A voucher system that lets any child in New Jersey go to any school, public or private, is the “final solution” to an overly expensive system that continues to fail too many children, Governor Christie said Monday.
Christie told an enthusiastic school choice advocacy group in Washington that he will expand the number of public charter schools and supports a bipartisan bill to provide thousands of public scholarships so children in failing districts may attend private or parochial schools.
“They are trapped by a self-interested, greedy schoolteachers union that cares more about putting money in their own pockets and pockets of members than they care about educating the most vulnerable and needy children,” Christie said.
But Christie said he was committed to going further. He said he saw families in Newark agonize over children losing a lottery to get into a successful charter school, while his income gave him the ability to choose to send his children to Catholic school.
Christie was the keynote speaker at the two-day “national policy summit” in the Omni Shoreham hotel organized by the American Federation for Children, a Washington-based group that advocates for vouchers, charter schools and tax credits for corporations that fund scholarships.
Christie said the climate is right for passage of a scholarship bill that some advocates say could serve as many as 24,000 children. It is sponsored by Sens. Raymond Lesniak, D-Elizabeth, and Thomas H. Kean Jr., R-Westfield, and will have its first hearing later this month.
A broad coalition including the head of the state Black Ministers Council, traditionally a power base for Democrats, supports the bill.
“If it doesn’t happen now, I’m not sure it’s ever going to happen,” said the Rev. Reginald Jackson, who attended the dinner.
Christie said New Jersey could be a national bellwether.
“If we can make this happen in New Jersey over course of next four years, there is no excuse anyone anywhere not to get this done,” he said.
Steve Baker of the New Jersey Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, said in a phone interview from Trenton that vouchers divert money from public education at a time Christie has already ordered deep budget cuts.
“To talk about taking more money out of the state budget and dedicating it to providing subsidies for private education, it’s incredibly misguided priorities,” Baker said. “It’s fundamentally a matter of whether public education is public or not.”
Baker said that if schools are failing, giving the money that’s being spent on them to other schools won’t fix them, Baker said. The public needs to provide the resources to help them perform, and data have shown New Jersey among the nation’s leaders in closing the gap between the best schools and the worst, he said.
But Jackson said annually increasing budgets did not produce needed results.
(Source: NorthJersey.com)
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8 Responses
I on’t trust anyone connected with the teachers union in New Jersey. The facts speak for themselves. The schools are failing, and all the teachers union talks about is how unfair the Governor is. If they truly care about the children, they should propose concrete ways of improving the schools; and “DO MORE WITH LESS”!
Amen
Thank G-D. Finally, a political leader with common sense, who is not being blackmailed by the unions.
The headline to this story, “NJ Gov. Christie: Vouchers Offer ‘Final Solution’ For School System”, has rather unfortunate connotations for yiddishe mentshen.
Does anybody remember who else used the phrase “final solution” in connection with the Jewish people?
Halevai we could find a conservative Republican here in New York to say the same thing.
1. I assume his choice of the words “Final solution” was a slip for which he’ll apologize. I doubt he intends to put the public school teachers in concentration camps (though have suggested the public schools system resembles the gulag).
2. So we have Orthodox Jews, Catholics, Blacks and anti-government conservatives, all ganging up on teachers’ union that are heavily influence (dominated perhaps?) by frei Jews.
3. Once yeshivos are dependent on vouchers, then will the government get to control curriculum and teacher selection. The goyim’s phrase we should worry about is “He who pays the fiddler, call the tune.”
Poor akuperma, you really don’t like the idea of frum parents, Latino parents, and African-American parents getting the financial freedom of choosing their respective yeshiva, Catholic parochial school, and Baptist school respectively. Instead of the money going directly to the district i.e. the unions, it goes to the school. akuperma, could you answer me one question; where do all of those union dues go to?
#7 – I love the idea of vouchers (though at this point it will benefit grandchildren rather than children) – however it has been nice not having to deal with secular bureaucrats telling us how to educate our children. We see in Israel some of the problems when frum schools take money from the Hilonim. Once the government starts picking up the tab, they start meddling. Arguing over curriculum is probably more fund than fund raising, but it isn’t such a simple matter.