New Jersey Education Association president: 'Our governor is a liar'
May 02, 2010, 6:55AM
Robert Sciarrino/The Star-LedgerBarbara Keshishian, president of the New Jersey Education AssociationBy Barbara KeshishianNew Jersey’s teachers and school employees have come to an alarming, yet obvious conclusion.
Our governor — and there is no delicate way to put it — is a liar.
In a court of law, you stand convicted if the evidence points to your guilt “beyond all reasonable doubt.” So it is with our governor’s relationship with the truth.
The final straw came the day after 15,000 New Jersey students walked out to protest the governor’s budget cuts. Despite news reports proving the walkout was organized by students on Facebook, and despite NJEA statements urging students to stay in school and conduct protests during non-school hours, Chris Christie told a whopper.
Without offering any evidence, he said: “There were many factions across New Jersey led by the teachers union who were encouraging this.”
This was nothing new to pundits and political observers who have watched the governor’s obsession with punishing NJEA metastasize into an unprecedented attack on public education. From the day he took office, Christie has attacked public education, NJEA, our members and even our students in a series of often incredible assaults. Every day, I hear from teachers who cannot believe the vitriol and mean-spiritedness of this governor as he launches yet another broadside against the people who educate New Jersey’s children.
Teachers and school employees are justifiably outraged. Our public schools are, by any measure, at or near the top of all public schools in America. Yet Christie cut school aid by $475 million last January, and he wants another $1 billion in cuts this September. He has already signed legislation that cuts pension and health benefits for all future school employees and eliminates them entirely for many part-timers. Now he is proposing legislation that could force thousands of talented teachers to retire earlier than planned or lose a major portion of their pensions.
His context for these actions is to blame teachers and the NJEA for most of what is wrong in New Jersey. While NJEA and its members find that patently unfair — and often absurd — we are outraged at the misinformation campaign the governor has conducted along the way.
You be the judge:
• During the campaign, candidate Christie, in “An Open Letter to the
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