I guess you could say this whole sordid mess is just another black eye for the New Jersey Education Association, but that organization has gotten so many black eyes in the last year you can hardly tell the difference.
It’s certainly a black eye for (now former) N.J. Department of Education Commissioner Bret Schundler, but as far as anyone can tell, he’s in hiding, so we can’t see how bad he looks.
And it’s a black eye for Gov. Chris Christie’s administration, which started out trying to point fingers at someone else for the fact that the state lost out on $400 million in federal Race to the Top money because of a dumb clerical blunder. When his administration’s first response— which was to blame the feds for not notifying New Jersey education officials of their own Department of Education’s mistake — turned out to be untrue, he went to Plan B.
He admitted his administration had goofed, big time, but tried to put some unguent on the sting by reminding us that he has lots of other swell educational reforms in the hopper.
On Thursday, Aug. 26, he also fired Schundler, who had so far declined to resign as requested.
Turns out, Bret and his posse knew about the whole thing a couple of weeks ago, when they were asked by the feds about problems with New Jersey’s application. Schundler, et al., couldn’t answer the questions then, and they apparently forgot to answer them later. Then, when asked about it after the state learned it lost out on the federal money by a hair, and would likely have gotten the dough if the dim bulbs at the Department of Education had only followed through, Schundler got a case of amnesia.
He forgot to tell Christie’s administration the feds had given New Jersey a heads-up after all. And when the feds released the video later in the week proving that, and confirming the New Jersey officials’ gross ineptitude, Schundler was toast.
And Christie was walking around holding a raw porterhouse to his eyeball to reduce the swelling and discoloration.
The NJEA is also buying raw steak by the carload. Their official stance is that the Christie administration is to blame for the whole shebang. But since the NJEA has lost virtually all of its credibility because of its antics, nobody is going to buy that claptrap.
Keep in mind that New Jersey missed being in the top 10 contestants for federal Race to the Top money by three points, receiving 437.8 out of a possible 500 points and putting us in 11th place, just behind Ohio.
If New Jersey had received the 4.8 points it lost by submitting budget numbers for the wrong time period, we would have likely gotten the money. But we would have won it by a much greater margin if the NJEA hadn’t declined to support the application for federal funds in the first place.
The NJEA’s intransigence, scare mongering and general weirdness over the last year has cost more educators’ jobs in New Jersey and done more to diminish the quality of education in this state than it accomplished for its membership.
Meanwhile, as New Jersey students go back to school this fall to greatly reduced staffs and programs, you have to wonder who’s going to explain to them that their experience would have been $400 million richer if the people at the top — the governor’s administration, the NJEA and the leadership of the state’s EducationDepartment— hadn’t been such incredible screwups.
It might, in fact, become what’s known as a “teachable moment.”
“All right, children,” the teacher might say, “this is what happens when grownup chowderheads act selfishly, don’t take responsibility for their actions and don’t check their homework.”
A teacher might say that — unless he or she is one of the teachers who doesn’t have a job because of this $400 million blunder.
Those teachers and Schundler (at least he deserves it) — are at the unemployment office.
• • •
Lost among all the dreary economic news recently was something that should have all men and women of a certain age (like me) sitting back to relax.
According to a study on muscles by the University of Oslo, we may not lose our muscle strength as we grow older, even if we don’t spend much time at the gym.
As physiologist Kristian Gunderson told NPR, when you are young and exercise, you build new muscle nuclei, which stay there, even if you quit exercising for years. And even then, it doesn’t take much to wake those nuclei back up and put them to work again.
In other words, your muscles remember how strong you once were, and it doesn’t take much to get back in fighting trim.
That’s why that friend of yours who used to lift weights but now has a beer gut and spends every evening in his La-Z-Boy only has to work out for a couple of weeks to be pumping massive amounts of iron again.
This only works, of course, if you build those nuclei when you’re young. If you don’t do that, your muscles will have nothing to remember and you’ll always be a 90-pound (or 230-pound as the case may be) weakling who gets sand kicked in his or her face.
What do we learn from this? Three things, actually:
First, you youngsters quit texting for a few hours and start breaking a sweat at the gym. Your body will thank you in 30 or 40 years.
Second, those of you who were in shape once but have put off going to the gym for several decades might as well stay home and watch “The Jersey Shore.” Your body will be ready again when you are.
Third, those of us who were never in that good of shape might as well stay home as well. For us, the ship has pretty much sailed.
I’m sure the doctors and health professionals out there will disagree with all that — and I’m sure I’m engaging in some wishful thinking— but that’s how I choose to read the study.
Besides, the Missus is out of town, and my cheese dogs are just about ready.
Gregory Bean is the former executive editor of Greater Media Newspapers. You can reach him at [email protected].