NJEA President pushes back against Christie and Star Ledger

In the past year, the New Jersey Education Association has taken more than its share of criticism while fending off Gov. Chris Christie’s attacks on school funding and public education.
Yet on March 13, The Star-Ledger went too far. In an editorial, the paper ridiculed NJEA’s spending $6.6 million on advertising that challenged Christie’s priorities and misinformation.
It depicted NJEA’s relationship with Christie as a prizefight, calling our ads “ineffective counterpunches,” saying I am “no match for Christie” and that “if this were a heavyweight fight, it would have been stopped on cuts long ago.” Chris Christie is a pugnacious character, but suggesting that the organization representing teachers and school employees should, as a matter of course, be engaged in figurative fisticuffs with him is troubling — even if no governor has ever treated the state’s teachers with such disdain and disrespect.

I believe NJEA has an obligation to speak out when our students and their families suffer budget cuts, larger classes, fewer programs and ever-expanding user fees.
Still, I was taken aback by another article appearing in the same edition, by Kevin Manahan (who serves on The Star-Ledger’s editorial board) criticizing the media for failing to “do their homework” about Christie and asserting that “their shallow questions” allow Christie to inflate his achievements.

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NJEA and its members are not going to be demonized, demoralized or unfairly criticized by a governor who is carrying out a national attack strategy on public sector unions, and whose stated goal is the privatization of public education.

We teach our students to stand up to bullies. So, when Christie attacks the NJEA and public education, we will swing back hard because, in the end, that’s the only language bullies understand.

http://blog.nj.com/njv_guest_blog/2011/03/post_11.html