christie's plans, the NJEA and Schundler reached an agreement.  Luckily, this was only a slight problem for the Governor who can do no right and he simply tore up the application and had his staff write a new one without NJEA support.

Many commentators thought we would not be granted any money simply on the fact that the new application was done without union consent.  I think that is exactly what Christie wanted.  I figure, he thought NJ wouldn't get any money anyway and if he could spin some sound bites on how the reason NJ didn't get any money was because the NJEA couldn't agree to his plan it would make himself look good and the teachers look bad.  By the time we lost out on the money people would forget that there was an application supported by both sides that he tore up.

Unfortunately, again, Chris Christie's plan hit a little snag.  Instead of being rejected for not working together NJ was rejected for a clerical error.  A clerical error that was not in the original application and only in the rushed re-written application that was submitted after Christie tore up the one the NJEA and Schundler's staff worked on.  Of course Christie can't take responsibility for this.  After all, he does everything exactly right?  The problem is everyone elses fault except for Chris Christie. 

I guess this guy really can't catch a break.  I mean, all he wanted was to not be grated $400 Million in a specific manor in order to further his careeer. 

As always, I ask you check the facts in  my opinion posts so you get the information first hand.  I suggest a search of google news to get all the data you need!

Time to screw the kids again

NJ could let Edward J. Bloustein Distinguished Scholarship recipients know that they weren't going to get the money this year before they had to make a final school decision.  Instead, they decided to wait until 1 day after students made their choice.  I would hate to think the timing of the decision was deliberate.  Does anyone believe NJ would never try to trick kids into going to state schools by waiting to pull funding until after they had made a decision on this funding?  I mean, it's not like trying to attract talented teachers or other state workers with health benefits and retirement plans that are competitive with private industry and then taking it away after services were rendered.

Hillsborough Residents - Fight for your property value tomorrow (Monday May 17)

The Hillsborough township committe will be meeting for the final time Monday May 17 at the Municipal Building at 7:30 P.M.  They will hear input from the community on the school budget and then make a final vote on the budget.  I'm sure may who have children in the schools will attend the meeting in hopes of keeping the services they expect.  I also urge you to attend if you don't have children, but own a house in Hillsborough.  If you have concerns over your property value I believe you should express concern over the drastic cuts to the school budget.

Before you go to the meeting please do your own research instead of believing the opinions of others. Almost every report online or in the media is skewed one way or another.  I believe, however, if you take the data on its own you can form your own educated decision on this very important issue. A good place to start is the the Governer's full report on NJ school spending.  You would think this report would bash all schools given Christie's past statements, but inside you will find out how efficient Hillsborough schools were before any budget cuts. Unfortunately, with Christie's blanket 5% cuts to schools budgets it is the most efficient schools that are hurt the most and Hillsborough is a prime example of this.

You should also be aware Hillsbourough's Mayor's proposed cuts far exceed neighboring communities putting long term property values in Hillsborough at significant risk.  I believe the Mayor is thinking very short term as his current term is up in December.  Again, I recommend everyone research these numbers and see the truth for themselves before speaking.

Once you have all the data in hand please think long term for your property values and for the puplic education system in Hillsborough.

No tax increase is not enough to pass the budget

Budgets voted down with no tax increases:

BOUND BROOK

0 percent; no tax increase for a home assessed at $300,000

PROPOSED STAFF CUTS
27 employees


lebanon township


PROPOSED TAX LEVY INCREASE
0 percent

PROPOSED STAFF CUTS
4.5 positions

Perhaps someone from these towns could post here what they were looking for to pass the budget.

results so far: people are pawns for Chris Christie

Chris Christie may be saying students are pawns for teachers, but it appears the truth (at least so far) is the voters are pawns for Chris Christie.

On the results that have been counted so far I have yet to find a budget that was approved.  Even in cases where the taxes were not increased or only slightly increased and staff cuts occurred to make up the 5% reduction in state aid it appears the budgets were rejected.

It makes me wonder what, if any, budget would have been approved. 

I'm still hopeful for better results as more towns report.

I should also mention - I am not a member of the NJEA and I don't have any children.  I am, however, trying to protect the value of my property which I believe is largely driven by the quality of schools in the area.

I am also all for cutting budgets where there is waste.  I am simply against blanket cuts without even understanding the details.

Election Results

I'm waiting for the election results and I am hopeful that voters took my recommendation to look at the facts and vote accordingly instead of listening to Chris Christie and his incorrect blanket statements.  There are some towns that have clearly done a fantastic job with their budgets and others that need some work.  As the results come in we can look and see if there is any relationship between the efficiency of the towns and the yes/not vote to the budget.

For the sake of the schools and our property values let's hope voters gets it right.

Get the facts before voting on your school budget!

Chris Christie would like you to believe that every school district in NJ is wasting millions of dollars.  Unfortunately, this is not true.  There are certainly some districts out there that are guilty of wasting a ton of money and others are doing a fantastic job.

Chris Christie knows which districts are well behaved and which are not. His own staff even published a full report on school district spending.

Read the report, check out your own district, and decide for yourself where cuts should and should not occur before making blanket statements not backed by fact.

Drumthwacket costs $500K/year

Actually, it probably costs a lot more.  The most recent numbers I could find were from 2006 in this article from bloomberg.com that says the governor house costs $500K/year. 

I'm waiting for the Chris Christie plan to save that cash for something else, but I won't hold my breath.

Average Salary by County w/ 1 & 2 years experience

ATLANTIC	$45,190
BERGEN	$48,469
BURLINGTON	$49,517
CAMDEN	$47,924
CAPE MAY	$44,991
CHARTER	$44,751
CUMBERLAND	$48,780
ESSEX	$52,387
GLOUCESTER	$45,655
HUDSON	$49,792
HUNTERDON	$48,032
MERCER	$49,003
MIDDLESEX	$48,374
MONMOUTH	$48,013
MORRIS	$49,094
OCEAN	$46,929
PASSAIC	$49,730
SALEM	$45,410
SOMERSET	$51,009
SUSSEX	$47,070
UNION	$52,582
WARREN	$45,851

This chart represents the average salaries of the teachers that will be laid off under Chris Christies' plan.  Almost every average is lower than $50K. 

Since there is no plan to encourage early retirement or cuts in administration spending the actual layoffs will be in mostly non tenured teachers with less than 3 years of experience.  In the table above I have averaged together teachers from the APP data with 1 & 2 years experience (1st year omitted because many first year start in the middle of the year which results in a partial year salary being reported)

UPS Drivers make more than teachers

According to this yahoo finance article on UPS, they are looking for some new drivers.  The article futher states that the average salary for a UPS driver is $74K a year.  From my previous post on average teacher salaries you can see this is significantly more than the average NJ teacher.  It should be noted this average UPS salary includes the whole country while the teacher numbers are only in the high cost of living area of NJ.

It would be interesting to make a list of other jobs that pay better than teaching.

NJ Teaching Data by County

I wanted to run some of my own analysis on teacher salary data so I have downloaded all Data from the 2008-2009 APP NJ Public School Teachers site into my own database.

I will post the raw data in csv and excel format soon.  For now, here's my first query of the data with some county averages:

County	Average Salary	Num With Classes	Salary With Classes	Num Without Classes	Salary Without Classes	Ratio classes/no classes	Expense Ratio Classes/No Classes
ATLANTIC	63,211	4178	60,857	707	77,125	0.169	0.214
BERGEN	70,761	11617	66,363	2309	92,888	0.199	0.278
BURLINGTON	64,520	6409	61,167	1205	82,355	0.188	0.253
CAMDEN	65,204	7123	62,068	1383	81,352	0.194	0.254
CAPE MAY	66,293	1370	63,755	259	79,716	0.189	0.236
CHARTER	51,767	1649	48,982	260	69,430	0.158	0.223
CUMBERLAND	62,545	2265	59,315	679	73,319	0.300	0.371
ESSEX	72,813	10588	68,414	2398	92,237	0.226	0.305
GLOUCESTER	61,576	4081	58,291	855	77,259	0.210	0.278
HUDSON	71,663	6843	66,596	1352	97,312	0.198	0.289
HUNTERDON	63,000	2190	59,271	446	81,311	0.204	0.279
MERCER	68,925	5240	66,466	688	87,653	0.131	0.173
MIDDLESEX	67,469	9751	63,823	1981	85,419	0.203	0.272
MONMOUTH	64,770	9337	61,280	1802	82,857	0.193	0.261
MORRIS	67,544	7020	63,871	1362	86,473	0.194	0.263
OCEAN	60,381	6188	56,781	1114	80,383	0.180	0.255
PASSAIC	69,314	6644	64,999	1519	88,186	0.229	0.310
SALEM	59,274	1085	56,589	236	71,618	0.218	0.275
SOMERSET	65,118	4900	61,344	845	87,007	0.172	0.245
SUSSEX	67,890	2214	64,513	536	81,839	0.242	0.307
UNION	67,127	7471	63,279	1592	85,188	0.213	0.287
WARREN	62,085	1672	59,184	317	77,387	0.190	0.248

County	NJ County Name
Average Salary	Average Teacher Salary in County
Num With Classes	Num Teachers in County who have at least one class
Salary with Classes	Average Teacher salary in county with at least one class
Num Without Classes	Num "Teachers" in county without classes
Ratio classes/no classes	Ratio of teachers who have classes to no classes
Expense Ratio Classes/No Classes	$s spent for every class teacher towards a no class teacher

One thing that is obvious from this table - The average salaries are far from the 6 figure numbers the media has been talking about.

Chris Chrstie is wrong on teacher salaries and benefits

Welcome to my blog on why Chris Christie is dead wrong on just about everything!

My first post explores Chris Christie's feelings towards NJ teachers.

Let me start by saying I am not a NJ teacher.  I am not related to any NJ teachers.  I am not even a NJ parent.  I did vote for Chris Christie and I do think Chris Christie is dead wrong in his blaming teachers for the budget problems in NJ.  I can think of many better ways to fix the NJ budget crisis (I'll list them here in the next few days). 

Chris Christie seems to think NJ Teachers are overpaid. He has said this repeatedly. From his March 16th speech to the legislature:

“Political muscle fueled by intimidation tactics, political bullying and smears of public officials who dare to disagree. This conduct has set up an unfair system. Is it fair to have any public employees getting 4-5% salary increases every year, even when inflation is zero %, paid for by citizens struggling to survive? It is fair to have New Jersey taxpayers foot the bill for 100% of the health insurance costs of teachers and their families from the day they are hired until the day they die? Is it fair that teachers have a better, richer health plan than even state workers and pay absolutely nothing for it? “

But is Chris Christie correct? Of Course not!

Let’s look at some of the data. http://www.teachersalaryinfo.com/ lists salary data by state and is a great place to look for this info.

First, let’s look at raw salaries – Only 5 states have higher Teacher Salaries than NJ – MI, CT, DC, CA, MD. On the raw salary point it seems at first glance Chris Christie is correct. But, further analysis shows a different story. On this blog we’ll explore some of the numbers.

Second,  look at average teacher salary compared to median housing prices. Only 4 states (NY, AZ, CA, HI) pay their teachers worse than NJ when salary is compared to median housing prices. NJ teachers can’t afford to purchase houses in the state where they work! Does that sound like they are over-paid?

Next, compare NJ teacher salaries to median income of the state. Guess what, NJ is dead last in this category. From this statistic it sounds like everyone else in NJ might be overpaid, but I certainly can’t conclude teachers are overpaid.

Final comparison stat for today is cost of benefits. Chris Christie seems to thing teacher benefits are out of line. NJ ranks about middle of the road in this category. About half the states pay more for teacher benefits and half pay less. Don’t worry though, Chris Christie will fix this and make sure NJ ranks at the bottom.

So, if NJ teachers salaries are low compared to median housing prices and median income of the state and benefits are in line with every other state why is the per pupil spending in NJ only topped by NY and DC? We’ll explore this topic in the next post.

For now, let’s just think about how wrong Chris Christie is for thinking teachers are the problem in NJ.