My friends at InTheLobby and RedJersey are doing an admirable job pointing out the hypocrisy and arrogance of Governor Corzine over the award of a state contract to his NYU buddies to study how to prevent children from Essex County from committing crimes and becoming gang members.
However, the overriding question is not being addressed. Why is the state government spending any money on this issue at all? The answer to these problems is well known. Commissioning a $2 million study on this problem makes about as much sense as commissioning a $2 million study on how children learn to tie their shoes.
Better we should spending $2 million on buying every Essex County parent a CD of Bill Cosby's remarks commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Brown vs the Topeka Board of Education U.S. Supreme Court decision.
In my post on April 24th on the subject I offered common sense solutions to the problem.
Here's another:
Stop making single motherhood a career choice for urban teenagers. No more welfare, food stamps or section 8 housing vouchers for single mothers. Too harsh? Not really. What will happpen is extended families, communities and churches will step up and take care of their children and their children's children. Unwed pregnancies will decrease and adoptions will increase. Sadly, abortions will increase too. Sure there will be some hardship and awful headlines, but those events will not be any worse that the worst of what is happening now.
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10 comments:
Several problems walk with poverty, whereever you find large concentrations of poverty, without exception/
My solutions:
1. End Mt. Laurel RCA's;
2. End Abbot district funding AND regionalize the schoold districts;
3. Have the government stop buying open space;
4. No more 5 acre minimum lots in a small place like Jersey;
Explanation: All of the above shove people into poverty pockets, which is why NJ has both the highest national income, yet the poorest City.
When policies concentrate poverty to an area, the resources will never be enough to overcome it.
Spread poverty out, and communities can overcome it.
Ahh that is a great idea. then the state can become one giant subdivision with mcmansions on one acre lots all over it.
The rich will not want to live here and the poor will not be able too because the builders will not build anything they can affored.
You think taxes are high now? The govt. buying open space and 5 acre zoning actually keeps property taxes down.
Oh and regionalization. That is not the panacea evertone seems to think it is. It will save little money and will merge good school districts with bad. The bad half will suck resources away from the good half and you will wind up with one big mediocre school system if you are lucky?
Sorry but your plan will not solve the problem. Some people are poor because they have bad health or disabilities. Those we should support. The rest are poor because they make poor choices. want to eliminate poverty. Find away to teach people not to make bad decisions.
Good luck with that.
Find away to teach people not to make bad decisions.
Good luck with that.
That's too easy. Let people live with the consequenses of their bad decisions.
Teddy it's a matter of supply and demand. The more land you take off the market, the more you raise demand, and prices go up.
Supply and demand.
New Jersey has already taken 25% of its land mass off the market to appease radical environmentalists. Add to that what the Feds, counties and local government own, governemt owns well over 40% of all land in America.
When it hits 51%, I'll call you Comrade, because we will have officially crossed over to a Marxist system of government ownership and control of the land.
The Soviets denied the inflationary results of their system for so long that by the time they admitted it, it was too late to fix it. I'd hate to see that happen here. Keep that in mind the next time there is an open space question on the ballot.
You are wrong about regionalization of schools. When you concentrate all the ills into one school (like Asbury Park) you compound the problems and can't see to them.
You end up with Abbotts. Asbury Park alone takes $60 million each year from the state (aka you).
Spread the problem out into several schools, and they can be met with minimal resources.
Why some people are impoverished is another issue. That's a different topic from segregating them into certain areas. Segregation is bad fiscal planning, because the rest of the state ALWAYS ends up kicking in for the tab. ALWAYS.
True fiscal conservatives are against segregation. It's not just a moral issue.
And what pray tell do we do when the builders have developed that open space. OOPS same supply and demand problem just delayed a few years AND now we live on a parking lot.
The problems in the Asbury park school system will not go away because of regionalization. You could take all those kids and put them in the best school in the stae and there outcomes would hardly change. That is because the biggest indicator of student success is parental attitude.
I will refer you to ywo articles one by me and one by my friend Son Of Liberty on theses issues.
http://monmouth-bull-moose.blogspot.com/2008/04/mount-laurel-i-usually-confine-my.html
http://sonliberty.blogspot.com/2008/04/education.html
and one more by George Will
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/GeorgeWill/2008/04/24/a_nation_held_back_by_lack_of_education
I am not in favor of segregation I just do not like your solutions.
Teddy,
Asbury Park High School was segregated by race and socio-economics in 1996. That action was taken by the State in a ruling by the Department of Education.
Prior to that we graduated kids to the Ivy Leagues every year.
After the state imposed segregation, the school dropped horrendously.
The integration of the students had a measurable, positive consequence on the poorer students. The segregation has hurt them badly.
Take a closer look at the columns by George Will that quote Moynihan. Neither favors segregation.
It's amazing to me that 54 years after Brown v Board of Ed I still have to argue against segregation and what it does to the segregated student.
How embarrassing for New Jersey that in the school district they segregated, Asbury Park, there sits a grammer school called "Thurgood Marshall."
Talk about hypocricy.
But listen, if you don't want to reverse the ruling from 1996 and desegregate the school, then you just make sure you aren't late with our $60 million Abbott check each year, sucker.
Yeah it is always somebody elses fault.
I clearly stated I am against segregation.
I am also against forced desegregation through regionalization. I live in a good school district. Do I want a bunch of kids who do not want to be there and whose parents do not care dragging that down. My property taxes will go up to meet there "needs" and test scores will go down. That being said I am clearly on record as supporting affordable housing in ways that do not destroy communities
I have a relative who works in a high school with a broad socio economic population. She teaches remedial courses and AP courses. You would think that the parents of the remedial kids would be the ones that would need to go to parent teacher conferances. Guess who shows and who does not?
The reason Asbury Park graduated Ivory league students is because their parents gave a crapback then.
I have an Idea. Give the abbott districts the same as everyone else and tell the parents of the kids that go there to take some responsibility for how there kids do in school. Asbury Parks problems are caused by the people who live in Asbury Park. Do not pawn it off on some other community because you have some misplaced nostalgia for a place that no longer exists.
Dam I forgot to take that pill this morning.
Teddy said:
“Yeah it is always somebody elses fault.”
In this case it is. You don’t think Asbury Park segregated itself, do you? The 1996 ruling came from the State, over Asbury Park’s objection. That IS someone else’s fault. If you are going to respond, please address that fact.
Teddy said:
“I clearly stated I am against segregation.
I am also against forced desegregation through regionalization.”
Then you actually agree with me. I don’t favor either as well. A bit of history will put it into perspective (I don’t say that sarcastically or with condescension - I wouldn’t expect most folks to know the history of what happened to Asbury Park High in 1996, but since everyone kicks in $60 million a year to AP to pay for it, you should know).
Like you I think geography is geography, and you should go to the school where you live. Well for 100 years, Asbury Park High was the school attended by South Belmar, Belmar, Avon, Bradley Beach, Ocean, Asbury Park, Allenhurst, Interlaken and Deal. That was the geography – the natural order of things.
Ocean built their own High School in the 1960’s – more power to them. Home rule. Suit yourself and I support you. Same for anyone who pays for private school or home schools; I support you.
Even after Ocean left, the other towns kept Asbury Park well enough integrated with rich and poor, white and black students. The natural order of the geography.
In 1996 the State made a ruling that kids from Asbury Park’s sending towns could get bused to Red Bank Regional (I assume you are like me and don’t favor busing kids away from a their natural school district). That ruling took every rich white kid out of their natural, geographic public High School, and sent them to another public High School.
That isn’t natural segregation by folks moving in or out – that’s State sponsored segregation, by a state ruling.
If you don’t favor busing white kids out of their towns to another just to desegregate a black school, can I assume you are with me that it is just as bad to bus white kids away from their home district to create and leave a segregated district behind? If I oppose busing, I oppose it both ways.
The effect was to create in Asbury Park a school segregated by race and poverty. Exactly what Brown said is illegal. It concentrates into one school all the problems associated with poverty. The students don’t get to mix with the kids from successful families.
I graduated that school and I taught there. I saw first hand what the segregation did to the school. The kids in the High School are old enough to know what happened and why it happened. Come and watch these kids talk about all the photos of white students hanging on the walls from just ten years ago, and why now those kids are all gone. It’ll disturb you to realize that your government segregated these kids, because they realize it.
Teddy said:
“I live in a good school district. Do I want a bunch of kids who do not want to be there and whose parents do not care dragging that down. My property taxes will go up to meet there "needs" and test scores will go down. That being said I am clearly on record as supporting affordable housing in ways that do not destroy communities.”
I’m trying to find common ground with you, but I have to point out the last sentence in your paragraph above contradicts the rest of the paragraph. How would affordable housing “destroy” a community?
If the other schools don’t want to come back to Asbury Park, then we can close Asbury Park and send those kids to the surrounding 7 High Schools. There would only be 15 students per class coming in. That wouldn’t create enough needy students in any school to be disruptive to anyone or raise anyone’s taxes.
Let’s not forget that while there are more kids with problems in APHS because of poverty, all the students aren’t problems. Some of those 15 will be in your honors classes.
If we tried to send a mere 15 students per class to other schools, the backlash wouldn’t be over taxes. It would be because some folks don’t want their precious little snowflake sitting next to a student who is black and from poverty. I don’t have to argue the point – that’s why we got the 1996 ruling. There’s no other explanation for it (unless someone wants to give me one).
Teddy said:
“The reason Asbury Park graduated Ivory league students is because their parents gave a crap back then.”
Back then? It was 1996, not 1896.
Teddy said:
“Do not pawn it off on some other community because you have some misplaced nostalgia for a place that no longer exists.”
LOL!! I can’t wait to show the above quote to the folks in AP. I coined the term “nostalgia nazi” against the historical society because I always try to get them to stop trying to save old buildings and put up new ones. They declared me “preservation’s public enemy number 1.”
Oh and do you want to talk about “pawning off” problems? When it came time to build federal housing, they built them in AP so we would get the poverty. For decades the feds sent us about $10K in lieu of taxes when we were spending $millions to educate the kids in those tenements. A reverse Abbot situation, and we sucked it up without crying about it.
When the county needed a place for a methadone clinic, they put it in AP. Probation office? AP. AIDS Center? AP. Highest concentration of 501c3’s who don’t pay taxes? In AP. Highest concentration of Churches who don’t pay taxes? AP. We have police from other towns dropping off their homeless in AP. Asbury Park pawns off no problems – it takes in the problems so other towns don’t have to. It’s the most giving community in the County.
Look Teddy, if you don’t want the problems of poverty in your backyard, if you want to keep them in AP, just keep sending the money.
This year I’ll be taking this from you: $60 million in Abbott money. $20 million federal education money. $12 million to make up for a budget shortfall.
And don’t be late with my check. We stack your money up in corners. We use it to prop up furniture, light cigars with it, wipe our rear ends with it, etc.
Hear that sound? Phtt. Phtt. Phtt. That’s me counting your money. We’re having a meeting tonight to figure out how to waste more of it. Not a damned thing you can do about it either.
Hurry up and send my check.
First see my post on affordable housing. My point is the 200 market units that have to built to get 5 affordable houses is what destroys communities.
If all you say is true and I have no doubt it is then yeah Asbury got a raw deal. It should not have been made a dumping ground.
My beef is not with Asbury I would not be in their region and I really do not have a problem with my kids going to school with poor kids or with minorities.
My beef is with people blaming the system for poor performance and trying to shove their problems off on some body else.
Lifes not fair deal with it move forward and solve your problems. Education is easy if the parents care. If they do not care 99% of the time it just does not matter what you do.
Teddy said:
"Lifes not fair deal with it move forward and solve your problems. Education is easy if the parents care. If they do not care 99% of the time it just does not matter what you do."
On that I agree with you friend. 9 out of 10 on Asbury's West Side are born to single parent homes, and we can't get the parents into the school no matter what.
On that I your point is well taken.
Asbury Park High School as a dynamic young principal. You may have read about him in the papers - Tyler Blackmore. He's in his 30's.
He moved into Asbury Park. He's doing an end run around the parents. He started a mentor program for all students. Every responsible peron in AP is getting a student to mentor.
Wish him luck.
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