NJPP’s Weber and Baker Say NJ Must Spend $4 Billion More to Match Massachusetts’ Education Results, but MA Spends Less than NJ
September 21, 2023Post-Pandemic, Teachers are Stretched and Stressed.
October 2, 2023Thanks to one of our readers for a heads-up about more bullying from mendacious Michael “Hundreds of Millions” Gottesman, the founder of NJ Public Education Coalition (NJPEC). Sunlight has documented Gottesman’s serial mendacity and now we can add serial bullying to Gottesman’s profile. We think there’s a strong case that Gottesman and NJPEC are NEA/NJEA frontmen in the culture wars being waged in school districts across the state, but maybe a better description would be hatchetmen.
As we have detailed, Gottesman has used bullying and intimidation as his go-to tactics in his “lawfare” war to impose deeply unpopular, progressive policies on New Jersey school districts. Recall that Gottesman urged Gov. Murphy to crack down on school boards that were defying Murphy’s controversial sex ed guidelines, offering to sue the districts and pointing out that defending against such legal action would cost these districts money. Murphy’s attorney general subsequently filed lawsuits against four school districts over their parental notification policies. Gottesman also inundated selected school districts with multiple, wide-ranging open-records requests, which look very much like another attempt at intimidation.
In the latest example of Gottesman’s bullying, Christopher Jimenez posted a blog “An inside view of the NJ BOE hearings,” which covered the September 6 State Board of Education meeting. Gottesman is described as booing the Moms for Liberty speaker, whereupon “a man behind Michael told him to shut up and let her finish her testimony …” Here’s what followed:
“[Gottesman] burst into a rage. Mr. Gottesman took out his phone and started to record the man behind him, intentionally trying to intimidate him, although unsuccessfully. All this fuss continued to take place until a science teacher in the audience looked at Gottesman dead in the eyes and told him to stop.” [Emphasis added].
That’s the Gottesman Sunlight knows, so Jimenez’s description sounds accurate to us. As we mentioned in a previous post, Gottesman’s comment on Sunlight’s Facebook page was removed by a Facebook moderator for “profanity.” He also took to the pages of NJEdReport using a similar bullying tone to try to intimidate us.
The facts show that Michael “Hundreds of Millions” Gottesman is a liar and a bully. He’s the progressive hatchetman hacking his way through the culture wars. It would make sense for the NEA/NJEA to use dark money to hide their backing of him.