NJEA Prioritizes Politics Over School Safety and Learning Loss: Great for NJEA President Spiller; Terrible for Students and Teachers

As Sunlight has amply documented, NJEA leadership (including the conflicted President Sean Spiller) wants to spend $40 million of teachers’ regular, annual dues backing Spiller’s vanity run for governor — without teachers’ knowledge or consent.  Indeed, Spiller has turned the NJEA into one, big “Spiller for Governor” Super PAC. But while Spiller and a complicit leadership turn the union’s focus to politics and Spiller’s personal political ambitions, they are ignoring serious problems that affect the day-to-day lives of teachers and students: increased student misbehavior that threatens teachers and COVID-related learning loss that makes teachers’ jobs more difficult.  These are longstanding and much-publicized problems but NJEA leadership clearly has other priorities.  It’s politics over teachers and students.  The NJEA has truly lost its way.

STUDENT MISBEHAVIOR AT “CRISIS LEVELS”

Asbury Park Press reports that in Lakewood, teachers say student misbehavior has hit “crisis levels.”  Post-COVID, teachers have seen an increase in fighting “often resulting in injuries to students and staff” and verbal threats that create “a climate of fear and intimidation,” as well as a “disregard for school rules and authority.” They say there is inadequate discipline for students and support for teachers.

As a result, teachers have launched “year-long staff revolt,” and the Lakewood Education Association has raised the issue with the school board. The superintendent took action, requiring that misbehaving students be removed from school and not allowed back until fit to return, but teachers say the behavioral issues “have not improved … and more is needed.”

And it’s not just Lakewood. These post-COVID behavioral problems have occurred across the state since the 2021-22 school year.

The NJEA knows full well what it can do to help. In response to a similar increase in student misbehavior that was threatening teachers in 2010, the NJEA launched their “10 steps to reduce violence” campaign. This was a full-fledged NJEA campaign that called for political-style organizing by NJEA locals because it could not be left to the school district or anyone else:

Organizing is necessary to address school violence because nothing else works, especially relying solely on school districts or government agencies to do the right thing.

This problem has been plaguing schools — and teachers —  for years, and teachers are asking for help, but where is the NJEA?

SEVERE LEARNING LOSS DUE TO EXTENDED COVID SCHOOL CLOSURES

“Why Aren’t We Talking About New Jersey’s Lost Generation of Students?” asks NorthJersey.com columnist Mike Kelly in NJEdReport.  That’s an excellent question that we should all be asking.  We also ask: where is the state’s largest teachers’ union, the NJEA, and its President/gubernatorial candidate Sean Spiller on this important educational issue?

One reason for their silence could be that Spiller and the NJEA pushed to keep New Jersey schools closed for far longer than most other states.  In Montclair, Mayor Spiller sided with his union over his superintendent to keep schools closed.  Best not to bring up the problem when you helped cause it.

Here are the grim statistics, according to JerseyCan. In Table 1 below, note the large declines since 2019. As a result of extended school closures during COVID, New Jersey had some of the worst learning loss in the nation, especially for lower-income kids.

Table 1. Percentage of Students At or Above Proficient

Thanks to the new project Wake Up Call NJ, we know the negative consequences for New Jersey kids:

• 55% of 4th graders can’t do math at grade level.
• 64% of 6th graders can’t do math at grade level.
• 44% of 11th graders are classified as “not graduation ready.”

Thankfully, the New Jersey Tutoring Corps (NJTC) is doing the hard work of trying to get these students back on track, and has achieved excellent results for over 12,500 students across the state.  NJTC has 31 partners, including civic groups, universities, school districts, and charter schools … but not the NJEA.  NJTC has five funders, including Prudential and several private foundations … but not the NJEA.

Why isn’t the NJEA providing resources and financial support to NJTC?  Not only does this tutoring manifestly help kids, it helps teachers.  Having kids who cannot do math or read at grade level makes a teacher’s job harder.

So here are two important, longstanding problems in New Jersey’s education system that are negatively affecting both kids and teachers, but the NJEA is focused on politics. We ask: if teachers had a choice, would they choose to direct millions of their dues to politics or to addressing school violence and remediating learning loss?  

But teachers do not have a choice.  Sean Spiller and NJEA leadership have made the choice for them.  It’s politics over students and teachers. What a scandal.