In a letter to the editor, former Jersey City acting mayor, board of education trustee, and educator Marilyn Roman explains why there is no scenario where any school board members should be appointed.
Dear Editor,
Recently, I read an article online in your newspaper regarding the bill being introduced in the New Jersey State Senate by senator Raj Mukherji.
In it, he has changed the makeup of the members of the Jersey City Board of Education from a nine member board of elected members who serve three year terms to a nine member board three of whom would be selected by the mayor of our city, three selected by the city council and three elected by the citizens of our city.
He later changed this to three of the nine members to be selected by the mayor with the consent of the council. This is not acceptable either, for reasons I will later enumerate.
As a former board member of more than nine years, I would like to give your readers an example of just one experience I had which showed what a bad idea this would be.
A few years ago, I read an article in the local paper about the science school, the New Jersey Science Center was planning to build in Liberty State Park.
I was concerned about the school because, while it was an excellent idea, between the charter schools, private and parochial schools and the specialty schools that the Jersey City schools had implemented, the city schools were facing a “brain drain” in which the brightest and the average level students were leaving the regular classrooms of our district for all of the other options they now had, leaving our classrooms with many students who had not mastered the skills required or had learning disabilities.
Since we all learn from one another as well as from the teacher, this was not a good sign for the schools as well as for the teachers and students left in them.
The mayor had been mentioned prominently in the article and because I needed more information, I called him to ask if he could answer my questions.
When he came on the line, I asked how many students from Jersey City would be offered seats in the new school. He said the school, when full, would seat 1,600 students with 400 coming on board yearly, 200 of which would be Jersey City students.
He didn’t mention whether that was from the Jersey City Public Schools or all Jersey City students from the many private, charter and homeschooled students, but I believed that would be the case.
I told him I was concerned about the future of our city schools and wondered how we could come to some agreement about the education of the students who remained in our city schools.
I was thoroughly shocked when he told me he was not responsible for the children in the city schools and when I said, as the mayor, he was definitely responsible for all of them and for all of our citizens as well he did not agree.
He told me he was only responsible for the police, fire, public works and other city workers, but not for our children.
Needless to say, the rest of our conversation did not go well when I had to remind him that children and their education were the MOST important of his responsibilities because they were the future of our city.
The better educated they were the better the communities of our city would be.
If we all work together to give them an excellent education the less crime, social services, poverty, legal costs and the cost of funding the courts and the jails would be greatly lessened because people who have skills find it easier to get a job.
They don’t buy guns, they buy cars and homes and they don’t get put away, they go away on vacations and take their kids on day trips to the beach and the zoo and most of all, they raise their children so that they are ready for school.
My point here is that it is easy to see that any mayor who thinks he or she has no responsibility for our children should not be given the opportunity to choose candidates for the school board.
In addition, how much influence will he exert on the council people who are also responsible for choosing three Board members when they most likely have been elected on his slate and feel obligated to him.
It would also probably be a waste of money to have an election for the last three since the mayor has the money to bankroll the candidates he wants.
We could wind up with a nine member totally political board which would be a great catastrophe. The same thing would happen with only three members selected by the mayor and the rest elected because of the likelihood of political intimidation.
We would find ourselves in an untenable situation which could be as bad, if not worse, than our past experiences in our city.
Jersey City has had the lowest percentage of city funds going into the schools than almost any other district in the state. We also have among the lowest test scores in the State even with a budget of over $1 billion.
That’s a problem a mayor interested and responsible for the students could work on with the tax paying parents of our city to put pressure on the school district to plan work sessions for teachers to examine our test scores to find out what skills need to be taught.
Test scores aren’t everything but they are a measurement tool that indicates skills and preparedness.
The superintendent is responsible for leading the district in this endeavor. We are paying our present superintendent approximately $400K a year with few positive results.
We have more than $1 billion to work with and still no positive results. Perhaps, it is more than money we need to be successful.
Maybe it’s excellent leadership, the proper type of teacher training and a board that stands up to those who take a paycheck but never give back with creativity and hard work and a Union that needs to help highly trained teachers to have an input into planning and implementation based on student needs.
I have confidence in our teachers. I know so many of them are hard workers but it looks like they are not getting any help.
If we are going to make positive changes, let’s drop the idea of politicizing the board of education to an even greater extent than it is now and immediately begin to work on the real problem – our student educational needs, diagnosing the problem and implementing creative lessons to teach the skills, all of which will help them to be competitive and well educated.
The college readiness results put out by the state show that our high schools even some of those who are considered the most academic had only fair to middling results and the four major city school’s scores ranged in the area of the low teens for Dickinson High School and Ferris High School and single digit scores for Snyder High School and Lincoln High School. With the proper education, I know the students can do much much better.
Instead of quibbling over money, the city and the school district needs to roll up their sleeves and work smart to help our kids.
That would be so much better than politicizing the board of education.
Thank you very much,
Marilyn Roman
Parochial School Teacher – 5 years
Jersey City Public Schools Teacher and Administrator – 32 years
Administrator Hudson County Schools and Technology – 5 ½ years
Hudson County Freeholder – 6 years
Jersey City Council President – 4 years
(6 months of which were spent as the interim Mayor of Jersey City)
Jersey City School Board Member – 9 ½ years
