Author Archive
FY2024 Budget: State Spending Up 56% Under Gov. Murphy. What Happens When the Revenue Windfalls Go Away?
Posted On07/07/2023 byOnce again under Gov. Murphy, when it comes to the budget, politics supersedes fiscal responsibility. Murphy and his pals in the legislature sure know how to take care of their friends in an election year. Adding to a continuous string of record budgets, Murphy signed a $54.3 billion FY2024 budget. That’s up over 7% from…Read More
Sweeney Center Warns of “Fiscal Crisis” When Revenue Windfalls Go Away. What Happens with $7 Billion Pension Payments?
Posted On06/30/2023 bySunlight has long warned about New Jersey’s fiscal condition. In particular, we have focused on Gov. Murphy’s decision to accommodate his biggest political supporter, the NJEA, by choosing to make the full required pension payment rather than doing the hard work of reforming the teachers’ pension fund (TPAF), the largest and most distressed of the…Read More
More Mendacity and Bullying from Michael “Hundreds of Millions” Gottesman
Posted On06/27/2023 byMeet Michael “Hundreds of Millions” Gottesman, founder of the NJ Public Education Coalition (NJPEC), the group trying to bully school boards into adopting a progressive education agenda. Gottesman got his nickname because he maintained to the Star-Ledger that “right-wing extremist” groups had “hundreds of millions of dollars being donated to them in New Jersey” to…Read More
Student Test Scores Continue to Plummet, NJ’s Remediation Plan Is Failing Badly, and Gov. Murphy Is AWOL
Posted On06/21/2023 byWe have two disturbing pieces of news about learning loss for NJ students. First, a new update on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), known as the “nation’s report card” on student learning, and the news is terrible: both reading and math scores continue to plummet due to lingering effects from school closures. Here’s…Read More
More Signs that Education Truth Project and NJ Public Education Coalition Are NEA/NJEA Fronts
Posted On06/20/2023 byDark-money Super PAC Education Truth Project (ETP) continues to look like a NEA/NJEA front. Sunlight must rely on circumstantial evidence because ETP is funded by dark money, but there’s plenty of circumstantial evidence. And now we have more. And because ETP funds its affiliate, NJ Public Education Coalition (NJPEC), that group is also likely funded…Read More
Lee Siegel: Montclair School Kids Suffer While NJEA President/Montclair Mayor Spiller Focuses on His Political Ambitions
Posted On06/09/2023 byLong-time Montclair resident Lee Siegel penned a scathing article in City Journal on the poor condition of Montclair’s schools and the apparent indifference of its mayor, NJEA President Sean Spiller. Siegel notes that Montclair’s political elite, including Spiller, mouth progressive platitudes, but their actions speak louder than their words. As always, it’s the kids —…Read More
The Modern, Hyper-Political NJEA: More Spending on Super PAC, Less on Charitable Grants
Posted On06/06/2023 bySunlight finally obtained the NJEA’s 2018 IRS Form 990, which now gives us a consecutive set of recent returns. One section of the Form 990 provides information on all the NJEA’s grants to outside organizations, including charitable grants as well as those to its Super PAC, Garden State Forward. As can be seen in the…Read More
Former Public School Teacher Blasts Teachers Unions for Prioritizing Political Activism over Educating Kids
Posted On06/01/2023 byA friend of Sunlight’s sent us an excellent Tablet article by Alex Gutentag, a former teacher in Oakland, CA public schools. We urge you to read the whole piece, as it provides the perspective of a public school teacher who really wanted to teach and felt betrayed by his union and its focus on political…Read More
Laid-Off Montclair Teachers Reap the Whirlwind from NJEA President/Montclair Mayor Spiller’s Conflict of Interest
Posted On05/19/2023 byNJEA President/Montclair Mayor Sean Spiller’s conflict of interest continues to negatively affect Montclair and its school system. This time, it’s the dozens of young teachers and paraprofessionals being laid off, who will be leaving the school system along with the hundreds of kids who fled the extended school closures abetted by Spiller. All of this…Read More
Working Families, NJ Policy Perspective and Education Law Center: The NJEA’s Million-Dollar Allies
Posted On05/16/2023 byMaking our way through the NJEA’s 2020 IRS filing (the most recent), we now turn to the NJEA’s network of allies. The NJEA has long used its millions of withheld teachers’ dues to fund a variety of groups that augment the NJEA’s pursuit of political influence, often allowing the NJEA to obscure its own role…Read More