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Andrea Crowley-Hughes

Group Urges BOE to Fully Fund Schools

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Members of civic group Jersey City Together urged the Jersey City Board of Education to fully fund the city’s public schools at Monday’s listening session on the 2021-22 school budget, at which board trustees said the district is in need of more money from the state. 

Reading from a letter Jersey City Together sent to Superintendent of Schools Franklin Walker and the board, Nancy Pokler said, “You can and must propose and pass a fully funded, initial budget, one that meets the needs of our city’s children.” 

The group’s request is based on surveys and small group listening sessions with 1,000 residents. 

Jersey City Together’s letter says the New Jersey budget is expected to cut $83 million in state aid to the Jersey City Public Schools, as estimated by the Education Law Center, and the city’s payroll tax is expected to deliver approximately $20 million less revenue for the schools in the 2021-22 school year.

Education Law Center Research Director Danielle Farrie was quoted in the Jersey Journal about the potential for the district to lose $83 million in state aid. She said the cut would bring the budget shortfall to more than $350 million and leave the district with few options to fill the gap. 

The estimate from the Education Law Center is higher than what the superintendent estimated in November 2020, when he spoke of a coming shortfall due to a $30 million cut in state aid.

Pokler and Brigid D’Souza, who also spoke at the meeting, signed the letter as members of the Jersey City Together Education Core Team. 

“As a parent, I am seeing at home the impact of underfunding,” said D’Souza.

D’Souza told the board her son is on a Zoom call with more than 30 students in his fourth grade class each day. “I see him getting lost in the calls, not because of any deficit on the teacher’s part, but just because the class size should be smaller,” she said. 

“I ask you to please define adequacy so the public understands what a fully-funded budget should look like,” said D’Souza.

Board president Mussab Ali acknowledged, “it’s no secret that we have been underfunded for more than the last decade.” He said the district is currently underfunded by $57 million from the state, which is below the state’s own adequacy standard.

“We’re expecting between an $80 to $90 million dollar additional cut,” on top of being underfunded, he said. “If we were just to raise taxes $90 million dollars, all we’re doing is catching up from the hole the state’s about to put us in.”

For the 2020-21 school year, the board approved a $736 million budget that increased the school tax levy by 39 percent. 

Board trustee Marilyn Roman said in last year’s budget process, the board “bit the bullet” in asking the public to approve a budget that would raise taxes. 

“Our children not only have problems in terms of their learning but they are in dire straits in some instances when they are outside of school as well,” she said. Looking toward the future, Roman said the board needs to find a stable source of funding for the schools. 

Board trustees said they hoped the district’s three state monitors would communicate the district’s need for more funding. 

Also at the meeting, the superintendent said more details on what a school district re-opening would look like will be shared next week. In January, the board decided to keep learning remote for the third marking period at least until April 23.

“Our goal is to bring students in for in-person learning in incremental stages,” Walker said. “All the students will have the option to return for in-person learning, not simultaneously, but in groups.”

He said the re-opening process involves a school readiness assessment using recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), holding meetings with staff, conducting walkthroughs and reviewing the findings with the health department.

Jersey City Public Schools’ reopening plan, which includes a building readiness document, has been posted on the district website.

 

Ron Leir

Board of Education Elects New Leaders

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The man who called himself the “youngest elected Muslim in America” after winning a seat on the Jersey City Board of Education in 2017 now heads up that body.

At its annual reorganization meeting held last night, Mussab Ali edged out incumbent Lorenzo Richardson by a 5–4 vote to gain the presidency of the school board.

Lekendrick Shaw, who ran on the same slate with Richardson in last year’s BOE election, took over as vice president, turning aside challenges by the current vice president Gina Verdibello and by Noemi Velazquez.

Ali and Richardson had been on opposing sides on several key issues on how best to deal with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on city schools and on relations with the city administration.

Two members of the public who spoke after the board’s actions expressed their displeasure with the results.

Monique Andrews interpreted the vote to mean that Mayor Steven Fulop “now has control of the board,” adding that “taxpayers and the [city teachers’] union are in jeopardy … Politics is still here. Everybody is just trying to move up the ladder, and no one cares about our kids.”

Charles Balcer griped, “To have [Richardson] tossed aside leaves the board in uncharted waters. It’s a sad commentary.”

But after the reorganization voting, Richardson and Ali pledged to work together for the betterment of the local district and its approximately 30,000 students.

Richardson, a Ferris High School graduate who got an accounting degree from St. Peter’s College, said 2020 “has been a difficult year” for the district.  A youth mentor, Richardson added that “God saw us through it. We hope that in 2021 we can move the district forward.”

Ali, who heads the city’s Immigration Affairs Commission, is a McNair Academic High School alum and a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Rutgers University in Newark where he led the Muslim Students Association. He is working to develop a non-profit to train grassroots leaders of the future.

Acknowledging that he and his colleagues face tough times ahead given state school budget cuts, Ali said he hoped that with the ultimate distribution of COVID vaccines, “by the end of the year, we can see kids back in schools.”

Board members and the public may gain more insight into how learning will proceed when the board next convenes on Jan. 21. Franklin Walker, the district’s superintendent of schools, said he expected to share more details on that topic at that time. Since the pandemic hit, public school students have received virtual instruction.

Factions on the board have debated whether to reopen schools now or to wait until the district could adequately clean and ventilate classrooms and ensure that students would be re-entering a safe and secure school building.

Acknowledging that board members “don’t always get along, and that’s okay,” trustee Alexander Hamilton said, “Yeah, [our] leadership has changed, but we’ve worked together before.” Now, he said, “we need to work in a civilized way to make sure kids are our number one priority. It’s good to see two guys from the local school system as board officers …. Let’s put a smile on our face and get behind them.”

The Board also heard public comments from Mary Cruz, who congratulated Ali and Shaw and urged board members to unite to develop a strategy to “close the gap on student performance, which has been getting wider” since the onset of the pandemic; and from Robert Knapp, who lauded Superintendent Walker for “balancing the budget without a single layoff,” for re-launching, with New Jersey City University, the special needs program based at the A. Harry Moore School, and for securing free Wi-Fi hotspots and thousands of meals for children in need.

Following the public remarks, the board participated in a training session conducted by Charlene Peterson, a field representative of the N.J. School Boards Association, who reminded the trustees that their road to success depends on working together as a team. She added that their power derives not from the community that elected them, but from the legislature, and that it falls to the superintendent, not the board members, to run the schools; they should hold him accountable for the outcome.