Skip to main content

Let's be like New Jersey?

This story from today's WNJ deserves some additional comment:

TRENTON — New Jersey's education commissioner has ruled that a teacher should forfeit more than $50,000 pay for making a four-minute personal call during class.

However, Desly Getty won't lose her job as a performing arts teacher at Asbury Park High School.

Court records show Getty was covering for another teacher for 45 minutes in 2008 when she called suspended superintendent Antonio Lewis.

A student recorded two students dancing while she was on the phone and posted it on YouTube.

Getty went back to the class the next day to question students after she had learned about the video.

The teacher was reprimanded.

Asbury Park prohibits teachers from making personal calls while performing assigned duties.

Getty can appeal the ruling.


Aside from the grossly inappropriate relation of the fine to the offense, this case is not an anomaly in New Jersey.

Let me explain. I do a lot of consulting on Teaching American History grants, and a lot of it is in New Jersey. New Jersey school districts are no longer allowed to purchase lunch for their teachers during a day of professional development.

Why?

About two years ago, one NJ District Superintendent went to England on some sort of government-paid educational junket, and charge a meal (one meal!) on his state credit card that came to something like $170.

The State legislature reacted to this outrage by passing legislation forbidding school districts from ever paying any of their employees for meals again. That'll show the bastard!

Yep: the NJ way. Instead of punishing the person who actually committed the infraction, the government punished every teacher in the State.

Ultimate insult to injury: that former superintendent is now a NJ state legislator.
Labels:

Comments

RSmitty Doesn't Like Tuesdays, Either said…
$50-freaking-k? That's an annual salary (er...more than) for most teachers in our state (DE)!!! That's outrageous and continues to show yet again how horribly out of touch the powerful are with those who have boots-on-the-ground.
August 11, 2009 at 1:11 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Comment Rescue (?) and child-related gun violence in Delaware

In my post about the idiotic over-reaction to a New Jersey 10-year-old posing with his new squirrel rifle , Dana Garrett left me this response: One waits, apparently in vain, for you to post the annual rates of children who either shoot themselves or someone else with a gun. But then you Libertarians are notoriously ambivalent to and silent about data and facts and would rather talk abstract principles and fear monger (like the government will confiscate your guns). It doesn't require any degree of subtlety to see why you are data and fact adverse. The facts indicate we have a crisis with gun violence and accidents in the USA, and Libertarians offer nothing credible to address it. Lives, even the lives of children, get sacrificed to the fetishism of liberty. That's intellectual cowardice. OK, Dana, let's talk facts. According to the Children's Defense Fund , which is itself only querying the CDCP data base, fewer than 10 children/teens were killed per year in Delaw
18 comments
Read more

The Obligatory Libertarian Tax Day Post

The most disturbing factoid that I learned on Tax Day was that the average American must now spend a full twenty-four hours filling out tax forms. That's three work days. Or, think of it this way: if you had to put in two hours per night after dinner to finish your taxes, that's two weeks (with Sundays off). I saw a talking head economics professor on some Philly TV channel pontificating about how Americans procrastinate. He was laughing. The IRS guy they interviewed actually said, "Tick, tick, tick." You have to wonder if Governor Ruth Ann Minner and her cohorts put in twenty-four hours pondering whether or not to give Kraft Foods $708,000 of our State taxes while demanding that school districts return $8-10 million each?
Post a Comment
Read more

New Warfare: I started my posts with a discussion.....

.....on Unrestricted warfare . The US Air force Institute for National Security Studies have developed a reasonable systems approach to deter non-state violent actors who they label as NSVA's. It is an exceptionally important report if we want to deter violent extremism and other potential violent actors that could threaten this nation and its security. It is THE report our political officials should be listening to to shape policy so that we do not become excessive in using force against those who do not agree with policy and dispute it with reason and normal non-violent civil disobedience. This report, should be carefully read by everyone really concerned with protecting civil liberties while deterring violent terrorism and I recommend if you are a professional you send your recommendations via e-mail at the link above so that either 1.) additional safeguards to civil liberties are included, or 2.) additional viable strategies can be used. Finally, one can only hope that politici
Post a Comment
Read more