"Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast"
-Oscar Wilde		 Brilliant at Breakfast title banner "The liberal soul shall be made fat, and he that watereth, shall be watered also himself."
-- Proverbs 11:25
"...you have a choice: be a fighting liberal or sit quietly. I know what I am, what are you?" -- Steve Gilliard, 1964 - 2007

"For straight up monster-stomping goodness, nothing makes smoke shoot out my ears like Brilliant@Breakfast" -- Tata

"...the best bleacher bum since Pete Axthelm" -- Randy K.

"I came here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubblegum." -- "Rowdy" Roddy Piper (1954-2015), They Live
Wednesday, April 21, 2010

School Elections
Posted by Bob | 11:49 AM
The Elizabeth NJ school budget was defeated yesterday, Yes 1,607,
No 1,808. More voters turned out in adjacent town Union NJ, which has half the population, & nearly as many in Linden, which has one-third. We had four candidates for three Board of Ed positions. The BoE, though nonpartisan, is in effect controlled by the local opposition to the Elizabeth/Union County regular Democratic organization, which holds city Hall & County government. So one might expect a full slate of alternative candidates & more debate. Instead, we got a mailing from the mayor advising us to vote "no." Beginning a few months ago, we began recieiving a series of slick brochures & flyers from the BoE telling us how good the system is. Certainly, many of the schools look swell. There's a brand new grammar school around the corner constructed at state expense. We have a "Ronald Reagan Academy" & a bunch of other academies. But the test scores & rankings, easily available from several online sources, tell us Elizabeth has a typical urban school system, half as good as the small, no frills system in the town of Roselle Park on the western border, better overall than Newark & probably safer. None of the mailings informed us how many staff positions would be cut or in what areas. In a crucial year, with a budget heavily dependent on state aid, the election here generated little public interest. But we're projected to lose 4.5% in state aid. Union County's suburban towns are taking the biggest hits & facing huge property tax hikes. Chalk it up as a small victory for Mayor J. Christian Bollwage. The disputes between the Mayor & The BoE centered mostly on where our new state-mandated & financed schools would be built, & that of course raised questions of who might profit from the land deals & construction contracts, & such matters generally don't interest me, as I fail to see the point of getting involved in urban politics in Jersey if you're not trying to leverage some advantage, even if it's just a a clerical job for a relative in a cubicle in some obscure city agency.

Oh yeah, we like Ike.

Labels:

0 comments
Bookmark and Share