Author Archive
Newsflash: We Never Needed to Close Schools or Mask Kids During COVID
Posted On06/15/2022 bySunlight is posting an entire piece from NJEdReport because it is so important for New Jersey citizens to know this: New Jersey students’ “staggering” learning loss during COVID school closures is not news. Here’s what is: those school closures and months of remote instruction were unnecessary. Instead, New Jersey and the rest of the country…Read More
More Biased, Substandard “Research” from Mark Weber and NJ Policy Perspective
Posted On06/10/2022 byAnother Mark Weber (a.k.a “Jersey Jazzman”) report for New Jersey Policy Perspective (NJPP), another example of substandard, biased research. The sad thing is that the media takes what Weber says at face value when they shouldn’t. As Sunlight has documented, there are many, many examples of Weber’s shoddy and biased “research.” Weber returns to a…Read More
More Data Showing NJ Is Losing People and Wealth to Other States: Please Take Note, Tom Moran
Posted On06/06/2022 byThe Star-Ledger’s Tom Moran has been having a back-and-forth with Sunlight over whether New Jersey has an out-migration problem. We respect Moran and have found him to be a good-faith interlocutor and we have some data to add to the discussion. Here’s the argument in a nutshell. Moran contends that New Jersey’s outmigration problem is…Read More
NJEA President Spiller, Are You Calling Teachers Who Vote Republican “Racists” and “White Supremacists”?
Posted On06/02/2022 byNJEA President/Montclair Mayor Sean Spiller had some choice words for Republicans in the aftermath of the Buffalo mass-murder. A Patch report quotes Spiller as saying: “Sadly, racism and white supremacy have become ingrained in the mainstream of today’s Republican Party.“ That’s quite a wholesale indictment of the Republican Party. What’s more, “mainstream” Republicans means most Republicans, so…Read More
New Healthcare Law Saves Millions for School Employees but Taxpayers Are Paying More
Posted On05/31/2022 byMary Ann Koruth of NorthJersey.com brings some needed focus on the reality of the much-heralded 2021 “Chapter 78 relief” law negotiated by then-Senate President Steve Sweeney and the NJEA. In “New state teacher health plan didn’t deliver promised savings, say school districts,” Koruth reports that out of the 158 school districts surveyed, 85% said that…Read More
Deb Cornavaca, the NJEA and Gov. Murphy: A Revolving Door of Special-Interest Influence
Posted On05/18/2022 byWell, well, well, as night follows day, a NJEA political organizer cycles into the Murphy administration as a senior officer and then cycles right back to the NJEA. Murphy’s Deputy Chief of Staff Deborah Cornavaca is leaving to become the NJEA’s Director of Government Relations. Recall that Cornavaca was an NJEA political organizer before she…Read More
Harvard Study: NJ Among the States with the Most School Closures and Learning Loss. What Will Gov. Murphy Do About It?
Posted On05/17/2022 byWhile the NJEA wants to claim that learning loss did not really occur, a new study by Harvard University’s Center for Education Policy Research sheds some much-needed light on the severity of learning loss due to pandemic-related school closures. While the authors passed no judgments on whether a state’s COVID policies were justified, their conclusions were…Read More
Once Again, New Jersey Ranks Among the States with the Very Highest Property Taxes
Posted On05/10/2022 byThe Tax Foundation shared its property tax rankings today, and Sunlight thought it made sense to reconfirm what kind of property-tax burden New Jersey taxpayers are bearing. For 2022, New Jersey was 44th among the 50 states, and has been 44th or worse since 2019 (see chart below). The Tax Foundation evaluates state and local taxes…Read More
NJ’s Public Pensions Remain at Risk Because There Are Fewer Active Workers Per Retiree; So Taxpayers Will Pay More
Posted On05/06/2022 byA brief addendum to Sunlight’s blog on Tuesday about how the teachers’ pension fund (TPAF) is still at risk despite record contributions by Gov. Murphy. The ever-vigilant BuryPensions provided some additional words (data) of warning about the condition of New Jersey’s public pensions. Bury’s data shows that from 2000 to 2021, the number of retirees has…Read More
Despite Record State Contributions, the Teachers’ Pension Plan Is Still Structurally Unsound and at Risk
Posted On05/03/2022 byNew Jersey’s Division of Pension and Benefits came out with the actuarial report for the state’s public pensions. Because of record pension contributions from the state and most importantly record investment returns of over 28%, the condition of New Jersey’s pensions improved. But New Jersey’s pensions are not out of the woods. First, the actuarial…Read More