"Paying a King's ransom for failure" — that's what Governor Christie called the current tenure laws in Newark's public schools, which protect the worst teachers from discipline or dismissal. Because the school district cannot afford the lengthy dismissal process to get rid of these teachers, district officials have to put these teachers aside and pay a substitute teacher to cover the classes for these teachers.
More forcefully than any other governor in recent memory, Christie has rolled up his sleeves to take on the powerful collective action of the teachers’ unions in New Jersey, which have resorted to every trick to maintain their power. From mobilizing their students to march out of school and protest projected cuts, to praying for the governor's death, to castigating him and his supporters as Nazis, the teachers' unions have stopped at nothing to stop the Governor from ending their unjust hegemony over our youth's education.
For decades, school board and unions have either worked in league with each other or have frustrated each others' efforts to such an extreme, that the teachers and the students lose every time. School districts are going bankrupt having to pay off a growing number of pension payouts to former teachers.
Governor Christie should come to Los Angeles and bust up the sclerotic teachers' union in the second largest school district in the nation. The rubber rooms in Los Angeles, where incompetent and ineffective teachers are warehoused, would rival the largest section of sequestered teachers in New Jersey.