Message From the President

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Earlier this school year I made the following comments in one of my TEAM spirit articles:

I need to do something in this article that I hardly ever do. I need to talk about politics. The reason I usually don’t discuss politics is because every person has the right to their own opinions and no one should try to force their own beliefs onto someone else. I am not trying to force my opinion on you with this article; I just want you to be knowledgeable about the candidates and their views towards our profession and our benefits. This is by far the most important election that I have ever voted in. Never before have I felt like someone was trying to take something away from us as I do right now. The things I care about the most will be affected if Chris Christie is elected the next Governor of New Jersey. I care about Health Benefits after retirement and I care about those retired members that are already enjoying premium free benefits for life. I care about school funding and the possibility of losing jobs and extracurricular activities that our students currently enjoy. I care about the funding of our pension and I’m sure you do as well. I care about having the right to negotiate our salaries and our benefits to make sure we continue to be treated fairly at the bargaining table. If you care about the same things I just mentioned, the choice is clear for you on November 3rd.

I was slightly criticized by some of our members after writing that article for voicing my opinion about politics. In response, I am not the least bit sorry for trying to inform our members about the candidates running for Governor at that time. I was trying to protect us from the attacks on public education we are now experiencing. We all understand the debt New Jersey is faced with right now. But I wouldn’t be so quick to place the blame squarely on the shoulders of public school employees. I personally have made no decisions in Trenton and should not be held responsible for the years of financial mismanagement by the legislators.

Because of those years of mismanagement, the Governor has asked school district to reach out to the Presidents of the local associations and ask them to reopen our contracts and take a pay freeze. Here is my response to that: We have already made concessions in our contract. For those of you that may have forgotten, we changed our healthcare provider to the SEHBP, which has saved the Morris School District millions of dollars over the past two years of our contract. We also made a change to the extracurricular salary guide, which has also yielded a substantial saving to the district. So please don’t tell us we are unwilling to bargain. We just choose to bargain on a two-way street instead of having our conditions imposed upon us. We will already be subject to a 1.5% salary reduction upon the expiration of this contract. If we were to reopen our contract, that 1.5% would be imposed upon us at the time of reopening the contract. So in essence, a pay freeze would result in a pay reduction.

So let’s marinate on that pay freeze for a moment…. A Pay Freeze = a 0% increase…. Health benefits = 1.5% reduction in pay.... School Tax increase in my town because loss of state funding…. Loss of summer school and other summer programs that many of our members count on just to pay the bills…. I was never a math teacher, but this equation makes no sense to me. There are other options for reducing the budget. I just have never been asked for my two cents. At the same time the Governor is asking us to take a pay freeze, he has rejected any consideration of reinstating a very modest tax on the very wealthiest New Jersey residents, those making more than $400,000 per year. Last year, that surcharge generated nearly $1 billion in revenue for the state, enough to close much of the hole that his reckless budget opened in local school budgets. Oh, did I mention the surcharge resulted in less than 1.5% of their income?

As I mentioned above, let’s not forget that we are taxpayers and we will be the victims of one of the Governors false promises. Property tax relief will not be experienced after the Governor slashed nearly $1.5 billion from state aid to schools and higher education. As a matter of fact, the taxes in Morristown will be increased over $200.00 per home due to the Governor taking over 3 million dollars of surplus from the Morris School District that was slated to be returned directly to the taxpayers. But this is not the first promise the Governor has broken and it will not be the last. Here are some of his promises that he is trying his best to break. These are excerpts from a letter the Governor had written to teachers before he was elected.

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE TEACHERS OF NJ
I am the proud product of our state’s public education system. In fact, my late mother was a dues-paying member of the NJEA. I know firsthand that one of the main reasons many of our schools rank among the best in America is because of our dedicated teachers and educational professionals who work hard every day to give our children the learning experience they deserve.

Right now, the Trenton-based leaders of the teachers' union are literally spending millions of dollars of your union dues to falsely attack me on television and through slick mailers. This is nothing but an attempt to poison me in your eyes so that you will vote for four more years of Jon Corzine and his failed policies. Just so I am clear, what they are saying about my intentions to hurt pensions or lay off teachers is absolutely, 100% untrue.

Here are the facts

I will be a strong ally for teachers in the classroom. When elected, I will make education funding a top priority and I believe we must ensure those dollars reach our children and the classroom, not the educational bureaucracy. In these tough economic times, we must ensure that the proper resources get to you, the teachers in the classroom. We must also make sure that education dollars are always a priority and come from stable sources.

Too often these grants or stimulus dollars are accepted for programs with no plan on how to pay for them after the money runs dry. (Sounds like Race to the Top funds) It is time for a new era of responsibility in Trenton, and I will work to secure a steady source of funding for all education programs.

I will protect your pensions. Nothing about your pension is going to change when I am governor. In fact, in order to ensure your retirement savings are safe, I believe we must prioritize the protection of pension fund dollars and investigate the cause of Jon Corzine's large investment losses to our pension system. Currently there is a $34 billion deficit in the State's pension fund, which threatens the retirement and lifeline of so many teachers. We must do better for our teachers, future teachers and retirees. As Governor, I will work to close unfunded liabilities and make sure our state lives up to its promises, unlike Jon Corzine. I will not raid your pension fund to cover budgetary shortfalls like previous governors of both parties have done. One of the changes I will bring to Trenton is responsible management, investment, and oversight of state pension dollars. I will not end collective bargaining and will safeguard protections for ALL public employees, including teachers. Collective bargaining is an important safeguard for public employees and is a part of a long American tradition of self government. We must make sure that the voice of every worker is represented in contract negotiations. I will demand open, honest, and fair deliberations.

We may disagree on some issues, but I know we agree on what’s most important – delivering the best education we can for our kids. Giving New Jersey's children a quality education is critical to their future and I know we wouldn't be able to do that without the dedication and tireless commitment of teachers like you. I appreciate you allowing me to clear up some of the misinformation being circulated about my plans to support our state's teachers.

Now here are some of the words of NJEA President Barbara Keshishian regarding The Governors attack on the NJEA and public school employees.

I understand politics, and I understand Gov. Christie’s tactics. If I were cutting funds from schools to provide tax cuts to the wealthy, I’d be looking for a distraction too. I wouldn’t want people focusing on the consequences for students and I wouldn’t want people asking why millionaires get a pass when everyone else is being asked to share in the sacrifice. I wouldn’t want to answer for why teachers and staff will be laid off, why class sizes will go up, why academic programs will be cut, or why valuable extracurricular activities will be cut. I wouldn’t want to have to justify slamming doors in the faces of college students who just want to get the training and education they need to prepare for today’s jobs and help grow our economy back to health.

Gov. Christie is a very shrewd politician, and he’s using crafty political tactics to impose his agenda on the state. But when he turned his attack machine on teachers and school employees, he really stooped to a desperate new low, because our members are not the problem. Our members are the people who work early in the morning and late into the night to make sure our schools are safe and clean and our students are getting a great education. They are the people who go into their own pockets to buy books and supplies that the district cannot afford. They are the ones who bring winter coats for the kids who don’t have them, and quietly provide a morning snack to students who don’t get breakfast at home. So when the governor takes shot after shot at school employees, sneering that they don’t work very hard or proclaiming that they just don’t care about students, it’s an unfair and unwarranted attack on people who have dedicated their lives to educating the children of our state. The consequences for children and schools are too great. People of integrity must hold this governor accountable for his misguided priorities. The wealthy have their advocate in the Statehouse. Students and school employees deserve to have someone speaking for them too.

Last but not least for my article, TEAM has been trying very hard over the past few years to improve our communication of information to our members. We can no longer rely on using the district’s email to communicate the bulk of our business. Therefore, we are asking every member that has an email address to share it with us. We would like you to stay informed of the many changes that we are being confronted with on a daily basis. We have also established other new ways of communicating information to you. www.motownteam.org is our website that is updated frequently with useful information. We have also created a Facebook page under The Education Association of Morris and we are even using Twitter at Twitter.com/motownteam. If that is not enough, let me know and we will start sending smoke signals.

Sincerely,
Smitty Horton