Aleksandr's Excellent Question

Culturegeist's Friday night DVD

Tonight was going to be a night off from blogging, director Christopher Nolan's 2014 scf-fi epic Interstellar was in my mailbox (from Netflix) when I got home from a long day's work and I was all set to make dinner, prop my feet up and watch it with my trusty cat Buster snoozing at my feet.

But I went to check my blog stats and saw that a reader named Aleksandr Petrov had posted an excellent comment in response to my previous blog in which I suggested that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's "Fairness Formula" isn't really fair.

Aleksandr asked:

"How about fairness to my children from (a) "rich" district? Why (should they) get nothing from state taxes I pay?"

Excellent question Aleksandr, and obviously a complex one, I'll postpone my interstellar adventure to try and answer it.


For those who haven't heard, on Tuesday Governor Christie announced an initiative he calls his "Fairness Formula", which would cap all state funding for New Jersey public schools students at $6,599 per pupil - regardless of the school.

Now Aleksandr's question echoes the feeling of many people in New Jersey, and I respect his concerns and felt compelled to offer an answer. I went to post my answer to to his comment but found I had exceeded the number of words Blogger.com allows in a reply comment; so I decided to just blog my answer.

From the context of Governor Christie's "Fairness Formula", I think a major part of the problem stems from the way that New Jersey's public schools are organized and funded. NJ school districts exist in silos broken up by individual districts, often a stones throw from one another, separated by communities where the tax base is more of a boundary than a physical barrier like a road, a fence or a river.

Inside the Supreme Court 

TopMastersInEducation.com posted an excellent analysis online that explores the impact of how the steady decrease in federal funding of American public schools over the years has put more and more of the financial burden on states and local municipalities and districts to fund their public schools:

The opening of the article points out that a 1973 Supreme Court decision ruled that a formula of public school funding based on local property taxes does not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

The end result is the situation we currently have here in NJ, and in many other states.

As the Top Masters article observes:

"Such a system has created what many school districts view as an unequal distribution of wealth that amounts to wealth discrimination, as more affluent school districts with more business and higher residential property values have been more able to raise more money from local sources than poor districts for more than 40 years now."

So with all due respect Aleksandr, your children do not get "nothing" from the taxes you pay, by their living in a more affluent district than say, East Orange or Trenton, they are getting a lot more in terms of the quality of the public school education they receive by virtue of your ability to afford to live where you do.

East Orange High School

It's far easier for the public schools in your district to attract more qualified teachers and administrators who want to ply their skills in an educational environment where the schools are adequately funded, are better organized and better managed.

Are all communities the same?

Obviously not.


And no one, including me, is going to fault you or any other hard-working parent who wants the best for their children.

To me, the silos and little fiefdoms in NJ are a waste of both human and physical capital.

Let's look at Mercer County as an example.

I was fortunate enough to graduate from West Windsor-Plainsboro South HS, regarded as one of the top public high schools in the nation for years.

WWPSHS is no more than about 15 minutes from Trenton Central HS; but in terms of the disparities in the quality of education, the management and administration of the school systems and the school facilities; they might as well be on different sides of the moon.

Is that the fault of the students growing up in urban districts with under-performing schools?

President Harry S. Truman

I would argue that it's the responsibility of the administrators and school board members, and their inability to operate more efficiently is partly to blame; like Harry S. Truman I'm a "Buck Stops Here" kinda guy.

I actually agree with some of the arguments Governor Christie used in announcing his "Fairness Formula' initiative.

On average Trenton spends about the 3rd highest in the state per pupil, yet they have one of the lowest graduation rates and one of the worst attendance rates in New Jersey.


The Newark school system was so dysfunctional, the state took it over; not that they did any better, was the state's decision to eliminate attendance counselors and truant officers in 2013 really a smart thing to do?

The state-takeover doesn't mean every administrator and teacher in the Newark public school system was a self-serving individual with no concern for the welfare of students - but decades of poor leadership like that has consequences in terms of attracting additional funding.

Earlier this spring, Trenton laid of 164 public school teachers because they were unable to secure additional state funds to help alleviate a $5.9 million deficit.

But if Christie had his way and cut over 50% of the state funding from Trenton schools (who already lost 164 teachers) where does that leave the children?

Some are migrating to charter schools like the highly respected Foundation Academy, one of the best (if not THE best) school in Trenton, where students adhere to strict dress and behavioral codes and parents are required to play an active role on working with the school to play an essential role as liason between teacher and student. And students excel there.

Chris Christie: Sorry urban public schools

But that's another part of the problem with Christie's "Fairness Formula".

Christie is very much guided by a privatization mindset, so stripping under-performing public schools of resources also serves his goal of channeling more taxpayer funds to charter schools.

So yes, Foundation Academy students are excelling, and that's a good thing.



But remember, these are the same kids from the same communities who'd otherwise be attending more poorly run schools in Trenton that have been marginalized in), charter schools are siphoning off talent (talented teachers, students & administrators) and badly needed taxpayer funds from public schools.

Which brings me back to Mercer County, if Mercer County had a unified school system, more resources would be available to all schools. Just consider what superintendents are making in each of these individual school districts.

A unified Mercer County school system would have more power and influence too.

Instead we rely on a formula where individual districts drive the funding for their schools, creating in effect, public schools which are essentially separate and unequal. Even though they may be only a few miles from one another.

Don't get me wrong, I don't pine for some kind of socialist utopian fantasy, what bothers me is how Americans have sat back and allowed the federal government to absolve itself of responsibility for sufficiently funding public schools; even as We the People fund disastrous wars in the middle east to the tune of TRILLIONS of dollars. Why?

In part because of private conservative think tanks funded by people like the Koch brothers, people who literally have begun to endow chairs and departments at major universities to staff them with, and support people who view public education through the same anti-government privatization-mindset as Chris Christie does.

Remember Koch-puppet Gov Scott Walker (who didn't graduate from college...) cutting hundreds of millions of dollars from the University of Wisconsin?

These think tanks have begun the process of placing like-minded "academics" on local school boards throughout the country, in fact the Camden superintendent is one such person; Christie's heavy involvement in the funding of new waterfront development in Camden is no coincidence.

So I hear your concern Aleksandr, and your children have a right to reap the rewards of the taxes you pay, but Christie is self-serving to his own political ambitions and willing to do what he can to allow New Jersey to function as some kind of "conservative socio-economic laboratory" where kooky ideologically-driven right-wing policies are proposed or enacted.

Kansas Gov Sam Brownback

Just take a look at what Republican Governor Sam Brownback has done to the state of Kansas (including it's once highly-regarded public schools) and the absolute disaster it's been for the state.

Christie is clever, and he knows he can use the lingering anger over the 1985 Abbott court decision as a wedge issue to garner support for a plan that would drastically slash state public school funding for urban schools in districts already facing a host of challenges, and magically increase state funding for wealthier districts - not in the interest of education.

But as a transparent Trojan Horse to gift the wealthiest districts in New Jersey with a property tax cut. Christie's proposal serves his own political ambitions, not the interests of public education in New Jersey.


And it reeks of coded racism.

The irony here is thick enough to cut with a knife, conservative think tanks and politicians have slowly and steadily reduced the federal share of public school funding, while allowing a district-funded formula to take root, creating even more inequities based on class and race in the educational system of the greatest nation in the world.

And now a guy like Christie points to those underperforming schools in cities that have seen their tax bases decimated by the disappearance of manufacturing jobs and urban blight, and says, "these schools are getting too much state funding, it's time to strip all these Abbott schools of at least 50% of their state funding, and give it to schools in wealthier districts."

And he calls it a "Fairness Formula"?

Mittens Checks In As GOP Tries to Deflect Media Attention From Despicable Voter Suppression Tactics

Failed 2012 Presidential candidate Mitt Romney: back on the political trail

Our old friend Mittens (Romney) was back in the news again today, bringing his folksy, substance-free brand of conservatism to the great state of New York to fire off a couple of political cheap shots at incumbent Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo.

The Republican gubernatorial opponent, West Chester County Executive Rob Astorino, isn't likely to make a dent in Cuomo's commanding double-digit lead, or overcome hizzoner's deep-pocketed backers, name recognition or mastery of Albany politics. Republicans know that.

They certainly couldn't have forgotten that Romney got his political clock cleaned during the November 6, 2012 presidential elections when President Obama took the state of New York by an overwhelming margin of 63.35% to Romney's 35.17% on the way to a decisive 2nd term victory.

So it's not like Mittens is some kind of political rock star in New York; aside from some sparsely populated upstate rural areas, the voting populace soundly rejected he and former vice-presidential candidate Congressman Paul Ryan's economic policies in 2012.

The real reason the GOP asked Mitt to pen an open letter to New York voters criticizing Cuomo as a "typical corrupt New York politician" was more likely just a calculated PR ruse designed to help deflect the pummeling the Republican brand took in the media last week.

And it wasn't just the media taking Kansas Governor Sam Brownback to task for the economic disaster resulting from his bizarre Tea Party-inspired "experiment" to use failed Reagan-era supply-side economic theories to jump start the Kansas economy.

Even Republicans have publicly criticized Brownback's combination of massive tax cuts (for guess who?) and huge cuts in state spending on things like education and job training programs for the current sad state of the Kansas economy. More than 100 Kansas Republicans fed up with the Tea Party's grip on power publicly backed Brownback's Democratic opponent for governor, statehouse leader Paul Davis.

As the members of the editorial board of the Washington Post observed back in late September:

"Mr. Brownback’s Kansas trial is rapidly becoming a cautionary tale for conservative governors elsewhere who have blithely peddled the theology of tax cuts as a painless panacea for sluggish growth. Most key indicators suggest that job creation and economic growth in Kansas are lagging those of its neighbors."
  
Romney's political cheap shots at Cuomo served the GOP's purposes by making media headlines and also temporarily serving to put a more moderate face on the Republican party. Plus it's valuable low-cost media attention; media focus that won't be turned on the Republican right wing's ongoing effort to sway the outcome of the upcoming November elections by actively violating the right to vote for many Americans.

Did you hear about 79 year-old Joy Dunn of Arkansas?

Check out the article on ThinkProgress.org. She's an African-American resident of Little Rock, AK who can recall the time when black citizens like herself had to pay a $2 poll tax in order to vote; a sum which could represent a week's wages for rural blacks in the south during the time of Jim Crow.

Ole' Jim is apparently alive and well in Arkansas as Ms. Dunn's recent vote in a March special election in Arkansas was returned to her in the mail along with a note saying it was not counted because she had not provided copies of her ID.

She's never had to provide copies of her ID to vote in the decades she's been voting - and of course, no state or local municipal agency ever contacted her directly, or informed her to notify her that she had to; even though she does have valid state ID's.

Ms. Dunn manged to have a friend take her ID's to the library to photocopy them so she can vote in the November elections; but how many elderly residents in rural areas found their votes returned and don't have someone to help them figure out how to comply with state ID laws in order to vote? How many just gave up?

Similar doings are still going on down in North Carolina. The weekly news roundup on the Friday October 10th edition of NPR's Diane Rhehm Show featured some interesting discussion on the status of voter suppression in America. A caller from NC called in to say that he'd worked as a voting monitor at a polling site in a NC community with a liberal arts college and a fairly large black population.

He claimed that many people had received information in the mail that intentionally gave them the wrong polling location for their address or district. When many of those who'd received the bogus info showed up at what they thought was their correct polling site, they were not permitted to cast a vote.

The GOP's ongoing efforts to undermine the fundamental right to vote as a campaign tool is a disturbing travesty that fundamentally violates the law and drags the nation backwards into a much darker era.

Thanks to the destructive influence of the Tea Party extremists who now control the Republican party at the behest of right-wing billionaire backers like the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson (who seek to "reverse social engineer" the nation back into their own warped perception of a Democracy), the GOP is unapologetically ethically bankrupt at this point - lacking both scruples and a sense of decency and fair play.

The old joke about a politicians taking candy from babies has been replaced by a brutal reality where the GOP (literally) steals votes from the elderly, the poor and working class and students seeking to exercise their Constitutional right to vote.

Mitt Romney's cheap shots won't change that.