Local Control: In New Jersey, It's Not For "Them"

Bob Braun breaks an amazing story, once again showing Newark's public schools administration is out of control:

A parent leader who criticized the “One Newark” plan pushed by state school superintendent Cami Anderson was arrested yesterday  on charges he assaulted a central office administrator. Daryn Martin, president of the Parent Teacher Organization at the Ivy Hill School, was charged with ”aggravated assault” but released on his own recognizance. If convicted, he faces three to five years in jail.

Martin,  a deacon for he New Hope Baptist Church in Jersey City, said he was called by a Newark police detective and asked to come to headquarters to sign a formal complaint. He had earlier filed a criminal complaint against Tiffany Hardrick, an assistant school superintendent, but the detective said he did not have the right address on the form.  It apparently was a ruse to get Martin to come to police headquarters so he could be arrested. When he arrived shortly before 2:30 pm, he was confronted by a detective who told him:

“Here’s the deal, Mr. Martin. The simple assault charge against you has been elevated to aggravated assault because she is a public official.”

Martin said, “What charge? There’s no charge against me.” Despite his protests, he was handcuffed and fingerprinted. The police took a mug shot and swabbed his cheek for DNA samples. Then he was placed in a cell with two other inmates.

[...]

Simple assault charges are automatically elevated to a much more serious crime if the victim is a public official, including a school employee.

Martin’s troubles with Anderson began Jan. 15 when he posted notices of a PTO meeting at the Ivy Hill School. Later, he witnessed Hardrick and another central office administrator, Gary Beidleman, tearing down the notices, which had been approved by school principal Lisa Brown.

Martin said that, when he demanded they stop, Hardrick pushed him twice. He later filed a police complaint against Hardrick but, two days later,  he was banned from entering the school his two children attend. The letter notifying him of the ban accused him of pushing Hardrick and Beidleman although a  report filed by a school security officer about the incident mentioned no pushing.  At the time, neither Newark police nor the school administration would say whether any charges had been pressed against Martin. [emphasis mine]

Newark, NJ: A city where the school administration has church leaders who serve as PTO presidents arrested on the basis of... what, exactly? Reports from school security officers that don't mention assault?

At some point, we'll get to Dr. Hardrick's rather -- interesting, shall we say? -- past*. For, now, however, let's do a little comparing and contrasting. Because I read this story and I got to thinking...

Out here in the white, leafy suburbs, parent interaction with schools administration usually involves a pleasant chat over a warm beverage. Administration goes out of its way to solicit parent opinion and advice. Why? Because administration answers to its school board, and that school board answers to the voters, many of whom are parents.

Now, there's no denying that there are times when the system breaks down. Corruption can rear its ugly head anywhere and at any time. That was allegedly the case back in 1995, when the state took over NPS:

The takeover comes almost exactly a year after the state released a 1,100-page report chronicling the failings of the local district, where only one quarter of the students who took the 1993 high school proficiency test were able to pass on the first try.

The report said the nine-member elected Board of Education, which was also dissolved today, appeared more interested in the spoils of office, like cars, junkets and flowers, than in focusing on falling test scores, poor attendance and crumbling schools where sometimes even toilet paper was in short supply.

City officials wanted a chance to rebut those charges during formal hearings, but the takeover was accelerated by an administrative law judge, Stephen G. Weiss, who ruled last April that conditions were so bad that they warranted immediate action.

I'm not going to re-litigate the failings of the previous school board; let's agree, for the sake of argument, that the board wasn't doing its job and the state had to intervene. But that was nearly 19 years ago; have any other New Jersey school districts seen, since that time, large-scale failures of governance? (all emphases mine)

Tom's River:

Michael Ritacco, the once-powerful superintendent of the fourth-largest school district in New Jersey, will spend most of the next decade in a prison cell.

Calling it the worst case of public corruption he’s seen, U.S. District Court Judge Joel A. Pisano today sentenced Ritacco to 11 years and three months in federal prison and fined him $100,000 for bilking Toms River schools, setting up inflated insurance contracts and extorting up to $2 million from the brokers as kickbacks.

"It takes the cake," said Pisano, who in 2001 sentenced former Camden Mayor Milton Milan to seven years in prison for corruption. "Milton Milan was like nickels and dimes compared with this."

[...]

"I’m glad it’s over," said Alex Pavliv, a member of the Toms River school board who won election last year on an anti-Ritacco slate. "I think there clearly was a lack of oversight and hopefully this era is (behind) us and we can set about rebuilding this district for the children and taxpayers of the township instead of the crooks."

Hamilton:

Seeking to recover losses from an insurance contract scam, the school board tonight unanimously voted to consider suing former insurance broker Marliese Ljuba; Allen Associates, which was the company she represented; and current health insurance provider AmeriHealth.

According to the motion brought forward by board Vice President Joseph Malagrino, board attorney Joseph Betley will “investigate any probable cause for further legal action in connection with any wrongdoings in regards to school district health insurance matters,” between 2011 and 2012.

School officials believe they may have paid millions of dollars more than necessary owing to a wide ranging bribery scam that allowed Allen Associates to consistently win the district’s business without proper bidding procedures.

[...]

The state Department of Education withdrew $25,000 of state aid last September as a penalty for awarding negligent contracts to Allen Associates without a proper open process.

During her testimony at Bencivengo’s trial, Ljuba testified to having a cozy relationship with district officials, and current and former board members to ensure she maintained her lucrative contract with the district.

Elizabeth:

The latest sorry twist in the Elizabeth school board’s streak of outrageous misdeeds, authorities announced last week, is a scheme to cover up fraud in the school lunch program.

That is, more fraud in the school lunch program. Because the last time this board made headlines, it was when its president, Marie L. Munn, got caught getting free lunch for her children at school that she was not entitled to — and lying about it.

Now, authorities say the wife of another board member, John Donoso, did the exact same thing. Donoso told two attorneys associated with the school board, Kirk Nelson and Frank Capece, that he wanted to fix this so he wouldn’t end up like Munn, according to the state Attorney General’s Office. All four are now charged in a cover-up of the fraudulent applications after the board’s records got subpoenaed by the state.

It’s yet another example of the corruption festering in this district, one of the state’s largest and poorest. Starting in May 2011, The Star-Ledger detailed a host of allegations against the Elizabeth school system: fraud, nepotism, conflicts of interest, questionable fundraising, political shakedowns.

Apparently, the feuds and intimidation even extend into the classroom. Last month, 15 students who work as canvassers for state Sen. Raymond Lesniak, a long-standing rival of board President Tony Monteiro, were yanked out of class by the vice principal, one by one, to be interrogated about their political activity.

But laughably, the Elizabeth school board has concluded there is no such culture of corruption — after paying a half-million dollars to a law firm to investigate it.

Here's the latest on what's happening in Elizabeth. Keep in mind that the Elizabeth BOE was pretty much a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Christie administration.

West New York: 

West New York Board Of Education members sat on a darkened stage tonight as Superintendent of Schools John Fauta read a blistering state report claiming Mayor Felix Roque and his allies in the school district controlled hirings, firings and demotions.

"So help me God, no outside influence is going to penetrate this district,” Fauta said before reading highlights of the report with stoic disgust.

The report was compiled by the state Department of Education with the FBI. The report also alleges the mayor strong-armed employees to buy $2,000 tickets to his political fundraiser.

[...]

The state DOE's Office of Fiscal Accountability and Compliance (OFAC) began its investigation in July 2012 after being alerted by the FBI -- which was investigating Roque on a separate matter -- to concerns of inappropriate political involvement in the hiring practices in the school district.

Roque and his son, Joseph, were charged with computer hacking as a result of the FBI investigation and are scheduled to go on trial in July.

Among the DOE's claims is political involvement in the school district led to the hiring of town Commissioner Ruben Vargas in December 2011.

Vargas was hired as an assistant to the supervisor of transportation at $40,000 per year, but when asked by DOE investigators, Vargas could not describe his job responsibilities or his hours of employment, according to the report. Vargas met few, if any, of the qualifications for the job.

The report said Vargas told investigators he does not have a high school diploma or GED, is not computer literate, has no prior experience needed for the position and could not identify any skill or experience that would support his hiring.

Fauta told investigators he hired Vargas because he felt it would be difficult to properly manage the district if he didn't, according to the report.

The report says Roque manipulated the hirings, firings, demotions and promotions through intermediaries like Clara Brito-Herrera, the assistant superintendent for educational and personnel services, and Allan Roth, the assistant to the director of special education.

According to the report, former Memorial High principal Scott Cannao was demoted to assistant principal after he declined to buy a $2,000 ticket to a fund-raising event for the mayor.

The report also states that teachers and district staff complained to Fauta that they were being solicited to buy tickets during school hours and on school grounds, which is not allowed.

Lakewood:

The Lakewood Board of Education’s dealings with some of its largest vendors have been plagued by lax oversight and questionable contracts over the years, an Asbury Park Press investigation has found. 

In one case, the school board paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for grounds-keeping and school custodial services — before work was done. 

In another instance, the district paid $10,000 to Michael I. Inzelbuch, the school board attorney, for an unspecified reason as part of the sale of a former public school building used for the district’s administrative offices to Beth Medrash Govoha, a prestigious rabbinical college in Lakewood, according to the settlement statement. 

In addition, it appears that the school board paid tens of millions of dollars to an educational company that provides nonpublic students with a wide variety of services without anyone in the district verifying the accuracy of the company’s bills, according to the current school board attorney, Stephen J. Edelstein. 

Edelstein, whose Whippany-based law firm replaced Inzelbuch as board attorney in April after the election of two newcomers swung the board’s balance of power, said some of the terms of the district’s contracts with vendors may conflict with state statutes. 

Edelstein said he has referred some of his concerns to the Office of Fiscal Accountability and Compliance, an investigative and auditing arm of the state Department of Education. 

“I am not saying there was mischief, but undocumented payments open the door to mischief,” Edelstein said. 

Such lax oversight is not unusual for the Lakewood School District, which has a long history of running up budget deficits and other instances of fiscal mismanagement. 

In a 2010 report, State Auditor Stephen M. Eells found numerous instances in which bills were paid without proper documentation, and sometimes even without the school board’s approval. Eells even informed law enforcement officials about $5,000 he said was improperly used to pay for purchases at JC Penney and other businesses. Eells said he has not been notified that any action has been taken in that matter. When Eells followed up his audit in 2011, he found that most of his recommendations for tightening fiscal controls had not been implemented.

Garfield:

In Garfield, the president of the Board of Education has seven relatives working for the schools, including the superintendent. Half of the district’s 30 administrators have a relative working for the district, with many having multiple family members on the payroll. In the school year that just ended, relatives of trustees and administrators earned a combined $2 million in salaries. 

But when does Garfield’s established reputation for operating like a family business cross the line into unethical behavior that violates state statutes? This week, an administrative law judge will weigh in on this question with a case that revolves around allegations of nepotism, political patronage and school board members who pushed administrators to hire certain people. 

And ironically, the case was triggered by a scathing ethics complaint filed by one of the school board president’s own relatives — the superintendent, Nicholas Perrapato, whose wife is a $100-per-day substitute teacher and whose cousin is the medical director at $65,500. Perrapato, who believes some nepotism is not a bad thing, says he was compelled to file his complaint when the behavior became so egregious it was hurting the education of the district’s children. 

“Our hands were tied with anything we wanted to do, and the kids were losing out totally,” Perrapato said as to why he filed a complaint against five of his own board members. “They were really putting a stop to the process of education.” 

The hearing, scheduled to start Thursday, will examine Perrapato’s 2010 complaint against five board members: Dr. Donna Koch, Nickolce Milevski, Rosemarie Aloia, Edward Puzio and Anthony Damato. Perrapato alleged that these board members expected patients, relatives and campaign supporters to be hired by the district and pushed administrators to remove employees they did not like. 

Only Milevski and Puzio remain on the board, and they could face censure, suspension or removal from their positions based on a judge’s ruling, said Patrick English, a Clifton-based attorney representing Perrapato. 

“I’ve never seen a situation as egregious as this one,” English said. “What prompted this was the board members deliberately did not adhere to ethical guidelines, such that it was really negatively impacting the district. It was an enough-is-enough type of situation.”

Let's be fair: the state did appoint a fiscal monitor for Garfield, who remains on the job for at least another year. But is anyone seriously talking about a full state takeover of Garfield? Not that I've seen.

In every one of the cases above, an ineffective school board either allowed malfeasance to occur under their watch, or allegedly participated in unethical behaviors themselves. Yet none of these school boards have been taken over by the state, and only one board has to report to a state fiscal monitor.

How can this be? Why is Newark under state control, but these other districts are not?

Well, how about that? Looks like Newark has many more black students as a percentage of their population than the other districts. Any other clues?

Yes, Lakewood, Elizabeth, and West NY all have comparable free lunch-eligible populations to Newark. But, as I noted above, Elizabeth has been run by a school board closely allied to the Christie administration. And Lakewood is a case unto itself. In any event, Newark's student population has significantly more poor children than Garfield, Hamilton, and Toms River; further, it has a far greater proportion of black students than any of these other districts, all of which have demonstrated questionable governance.

It's time to start speaking frankly about this state of affairs. The good people of Newark are being subjected to a school restructuring their elected officials say they do not want, implemented by an administration their elected officials do not support. At the same time, all over the state, school boards that have been inept at best and corrupt at worse retain the right to manage their own districts while Newark is denied this privilege. Is this because Newark is a district full of black, working-poor citizens? 

You tell me.

"... I don’t care about the community criticism," Christie said. "We run the school district in Newark, not them."

ADDING: Look at the quote under Christie's picture again:

"We run the school district in Newark, not them."

Keep that in mind while we take a trip back in time to the heady days of Chris Christie's 2010 War on Teachers. Way back then, the governor would take state-paid helicopters to nakedly political events so he could make statements like this:

"And when one teacher was asked, "What are you doing here today? It's a Monday in the school year." She said, 'Oh, we got a substitute. I left a plan; it's not like they're watching videos or something.' 

"'They.' Not like 'they're watching videos or something.' I thought that was a really interesting part of the quote. That contraction: 'they're.' They didn't say 'the kids' then, did they? No, they only use the words 'the kids' when they want to evoke an emotional response from you which will get you to open your wallet and pay them. 

"When they're talking about protesting and fighting in Trenton, then it's 'they're.' 'They're watching videos or something.' I thought that was an interesting part of the quote. Language matters, ladies and gentlemen. Language is a window into attitude. And this isn't about the kids. So let's dispense with that portion of the argument."

So, by Christie's own standards, the use of the pronoun "them" indicates his attitude toward the community that is protesting his hand-picked state superintendent's actions. In Christie's own words, his use of a pronoun tells us: "This isn't about the kids."

OK, then...

*ADDING MORE: Uh-oh -- looks like Bob's already looking into Tiffany Hardrick's past:

Daryn Martin, the leader of the parent-teacher organization at Ivy Hill School, may go to jail because of a criminal complaint filed by Tiffany Hardrick, an assistant superintendent of schools in Newark who co-founded a New Orleans charter school.  So it’s a good time to ask just who this Dr. Hardrick is, why is she in Newark, and why she left New Orleans. The answer is–she is another one of Cami Anderson’s misguided appointments of an educator with a, well, unusual past.

Hardrick was a co-founder with Keith Sanders of the Miller-McCoy Academy in New Orleans, a charter school. She left the school “under a cloud” in July, 2012, after the trustees discovered they canceled a bus contract with an outside vendor and gave the business to a company owned by her brother, Bobby Hardrick.

A letter home to the school’s parents described how the busing crisis left students and parent in tough circumstances. Sound familiar?

Oh, my. Well, if Newark doesn't work out, maybe there's a job available in Toms River. Or Hamilton. Or Elizabeth. Or West New York. Or Lakewood. Or Garfield...

State-Run Newark Schools Blow Snow Closings Again

Just received this via email from a teacher in the Newark Public Schools:

We got texts from our dcs saying that school was closed at 7:39.

This means that she [State Superintendent Cami Anderson] waited until 7 or later to make the call. 

Kids and teachers were already in schools when they got the message. 

This is either incompetence or payback for our resistance to her. Either way, it's disrespectful and potentially harmful. 

Yes, it is. Here in North/Central New Jersey, we've been under a Winter Storm Watch since 5 PM last night. The forecasts said 5 to 8 inches; everyone knew this was coming.

Newark's Central High has its homeroom bell at 8:00 AM; you can be sure that plenty of teachers and students were on their way to school, or already there, at 7:39. Now they have to go back home in conditions that are dangerous enough to merit closing the schools.

Experienced administrators do make mistakes -- but not the same ones repeatedly. Anderson kept Newark's schools open in the last snow emergency -- in spite of the fact that the charter schools were closed -- but, according to Bob Braun, attendance was extremely low. You would have thought Anderson would have learned to make the call early and err on the side of caution; apparently not.

It's worth pointing out that, under a new system devised by NJDOE Commissioner Chris Cerf, funding is now based on enrollment rates as determined by average daily attendance, not fall enrollment as was done in the past. This disadvantages districts with higher rates of poverty*, like Newark. Paterson, another state-run, high-poverty district, has already lost millions of dollars in funding because of the change.

You would think this would be reason enough for Anderson not to open school on a day when attendance will inevitably be low. You would think.

If Anderson had to answer to bosses who were elected by the people, she'd think long and hard before letting children go to school on a day like today. School board members would be getting lots of furious calls from parents; subsequently, Anderson would be getting lots of calls from furious school board members. This is how the system works in almost every other school district in the state.

But not Newark: Anderson answers to Chris Christie alone, who is just a bit distracted at the moment. Obviously, neither wants to put a child in danger. But when you're removed from your constituents by virtue of state control, you're not under the same pressure to make the call in favor of prudence.

In other words: the last two snow days in Newark are yet another example of why the district, and all New Jersey districts, must move toward a system of local control with appropriate and vigilant state oversight. I have little doubt Newark's students and teachers who made it into school today only to turn right around and go home would agree with me.

This is the number of snow days I should have called, or called much earlier, so far this year.

ADDING: A Facebook reader adds this:

Once again, the charters were closed, but not the public schools --until the 11th hour--creating hellish conditions for families, kids, and staff. I've seen people posting "that's it! I'm pulling my kids out of NPS!." Maybe it's just part of the plan.

Hmmm...

ADDING MORE: Peggy McGlone of the S-L picks up the story:

Many teachers and parents were angry they weren’t notified that the state's largest district was closed for a snow day until minutes before 8 this morning, after many had already arrived at school.

“It's ridiculous. It makes no sense. How do you put everyone in jeopardy like that?” said Grace Sergio, the mother of an eighth grader at Hawthorne Avenue School. Sergio said the call came at 7:51, just minutes before her son was supposed to leave.

Hawthorne is one of the schools scheduled for charter takeover under One Newark. The charters reportedly all made their calls to cancel school earlier. Keep that in mind, then reread my first update.

Funny how that all worked out, isn't it?

EVEN MORE: Bob Braun goes there:

Cami Anderson, appointed by Gov. Chris Christie three years ago to run the Newark schools, should resign immediately because she represents a danger to the children and employees of New Jersey’s largest city. More than a week ago, she kept the schools open in Newark when all the schools in Essex and neighboring counties were closed–including Newark charter schools. Today, she did not order the schools closed until many children and employees were on their way or already in school. Charter schools were closed by 7 a.m.

I can’t read her mind or her heart. I can’t know what her motivation is. But mounting external evidence points to this: She is trying to destroy Newark’s public school system in favor of creating a  free-trade zone for charter schools.

For myself: I don't think she needs to resign. I only think the NPS Advisory Board should immediately have the same rights as almost every other elected board in the state, and make the decision whether or not to continue her contract.

Again: why do elected officials in Millburn or Basking Ridge or Irvington or Union City have these rights while elected officials in Newark and Paterson and Camden do not?


* Note: I'm going to start adding this footnote when I link to or quote Bruce Baker: he is my advisor in the PhD program at Rutgers GSE, and we have published policy briefs together. Just want to keep everything on the up-and-up.

David Wildstein: Before Bridgegate, Christie's Best Teacher Basher

It looks like a large portion of the pre-Super Bowl commentary this weekend has been reserved for political pundits proclaiming the death of Chris Christie’s 2016 presidential campaign. Poor fellow: here he is, governor of the state hosting the biggest sports spectacle of the year, but forced to keep a low profile because of Friday afternoon’s bombshell:

David Wildstein – Christie’s childhood friend and personal appointee to the Port Authority -- is now claiming that Christie knew much more about last fall’s George Washington Bridge traffic jam than he originally let on. It’s a stunning, personal rebuke to the governor; while it may not lead to his impeachment here in NJ, it has almost certainly dashed any hopes the former Republican frontrunner had of winning the White House.

This weekend, in response to Wildstein, Christie’s office released an oppo-dump on the gov’s former friend, seeking to discredit him. I found this part particularly hilarious [annotation mine]:

Funny how Christie didn’t seem to mind that Wildstein, blogging as Wally Edge at PolitckerNJ, would break stories that cast Christie in a favorable light when he was the former US prosecutor working under the Bush administration.

But there’s another part of this story that needs to be told: the story of how David Wildstein -- Christie’s political hack, disguised as a journalist – helped smear educators and their unions in Christie’s first year, setting up a climate of teacher bashing that culminated in a wholesale assault on New Jersey’s excellent public education system.

Trust me on this one, folks: it’s a story that takes more than a few wild twists, but pays off in the end…

* * *

The 2009 gubernatorial election in New Jersey was not the most politically sexy affair. Jon Corzine was a mediocre governor at best, presiding over the state during the worst economic downturn the country had seen in decades. Yes, New Jersey is a blue state, chock full of Democrats. But the vast majority of party officials are hooked into powerful machines, and people were getting sick and tired of reading about the latest embarrassing mayor's or school superintendent’s shenanigans.

Corzine himself wasn’t helping: he had been one of the princes of Wall Street when he was running Goldman Sachs. Now the Occupy Wall Street movement was taking off*, pointing an accusing finger at Corzine and his ilk; it was hard for him to garner much progressive support with that kind of resume. Add to that his ethically questionable personal relationships, his weird car accident, and his anodyne campaign style, and the all pieces were in place for a politically savvy and moderate Republican to win the governor’s race.

And back in 2009, before he became a national figure, Christie sure looked moderate: another Tom Kean, Sr. Unlike the Tea Party radicals we were starting to see nightly on the cable networks, Christie seemed halfway sane: relatively moderate on social issues (emphasis on relatively), and fiscally conservative but not a slash-and-burn libertarian. The Republican candidate appeared to have a record of going after corruption and getting things done: a practical man at a time when we needed practical solutions.

No, he wasn’t going to get the outright support of labor, particularly public employee labor. But he appeared to be someone government workers – particularly teachers – could work with. How did we know? Because he told us so, and in no uncertain terms [emphasis mine]:

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. Despite what is said by my opponents, I would accept federal education stimulus dollars to help fund our children’s educations. Education is a priority and this money is critical to ensuring we are able to continue giving our children the education they deserve. 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. 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.

The bolded sentence remains at the top of this blog as a tribute to how utterly deceptive Chris Christie was during that campaign towards teachers and other public employees. He later claimed that he had no idea how bad the fiscal situation for New Jersey was, regarding both pension obligations and the budget. This is a demonstrable lie: everyone knew that the pensions were in horrible shape. Looking back, it’s clear that Christie was selling teachers and cops and firefighters and all other public employees a big barrel of snake oil when he told us he wouldn’t touch our pensions.

And it barely took any time at all after Christie won before we saw just how radical his plans really were. He started going after the pensions in his first term. He killed a “millionaires tax,” brazenly saying it was really the Democrats’ fault that the badly needed revenue was no longer there. He broke explicit promises he made to school districts, drastically slashing their state aid and decimating local budgets.

But perhaps his most astonishing idea was -- again, keep in mind he had just slashed taxes on the state’s wealthiest citizens – putting the solution for New Jersey’s fiscal disaster almost solely on the backs of teachers:

CHRIS CHRISTIE: I don't think so. It doesn't have to. And, you know, what I said to the teacher's union a year ago was if they had been willing to take a pay freeze for one year we wouldn't have any larger class sizes, 'cause [we] wouldn't have had to lay off teachers. But instead, they chose to continue to get their salary increases rather than be part of the shared sacrifice, Diane. And they weren't. And they say they're for the kids. They should have taken the salary freeze. They didn't. And now, you know, we had to lay teachers off. [emphasis mine] 

This, it would turn out, was another blatant, unrepentant lie: as the Office of Legislative Services later reported, “freezing” teacher pay wouldn’t have closed even one-quarter of the gap Christie created in school state aid. And, on top of everything else, Christie was proposing an illogical tax scheme that would have barely returned any money to the districts affected.

Chris Christie was on a jihad: for some bizarre personal reason, the newly minted governor just couldn’t (and still can’t) stand teachers or their unions. This man – whose political stock-in-trade was putting on the public persona of a big, tough guy-- became a whiny, petulant brat whenever he perceived a slight on him coming from the NJEA, the state’s largest teachers union, or teachers themselves.

In hindsight, it’s obvious why: Christie was going to make teachers and their unions the bad guys in his crusade to privatize the schools, renege on his pension promises, bust the unions, and begin a corporate tax giveaway that would make his political mentor, George W. Bush, proud. Everything would be blamed on “greedy” and “self-interested” teachers; not the cops or the firefighters, mind you, but teachers.

To pull this off, Christie would have to be able to point to examples of bad teacher behavior. Someone would have to find a way to get enough of the public to believe that the people who wipe kindergartners' noses and grade scribbled essays on the War of 1812 were not worthy of the modest wages and benefits they earned.

Luckily for Christie, teachers were becoming frustrated. And it would only take a scant few, using some impolite language, to give him exactly what he needed to screw the rest of us over.

* * *

As a working teacher in 2010, I have to tell you that the reaction I sensed from my colleagues to Chris Christie’s War on Teachers was the same as my own: shock.

In the years since I started this blog, I’ve met a lot of New Jersey teachers, both in person and virtually. While everyone has his or her own reasons for going into education, I can’t recall one educator I’ve ever met who thought teaching was a good career choice because of the compensation. Sure, teachers in New Jersey do OK – but if you want to make money, there are jobs that pay much better and don’t require gallons of Purell.

So when Christie started throwing words around about us such as “greed” and “self-interest,” it was like looking out the window of an airplane and seeing a school of fish: it just couldn’t be happening. We were greedy? We were the reason the state was in a fiscal crisis? We didn’t care about our students because we wanted fair wages and decent benefits? We were spoiled because we had “Cadillac benefits” that were anything but?

How did this make any sense? Here we were, trying to provide for our middle class families, scuffling like everyone else. Our own husbands and wives and children and parents were seeing their pay cut; our students’ families were struggling through the Great Recession; we were living with this economic disaster every day. We kept hearing about all these huge raises we had been getting, but we knew that our pay hadn’t been keeping up with the private sector when times were flush. Now it was our fault that our three-year contracts -- which would be renegotiated downward soon enough -- included pay raises that were actually well in line with prevailing wage increases before the downturn?

It was surreal. But once the shock wore off, some of us started getting angry. We knew this governor was pulling a con on the parents of our students when he blamed us for the state’s woes. We knew that many in the press weren’t challenging him on some of the most basic facts about teacher pay and school funding. And we were getting frustrated that the few who were questioning this massive wave of lies weren’t getting a forum to make their case.

Some teachers started expressing their frustrations in our society’s new town square: social media. Facebook is a particular favorite of teachers, although many also tweet and blog. Yours truly, in fact, started this blog back in 2010 in direct response to the nonsense I heard and read during Christie’s war; it seemed to be a better outlet than writing letters to the editor that never got published, or waiting for a chance to talk on Gearhart’s show for 20 seconds before he cut away for a commercial.

Around the same time, however, another voice for New Jersey’s teachers bubbled up: Stop The Freeze New Jersey (currently known as Defend NJ Education), a Facebook page that allowed teachers to comment on stories and posts about Christie and his increasingly out-of-control fight with educators. In a little more than a month, STFNJ had gathered up more than 60,000 followers, an amazing showing for a page that did nothing more than present a forum for New Jersey’s teachers to fight back.

Let me interject a personal note: this blog never really took off until STFNJ started reposting my stuff. To this day, any time my work shows up on the page, I am guaranteed a huge bump in traffic. It’s not at all an exaggeration to say that without STFNJ, you probably wouldn’t be reading Jersey Jazzman right now; for that, I am deeply appreciative (others may hold a different opinion…).

Now, there are some governors who may not have cared much about a social media phenomenon like STFNJ – but Chris Christie wasn’t one of them. This governor is as hip to the political potential of social media as any other politician in the country; as STFNJ would show later, Christie would even engage in personal Twitter battles with his critics when he was so inclined.

So when STFNJ started to gain momentum, you can be sure there were those within the governor’s office who figured they needed to put a stop to its growth as quickly as possible. Late in February of 2010, Facebook actually shut the page down for a bit, claiming a violation of its terms of contract; only an uproar from the page’s many followers allowed it to continue. How then, could STFNJ be contained?

Enter David Wildstein.

* * *

Wildstein was more than a simple “anonymous blogger.” Under the pseudonym Wally Edge, this childhood friend of Chris Christie’s had become arguably the hottest political columnist in Jersey. His anonymity was certainly part of the column's appeal, but so was his ability to break hot political stories -- and, a decade ago, many of those stories had their source in the US Attorney's office, which was under the direction of Chris Christie.

This isn't mere speculation; just today, former PolitickerNJ reporter Brian Murphy tells the story of his days working for Wildstein/Edge, and how he and Christie managed their symbiotic relationship: 

And finally, let me point something out: Christie goes out of his way to knock David Wildstein for being “an anonymous blogger known as Wally Edge.”

I worked for Wally Edge. I discussed it yesterday morning on MSNBC.

I enjoyed working for him. He was a fiercely loyal editor and advocate, and a very skilled observer of all things political. It is true I did not know at the time that Wally Edge was David Wildstein, but I took the job as a professional journalist, with a sense of the ethical obligations I had to sources and readers. It was better for me not to know Wally’s true identity so I would not have to lie to sources when they asked if I knew. And at some point the question just wasn’t very interesting anymore. He knew things. He had good sources. He was at least as fair as most other editors I’d worked with. He pushed back against people who gave me a hard time. He put me in a job where I was a daily reporter in one of the most politically cutthroat states in the federal union, and he helped me make it my own while I was there. And he never lied to me. So, yes, I liked Wally Edge. And it’s disappointing to me that we are where we are today.

But you know who else liked Wally Edge back then?

Chris Christie. The same man who earlier today denounced Wildstein for being an “anonymous blogger.”

I don’t have my email records from 2002, but if I did I am sure I could produce emails to and from the U.S. Attorney’s office. Almost everyone leaks in political reporting, but some of my biggest scoops came from leaks from Christie’s office, either to Wally or to both of us.

And Chris Christie loved the product of our work. When I covered the Newark mayoral race in 2002 I spent part of the day looking at polling sites where Cory Booker supporters were being intimidated or harassed. From the back of an SUV I would type up a story with photos, file it over a dial-up connection, and wait 15 minutes until federal election monitors were dispatched to the site by Christie’s office, where Christie was reading PoliticsNJ.com himself and reloading the page every few minutes.

When Chris Christie gave a press conference that afternoon in the U.S. Attorney’s office in the federal building in Newark, he was holding a rolled up piece of paper in his hand as he stood at the lectern and took questions. The piece of paper was one of my stories. When I went to speak with him afterwards, he unfurled it and told me how much he loved the work I was doing.

I don’t know if Chris Christie knew the true identity of Wally Edge back then. But he certainly did by the time he appointed David Wildstein to the Port Authority. And by then he had to know that the coverage David (and I, and Steve, and our fellow alums) had given to his prosecutions had played at least a small part in helping him become governor. [emphasis mine]

So Christie and Wildstein, friends from childhood, had already established a mutually beneficial relationship well before the 2009 election. But that turned out to be just the warm-up.

In 2010, almost immediately after his election, Christie started slashing state aid to schools -- and he used teachers as his scapegoats. Those same teachers, shocked that they were being targeted by the governor, started fighting back on social media. If the public became sympathetic to their cause, and started taking sides with the NJEA and against Christie, it would not only jeopardize Christie's plans -- it might hurt him politically. How could Christie begin to get enough of the public to lose their respect for teachers, enabling him to make his school aid cuts and set up his union-busting schemes?

Once again, Christie's childhood friend would come to his rescue. Late in March of 2010, David Wildstein did what he did best: wrote a story, as Wally Edge, that played perfectly into Chris Christie's anti-teacher strategy:

On Facebook, some teachers say things they wouldn't want their students to hear

By Wally Edge | March 29th, 2010 - 9:27am

XXX, a basic skills and remedial English teacher at XXX Elementary School in XXX, has some advice for his fellow educators as they prepare to fight Gov. Christopher Christie’s proposed state budget: “Never trust a fat fuck.”

That’s what XXX posted on a Facebook group called New Jersey Teachers United Against Governor Chris Christie’s Pay Freeze, which has more than 57,000 fans -- a powerful grass roots tool as the teachers union fights Christie’s proposed state budget.

But comments posted on the social networking site – most of them during school hours -- often get personal as they exercise their first amendment rights.

“How do you spell Asshole? C-H-R-I-S C-H-R-I-S-T-I-E,” wrote XXX XXX, the XXX at XXX High School.  “To those of you who voted for this fat piece of shit, shame on you!”

XXX, who makes $83,000 a year as an XXX in XXX, calls Christie's budget cuts "rediculous" (sic).

A XXX elementary school teacher wants her colleagues to encourage students to write protest letters to Christie. “My XXX will be writing,” said XXX.

And so on. I've "XXX"d out the names and positions because I don't want to make things more difficult for the teachers smeared here than they may well have been after this piece of yellow journalism was published.

Understand exactly what Wildstein did in this piece: he didn't just repost some mean things said about Chris Christie. No, he actually published the salaries, schools and positions of these teachers. He then implicated some of them in posting during school hours (which, by the way, is a perfectly acceptable thing to do on a break using your own phone or other internet connection; and don't try to tell me posting on Facebook isn't done all the time in the private sector during business hours).

Predictably, the local press had a field day with Wildstein's story; however, it also got picked up by the national press. The Associated Press, The Huffington Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Wall Street Journal, Rush Limbaugh, and The Daily Beast were among the outlets to follow up on Wildstein's report; interestingly, none cited the original Wally Edge report, although his byline predated every other one I could find. Some of the reports, in fact, cite many of the same quotes Wildstein/Edge had used in the original post.

Keep in mind that Wildstein/Edge used only about a dozen quotes from a page that had over 60,000 followers. Were they over the top? Of course -- but that didn't mean they were representative. And what was the point of publishing names and salaries and assignments if only to intimidate teachers and suppress future criticism of Christie?

But it didn't end there. At some point, one or more posters at STFNJ put up a variation on a joke that had been circulating around the internet for some time before:

Dear Lord.... 

I just want you to know that in the past year you have taken away my favorite actor, Patrick Swayze, my favorite actress, Farah Fawcett, my favorite musician Michael Jackson, my favorite salesman, Billy Mays and my favorite athlete, Chris Henry. I just wanted to let you know that my favorite President is Barrack Obama.

Regards...
Dick

That's dated 1/12/10; keep in mind that STFNJ started on 2/18/10. At some point after the page launched, someone took this joke and changed "Barrack Obama" [sic] to "Chris Christie," then posted it at STFNJ. A county level NJEA official then copied the joke and sent it out in a memo to his locals, admittedly a dumb move. This was exactly the opening Christie needed. Shamelessly mischaracterizing the joke as an actual "prayer," Christie excoriated the NJEA, claiming the higher moral ground.

Thus began the New Jersey Teacher Wars of 2010. Christie publicly upbraided teachers who dared to question him at his phony “town halls,” then released the videos afterward (one of those teachers has gone on to be a political thorn in Christie’s side, a spokesperson for teachers throughout New Jersey, and my dear personal friend and hero: Marie Corfield). He leveled outrageous insults at teachers and their unions, at one point comparing us to drug dealers. He actually told students their teachers didn’t care about learning.

The only reason Christie got away with this unprecedented assault on teachers was that the impolite "tone" a few teachers took against him was wildly overstated, both by Christie and by the press. And that wild overstatement all began with Wally Edge, aka David Wildstein.

We all know now what happened next to Wildstein: he took the Port Authority job to be Christie's "eyes and ears," and Rand Paul's future soon looked much brighter. But there was also a fallout for public schools in New Jersey: using teacher "greed" as his excuse, Christie slashed state aid to schools; only a lawsuit in 2011 stopped the hemorrhaging. Teacher and other public employee pensions were degraded, breaking Christie's explicit promise to teachers. An "Educator Effectiveness Task Force" was convened with only one working teacher, and no representatives of the NJEA; their embarrassingly inept report lead to AchieveNJ, a teacher evaluation system so poorly conceived I've code-named it Operation Hindenburg.

A very good case can be made that none of this would have happened without David Wildstein's help: Wally Edge was New Jersey's first, and arguably its best, teacher basher. But he ultimately found out what we Jersey teachers already knew: Chris Christie will say anything, do anything, and blame anyone to get what he wants.

I look forward, in the coming weeks and months, to reminding all of you New Jersey "reformers" just what sort of man you have allied yourself with. I'm afraid you are going to see, in nauseating detail, just what sort of "friend" you have in Chris Christie.

"You know, I was the class president and athlete. I don't know what David was doing during that period of time…"

* A reader points out the Zuccotti Park protests didn't start until 2011. It's a good point, and I should have been more clear: the sentiment of OWS was certainly rising, but it hadn't yet coalesced into the protests. Political observers did make the point during the 2009 campaign that this growing outrage at Wall Street was a liability for Corzine. Thanks for the correction, G.

Also made a few more edits for clarity; such is the life of the blogger who acts as his own editor...