New Jersey Students Plan Statewide Walkout

Hey, guess what. Students like their school libraries, teachers, sports teams, school nurses and guidance counselors. So students in New Jersey are planning a statewide walkout to protest the cuts to the state education budget, which have created havoc across the Garden State.

The students are mobilizing via Facebook, and thousands have already signed up to support the walkout. Offer these students your support by going to their site. This is the kind of organized action that will get results, so let this kind of action spread across the nation.

When students stop going to these dumbed-down test factories run by corporations, maybe the pols in Trenton and Washington will begin to get the message. ht to Stan Karp.

NJ students plan statewide walkout Tuesday

By LESLIE BRODY The Record

04/23/2010

A Facebook page encouraging New Jersey students to cut class Tuesday to rally against state aid reductions has more than 13,000 signed up to participate.

The page, called "Protest NJ Education Cuts – State Wide School Walk Out," exhorts students – with incorrect spelling at times — to express their outrage against state funding cuts. The event was launched before voters rejected most school budgets on Tuesday, but after Governor Christie announced he was freezing aid promised to districts this year and cutting $820 million for fiscal 2011. Christie says the cuts are necessary to close an $11 billion state budget gap.

"This is one of the most serious things to ever happen in the state of New Jersey," the Facebook page says. "The only potential for change lies in the students. The youth who will be effected [sic] by all these cuts need to rise up and do something."

Students from Hackensack High School, Dwight Morrow High School in Englewood, Academies@Englewood and Rutgers University are among those who pledged to join the 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. walkout.

The Christie administration has insisted students belong in class and accused teachers of staging a recent student walkout in Cliffside Park. On Friday, New Jersey Education Association spokesman Stephen Wollmer echoed the view that students should stay in school.

"We do not endorse a student walkout," Wollmer said. "It would be totally inappropriate for any educator to endorse a student walkout. This just illustrates the power of social network sites."

Englewood schools Superintendent Richard Segall, however, said he was happy students were getting involved in politics and exercising their civil right to criticize budget cuts that would hurt them. "If they're doing it peacefully, within the law, and targeting their protest with a purpose, it shows somebody is educating them properly," he said.

Segall said students would suffer the consequences, however, if they failed to hand in assignments, for example, or missed an 18th class. A student cannot get credit for a course after 18 absences. Civil disobedience often required sacrifice, he said: "If we give them a free pass, they have suffered nothing … and that doesn't teach them anything."

Students listed on the Facebook page and its creator did not respond immediately to requests for comment. It is unclear how many will actually participate. Those signed up by Friday represent only a small fraction of the state's 1.4 million public school students.

Cliffside, NJ Students Walk Out to Protest Teacher Cuts

From NorthJersey.com:

The 45-minute protest by hundreds of students included some stinging criticism of Governor Christie’s plan to slash state education aid as part of his attempt to balance the upcoming state budget.

“Right now, he’s creating a fence around our future,” said 17-year-old senior Barbara Hernandez of Fairview, who called the aid cuts misguided.

The governor said later Friday that he believed the teacher’s union had orchestrated the walkout.

“They’re being used,” Christie said, when asked if students should face consequences for the protest. “I don’t blame the kids at all. Those kids are victims. They’re pawns, unfortunately for them.”

Student organizers and a spokesman for the New Jersey Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, said teachers pleaded with the students over the school's loudspeaker not to walk out.

“Our members didn't encourage this, they didn't plan this, they had nothing to do with it," said NJEA spokesman Steve Baker. "This is just another example of the governor tying to play politics with education.

Cliffside Park school officials are considering layoffs of 45 staff, including about 20 support staff and custodians, to close a $1.8 million budget gap.

The student protesters organized on Facebook and through text messages after news of the layoffs started trickling out in recent days.

The first protesters, some in T-shirts despite temperatures in the mid 30s, left class just after 9 a.m. and successive waves followed until 400-500 students mingled on the field and marched around the track.

They assembled on the sports field behind the school brandishing signs and chanting “save our teachers.”

The protesters were corralled onto the field and told by administrators they could not walk on the sidewalks surrounding the school.

They held aloft signs reading “Larger classrooms = no education” and chanted the name of one teacher, a coach of freshman sports, who is rumored to have received a layoff notice.

“Grades are going to start dropping,” student Joe Koonce said of the layoffs.

The students went back into class at about 9:45 a.m.

Superintendent Michael J. Romagnino said he wasn’t happy that the students left the building, though he was aware they were going to march. He didn’t see the protest as being against the administration.

“I think it was against the cuts,” Romagnino said. “Most people, including students, understand that if you have to cut $1.8 million out of the budget, the only way you can make that up is by cutting programs and staff.”

Romagnino said the district, which has about 2,700 students, is also considering cutting pre-kindergarten and kindergarten to a half-day and ninth-grade sports, among other measures.

The district will hold a budget meeting on Wednesday at 7 p.m. and a group has handed out fliers urging parents to show up in support of the teachers.

Parents Rafael Concepcion and Lilly Cancar, who is a 1985 graduate of the high school, watched the protest from just off school property. The couple’s two children attend elementary school in Fairview but will go to the high school in a few years.