Schools Can Help Obese Kids Shed Weight, Get Healthier

Here's some research news that's bound to make the first lady and lots of other parents take note: Schools have more power to influence over kids' eating and exercise habits than previously thought.

Researchers found that in schools where the exercise went up and the junk food went down, obesity rates declined, too.

And fewer obese kids means lower risks of health problems associated with carrying around too much weight, like Type 2 diabetes.

In a three-year study published online by the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers followed 4,600 students from 42 middle schools across the country. Half attended schools that required longer, more intense gym time, more nutritious food choices, and a focus on nutrition and exercise in class. Half didn't.

Obese or overweight students at the schools where the health interventions were tried were 21 percent less likely to be obese at the end of the study, compared to the obese and overweight kids at the other schools in the study.

"To see a change in something physiological from school-based study is really quite remarkable and should give us some sense of hope that we can begin to address this really important health issue of obesity and Type 2 diabetes -- and all the complications that go along with it," says Dr. Dan Cooper, a pediatrician at the University of California-Irvine and a principal investigator for the study.

Data gathered from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey a few years ago found almost 35 percent of those ages 6 to 19 are either overweight or obese. Rates among children who are black or Hispanic are even higher.

One surprising finding of the study: The number of overweight and obese kids at both the intervention and control schools decreased by 4 percent at the end of the study. Cooper says that may be because more people became aware of obesity during the study period, and teachers from different schools possibly exchanged information about their programs.

"I suspect that when we do look back on this -- and I don't know if we'll ever really be able to figure this out -- but to some degree, there was some borrowing going on," he says.

But can such results be duplicated in the "real world?"

Cooper says yes, because researchers relied heavily on existing staff at the schools.

"If we had completely put in our own staff, maybe we would have gotten a bigger result," Cooper says. "But then the question would have been how are you going to make this work in the context of real schools unless you work with the people who are there?"

Cooper says school administrators are starting to show interest in the study.

Picture: Roland Barral and John Raslowsky after finishing the First Hoboken Marathon circa 1977.

Hoboken Board of Education Meeting: June 29 7:00 pm

Final Hoboken Board of Education Meeting for the 2009-10 Academic School Year

Tuesday, June 29, 2010 7:00pm

Board Meeting Room
1115 Clinton Street
Hoboken, NJ 07030

June 29 2010 - Special Session

More Federal Aid Needed for Low-Income College Students, Report Finds

The Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance, an independent committee that advises Congress and the secretary of education on national policy, presented a report in Washington on Friday that did not bode well for low-income college students seeking degrees.

The report, entitled “The Rising Price of Inequality” sent a clear message to the federal government: without a broad increase in need-based state and federal aid, fewer low-income students will have the resources to remain enrolled in college and earn degrees over the next decade.

Furthermore, as the Chronicle of Higher Education reports that the financial burden of a college education has grown to take up a larger portion of a family’s income, with four years at a public college costing 48 percent—almost half—of a low-income family’s annual income in 2007. A four-year education was 41 percent of a low-income family’s earnings in 1992.

This is bad news for low-income students, but also could delay President Obama’s goal of having the United States produce the most college graduates by 2020, according to the authors of the report.

“Recent progress in increasing need-based federal grant aid is encouraging, but must be greatly intensified and broadened,” the report reads. “At a minimum, federal policy must seek to ensure that states and public colleges hold Pell Grant recipients harmless against increases in cost of attendance, through increases in state and institutional need-based grant aid.”

The authors also recommended a national experiment to gauge how college access would be impacted by
increasing opportunities for loan forgiveness and income-based repayment options, the Chronicle reported.

Read full article by clicking HERE

The Rising Price of Inequality

Bohemian Goddess Phillipa Fallon Performs a Nihistic Beat Poem in "High School Confidential"

The following text is taken from Bill Geerhart who is the editor and co-counder of CONELRAD.com. CONELRAD is the creation of writers who grew up in the shadow of the BOMB. I have found the site to be a treasure for interesting and novel aspects of the atomic age and it's subsequent impact on popular culture. -Dr. Petrosino

Approximately mid-way through the Albert Zugsmith exploitation film masterpiece HIGH SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL (1958), an attractive, quasi-bohemian woman strides on stage at a coffee house and belts out a beat poem that provides a delightfully nihilistic snapshot of the Cold War—including references to the space race and atomic evacuation. The fact that she happens to be accompanied by Jackie Coogan (who plays a heroin kingpin in the film) on piano is, like, pure existential gravy. Predictably, the teens in the audience appear to be digging Coogan’s incongruous ragtime key work and disregarding the depressing content of the lyrics.

High School Drag: Phillipa Fallon [1958]

My old man was a bread stasher all his life.
He never got fat. He wound up with a used car,
a 17 inch screen and arthritis.

Tomorrow is a drag, man.
Tomorrow is a king sized bust.

They cried ‘put down pot,’ ‘don’t think a lot,’ for what?
Time, how much? And what to do with it.

Sleep, man, and you might wake up digging the whole
human race giving itself three days to get out.

Tomorrow is a drag, pops, the future is a flake.

I had a canary who couldn’t sing.
I had a cat who let me share my pad with her.
I bought a dog that killed the cat who ate the canary.
What is truth?

I had an uncle with an ivy league card.
He had a life with a belt in the back.
He had a button-down brain.
Wind up a belt in the mouth with a button-down lip.

We cough blood on this earth.
Now there’s a race for space.
We can cough blood on the moon soon.

Tomorrow’s dragsville, cats.
Tomorrow is a king size drag.

Tool a fast shore, swing with a gassy chick.
Turn on to a thousand joys.
Smile on what happened, or check what’s going to happen,
You’ll miss what’s happening.
Turn your eyes inside and dig the vacuum.

Tomorrow, DRAG.

Strange Fruit Indeed: Interrogating Contemporary Textbook Representations of Racial Violence Toward African Americans

The following article and interview centers on work that two of my colleagues at The University of Texas at Austin have conducted over the past few years looking at the issue of race and violence toward African-Americans as depicted in K-12 textbooks. Strange Fruit, refers to a famous Billy Holiday song. This work was recently published in the Teachers College Record, one of the most prestigious journals in education. -Dr. Petrosino

by Anthony L. Brown & Keffrelyn D. Brown — 2010

Background/Context: Recent racial incidents on college and high school campuses throughout the United States have catalyzed a growing conversation around issues of race and racism. These conversations exist alongside ongoing concerns about the lack of attention given to race and racism in the official school curriculum. Given that the field of education is generally located as a space to interrogate why these difficult issues of race in schools and society still persist, this study illustrates how contemporary official school knowledge addresses historical and contemporary issues of race and racism. To do this, we examine how historic acts of racial violence directed toward African Americans are rendered in K–12 school textbooks. Using the theoretical lenses of critical race theory and cultural memory, we explicate how historic acts of racial violence toward African Americans receives minimal and/or distorted attention in most K–12 texts.

Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: We examined the knowledge constructed about racial violence and African Americans in the United States. Using the theoretical lenses of critical race theory and cultural memory, we show how the topic of historic acts of racial violence toward African Americans receives minimal and/or distorted attention in most K–12 texts. The purpose of this study is to illustrate that although accounts of racial violence that historically have been excluded from textbooks are now being included, this inclusion matters little if it is presented in a manner that disavows material implications of racial violence on sustained White privilege and entrenched African American inequities.

Research Design: The findings from this study come from a textbook analysis of 19 recent U.S. history social studies textbooks adopted by the state of Texas. Drawing from the tradition of recent critical textbook studies, this study used a literary analysis methodology.

Findings/Results: In this study, we found that although narratives of racial violence were present throughout the texts, they often rendered acts of violence as the immorality of single actors or “bad men doing bad things.” Additionally, these presentations portray violence as disconnected from the institutional and structural ties that supported and benefited from such acts.

Conclusions/Recommendations: The findings from this study illustrate the limited historical and sociocultural knowledge about race and racism provided to teachers and students through K–12 social studies textbooks. These findings have direct implications for how teachers and students conceptualize and grapple with real issues of race and racism in schools and society. We suggest that the knowledge contained in school texts must go beyond simply representing acts of racism, situating such acts of racism within the discursive and material realities that have shaped the lives of African Americans in the United States.

Kids First Decides to Suspend Adult Education For Hoboken Residents During the Greatest Economic Downturn Since the Great Depression

The current unemployment rate in New Jersey is 9.5% and reflects the national average. In Hoboken, the rate is likely significantly higher. We are now in the 32nd month of the Great Recession which began in December of 2007. Every sector of the economy has been impacted from real estate, to equity investments, health benefits, and of course jobs. Such an economy also brings feelings of boredom, depression, anxiety, and stress. One area that has always been of benefit during times like this is adult education. With the Hoboken Adult Education Program (a.k.a. "night school") over 800 residents had the opportunity to develop and enhance their computer skills, their business skills, communication skills, network, develop social interactions, take part in adult physical fitness and nutrition courses, develop job skills for these difficult times and share a laugh or conversation with others from the community.

That is why it is especially troubling that the Kids First majority of the Hoboken Board of Education approved a decision to suspend the Adult Education Program until next year. The idea for privatization of this program will no doubt be floated-- the public should understand that the TOTAL COST of the Adult Education Program was only a few thousand dollars since tuition is already collected. There is little reason to justify why the Adult Education Program could not be continued while modifications were being considered. For the record, the decision to suspend the Hoboken Adult Education Program was made weeks before the Coordinator of Adult Education retired.

In keeping with the current tradition of the Kids First Hoboken Board of Education majority, the suspension of the Adult Education Program was a "live" agenda item and thus not on the public agenda for the June, 2010 meeting. The meeting was also not filmed or broadcasted.

June 29 2010 - Special Session

HHS Graduation June 21

Hoboken High School and Demarest Alternative High School will graduate 140 seniors in a joint ceremony on Monday June 21, 6 p.m., at JFK Stadium Veterans Field at 10th and Jefferson streets. In case of inclement weather, the ceremony will move to the high school auditorium, 800 Clinton St.

Demarest Alternative is a high school for students who need more individualized education than does Hoboken High School. It’s headquartered in the building at Fourth and Garden streets, which decades ago was Hoboken’s original high school.

Hoboken Charter High School ceremony will be June 29

Photo: Hoboken Reporter

The Cost of War

On June 7 mainstream American media acknowledged that the war in Afghanistan is now our country’s longest one, with Washington having entered month 104 of a conflict that began on October 7, 2001. The most protracted war before had been that in Vietnam. Current calculations based on the beginning of the American role in major and independent combat operations in that Southeast Asian nation – from the Tonkin Gulf Resolution passed by the U.S. Congress on August 7, 1964 – to the withdrawal of the last American combat troops in March of 1973 total 103 months. In fact it took several months for the Pentagon to act on the resolution and as such the Afghan war has already been the lengthiest in America’s history, but the formal recognition of it as such is now a matter of public record. The actual cost of the Afghan and Iraq wars in in terms of human life and suffering is, of course, incalculable. However, here is the latest estimates of the dollar expenditures to date of these long conflicts.

Studying Engineering Before They Can Spell It

The following is a story that appeared in the NY Times on June 13 by Education writer Winnie Hu and is entitled, "Studying Engineering Before They Can Spell It." The article discusses some efforts currently underway to incorporate STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) Education in the early elementary grades. At Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, NJ the Partnership to Improve Student Achievement (PISA) is a partnership of 50 teachers from 22 schools from the districts of Bayonne, Hoboken, Jersey City, Newark, Piscataway, Weehawken, and four non-public schools, together with Stevens Institute of Technology, Montclair State University, and Liberty Science Center, are providing teachers with deeper science content knowledge, research-based professional development, and experience with innovative science and engineering curricula and materials for Grades 3-5. The article by Ms. Wu presents some interesting strengths and challenges of attempting to do engineering education with students in the elementary grades. -Dr. Petrosino

GLEN ROCK, N.J. — In a class full of aspiring engineers, the big bad wolf had to do more than just huff and puff to blow down the three little pigs’ house.

To start, he needed to get past a voice-activated security gate, find a hidden door and negotiate a few other traps in a house that a pair of kindergartners here imagined for the pigs — and then pieced together from index cards, paper cups, wood sticks and pipe cleaners.

“Excellent engineering,” their teacher, Mary Morrow, told them one day early this month.

All 300 students at Clara E. Coleman Elementary School are learning the A B C’s of engineering this year, even those who cannot yet spell e-n-g-i-n-e-e-r-i-n-g. The high-performing Glen Rock school district, about 22 miles northwest of Manhattan, now teaches 10 to 15 hours of engineering each year to every student in kindergarten through fifth grade, as part of a $100,000 redesign of the science curriculum.

Spurred by growing concerns that American students lack the skills to compete in a global economy, school districts nationwide are packing engineering lessons into already crowded schedules for even the youngest students, giving priority to a subject that was once left to after-school robotics clubs and summer camps, or else waited until college.

Supporters say that engineering reinforces math and science skills, promotes critical thinking and creativity, and teaches students not to be afraid of taking intellectual risks.

“We still hear all the time that little kids can’t engineer,” said Christine Cunningham, director of Engineering is Elementary, a program developed at the Museum of Science in Boston that offers ready-made lessons, for about $350 each, on 20 topics, and is now used in all 50 states, in more than 3,000 schools.

“We say they’re born engineers — they naturally want to solve problems — and we tend to educate it out of them.”

The Obama administration’s Race to the Top competition, which will distribute $4.35 billion in education stimulus money to states, favors so-called STEM programs, which stands for science, technology, engineering and math.

At the same time, Congress is considering legislation, endorsed by more than 100 businesses and organizations like I.B.M. and Lockheed Martin, to promote engineering education from kindergarten through 12th grade.

In Manassas, Va., which has a thriving biotech industry, the local school district has spent $300,000 on a children’s engineering program since 2008, equipping its six elementary schools with tool kits for projects like making musical instruments from odds and ends, building bridges with uncooked spaghetti and launching hot-air balloons made from trash bags and cups.

At the new Midway Elementary School of Science and Engineering in Anderson, S.C., kindergartners celebrated Groundhog Day by stringing together a pulley system to lift a paper groundhog off the floor.

But as these lessons have spread, some parents, teachers and engineers question how much children are really absorbing, and if schools should be expending limited resources on the subject.

Engineering is not a requirement in most states.

“Just giving kids an engineering problem to solve doesn’t mean it will lead to learning,” said Janine Remillard, an associate education professor at theUniversity of Pennsylvania who is not opposed, but believes that good teaching is essential to making any curriculum work well.

She pointed out that schools have long offered project-based learning, without calling it engineering, like building Lego robots or designing a cushion for an egg drop.

“Ideally, you want them to come away with knowledge that goes beyond that problem,” Professor Remillard said. “They could just go through the motions and end up with a robot that can do a particular thing, but the next problem they face will be a new problem. This is where good teaching comes in.”

William E. Kelly, a spokesman for the American Society for Engineering Education and former dean of the engineering school at Catholic University in Washington, cautioned that engineering lessons for youngsters should be kept in perspective.

“You’re not really learning what I would call engineering fundamentals,” he said of such programs. “You’re really learning about engineering.”

Here in Glen Rock, where students have long excelled at math and science, administrators and teachers decided to incorporate engineering into the elementary grades to connect classroom learning to real life, as well as to instill social skills like collaboration and cooperation that are valued in the work force, said Kathleen Regan, the curriculum director.

“At first, everybody was like: ‘Engineering? Kindergarten?’ ” recalled Dr. Regan, noting that one school board member joked that she must be married to an engineer (no; a lawyer).

But now, Dr. Regan said, the engineering lessons have become so popular that children are talking about their projects at the dinner table, and some of their parents have started researching engineering colleges.

Ms. Morrow and Jennifer Burke, who also teach classes for the gifted and talented, developed the engineering lessons and run them in all four elementary schools.

They plan multiday projects, often built around classic and popular stories like the Three Little Pigs, and take students step by step through the engineering process: design, build, test, evaluate.

“They have to have the thinking skills of an engineer to keep up with all the innovation that’s constantly coming into their world,” Ms. Morrow said.

First graders were recently challenged with helping a farmer keep rabbits out of his garden.

In teams of four, they brainstormed about building fences with difficult-to-scale ladders instead of doors and setting out food decoys for the rabbits. They drew up blueprints and then brought them to life with plastic plates, paper cups, straws and foam paper.

Then they planned to test their ideas with pop-up plastic rabbits. If the fences were breached, they would be asked to improve the design.

“It gets your brain going,” said Elizabeth Crowley, 7, who wants to be an engineer when she grows up. “And I actually learn something when I’m doing a project — like you can work together to do something you couldn’t do before.”

In the kindergarten class that was designing homes — none out of hay, wood or brick — for the three pigs, Ms. Morrow started the lesson by asking the 20 children sitting cross-legged on the carpet if they knew what engineers do.

“They can write poems?” one girl guessed.

“Well,” Ms. Morrow allowed, “they could write a poem about something they build.”

But if they were still unsure about the language of engineering, the students were soon immersed in its nuts and bolts.

They tweaked their houses, adding ever more elaborate improvements to thwart the wolf. Then they huffed and they puffed.

And not a single house blew down.

photo: Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times

Students Meet with Con Man at HHS- District Officials: "We admit we were wrong"

According to numerous published reports by local newspapers and New York City television stations, a man was allowed to enter Hoboken High School, meet with students, and scammed them of hundreds of dollars worth of their time and labor. The man gained access to the students with administrators consent and wielding a false promise of a job for students which included handing out flyers for a reported $10 an hour. The story made regional news in the tri-state area as it aired on WABC-TV on May 27th with a follow-up story on June 7th. Most disturbing was that the man met with these children in a fast food restaurant and in a warehouse in Hoboken. As you read the story you will notice that the students' intuition was that something was "not right" but they placed their faith and safety on the belief that the gentleman was previously vetted by the leaders of the school and district. Evidently, this vetting did not take place.

In situations like this, it is very possible that the kids were more emotionally impacted by this event than many might expect. It is possible there might be some post tramuatic stress over the incident. It is advisable to have students meet with guidance counsellors, licensed professionals and social workers immediately to properly evaluate the situation. Hopefully this was done. In addition, it is not clear why district administrators did not follow standard and state approved protocols for unsolicited strangers seeking access to the children in our schools. But some questions remain:

1) Did the person show his fingerprint record? ALL adults who come in regular and sustained contact with students beginning with a school intervention are required by law to have a fingerprint check.

2) Did the person give a list of at least 2-3 references? And, was time allocated to follow up on these references by district officials?

3) Were parents contacted that their children would be meeting and working for this gentleman? Were assurances given that this person was vetted?

4) Was there an administrator or district certified person present when the children met with this gentleman?

5) Might the same "errors in judgement" not happen if the Hoboken School District had permanent and professionally current school and district level administrators in place overseeing our schools rather than the current strategy of using retired individuals?

6) Did students involved in this incident receive any follow up counseling services from district professionals?

HOBOKEN, NJ (WABC) -- A man conned Hoboken High School students into selling fake raffle tickets.

A voicemail message the con man left for one of the students said: "Tyquan right now, come to the warehouse, thank you."

It was all part of the scam that had high school teens passing out flyers for a company that didn't exist that was fronted by a man who was ripping people off.

The man, who identified himself as Dr. Dexter Davis, was invited into the high school last week by an administrator.

While on school grounds he was allowed to meet with students, and he offered some of them jobs.

Tyquan Goodwin and Paula Vazquez were among a group of students who agreed to work for him.

"Honestly, we all had our doubts from the very first day but we didn't know how to come out and say it," said student, Paula Valazquez.

The students took to the streets though, putting their doubts aside, and working long stretches to hand out raffle tickets for a bogus $500 prize.

They met with the con man at a warehouse and a McDonald's.

The students even gave him the $180 they'd earned working 8 hour days.

They sensed that something didn't add up, so they Googled his name.

What they found confirmed what they suspected, but didn't want to believe.

A Dr. Dexter Davis had been accused of being a con man last year in Connecticut.

They believe it's the same guy.

When Eyewitness News contacted school officials, they apologized to the parents and the students, and called what happened "unfortunate".

The superintendent told Eyewitness News: "That's our error and we admit to that. We admit we were wrong. An error in judgment was made by a professional involved and we are still investigating how this happened."

(Copyright ©2010 WABC-TV/DT. All Rights Reserved.)

See story reported by NJ.COM titled, "Hoboken police investigate possible scam involving high school students" by Mark Maurer.

See story reported by The Hoboken Journal entitled "Hoboken High School Students Schooled by Con Man".

Zimmer letter to Christie Concerning Withholding Connors Funding

ZimmerChristieLetter

June 8- Stated Session Hoboken School District

The document below is the Stated Session for the Hoboken Board of Education for June 8, 2010. Most notable, the document lists a number of additional retirements as well as the appointment of a Vice-Principal at Hoboken High School. This is the next to last meeting for the 2009-2010 school year.
June 8 2010 - Stated Session Hoboken School District

Potentially 300,000 Teacher Layoffs by Fall if no Federal Intervention

On a day when the DOW dropped below 10,000 and an announcement of the economy producing only 21,000 private sector jobs, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan and two top southern Democrats warned that without federal funds, thousands of teachers would be laid off in the coming weeks.

The jobs of 10,000 North Carolina teachers are at risk among 300,000 nationwide*, Duncan said, as recession-hit state and local governments struggle to meet requirements to balance their budgets.

"We are strongly urging Congress to take action and take action this month," Duncan said. "I don't have a Plan B. Plan B is children around the country are going to get hurt."Duncan (D-NC) and Etheridge (D-NC) said Thursday that a $23 billion education jobs fund proposed in Congress was needed to keep teachers in the classroom and off the unemployment rolls at a time the economy remains fragile.

With billions more in federal education dollars at stake, Perdue and others lobbied Duncan to note the state's efforts to claim a share of the U.S. Education Department's "Race to the Top" grants.

* Hoboken, which is facing the retirement of over 10% of it's teaching faculty is not in danger of layoffs in the Fall due to budget shortfalls.

NJ Governor Christie Overrides Education Commissioner Bret Schundler for Compromising with Teachers Union- Round 2 Race to the Top Application

In a move that may compromise New Jersey from being competitive for over $400 million in RACE TO THE TOP funding, Governor Christie broke an agreement reached by his Commissioner of Education and the New Jersey Teachers Association (NJEA). In doing so, Governor Christie essentially communicated both his lack of faith in his Commissioner as well further establishing his lack of willingness to reach any compromise on his educational reform agenda. You may recall, that part of having a competitive bid for RACE TO THE TOP funding is predicated on cooperation with teachers on some mandated reform efforts (i.e. merit pay, accountability, etc...).

You can view the Round Two Application by clicking HERE.

You can view the official Press Release by the NJ Department of Education by clicking HERE.

Below is an article that appeared on NJ.COM on June 1, 2010. The full article can be accessed by clicking HERE.

-------------------------------------

TRENTON — The Christie administration today submitted a new application for up to $400 million in federal education funding, promising a "bold reform agenda" — but breaking an agreement reached last week with the state's largest teachers' union.

The Race to the Top application returns to what Gov. Chris Christie called his “core principles” of rewarding teachers based on merit and student advancement instead of seniority.

In a West Trenton press conference today, Christie said his Education Commissioner Bret Schundler had made a mistake by announcing an agreement last week with the New Jersey Education Association that included compromises on merit pay, teacher seniority, evaluations and tenure.

The union had refused to endorse the state's first Race to the Top application in January, and the Obama administration has made a unified front a key factor in winning funding.

Tennessee and Delaware received funding in the first round of competition, and Christie in March said the "arrogant" union's lack of support "may have" been to blame for New Jersey being left out.

The agreement announced last week seemed to be a compromise to try to do better, but it was apparently made without Christie’s sign-off. The Republican governor said he first heard of his Education Commissioner Bret Schundler’s compromise after it was publicly announced and insisted the application be reworked.

"We had a long talk on Friday about the way these things work," Christie said of a meeting with Schundler. "This is my administration, I'm responsible for it, and I make the decisions."

But Christie said he still had firm and complete confidence in Schundler.

"I like working with him, and I think he’s one of the more inventive minds in public education in the country," Christie said. "I’m sure we’ll have disagreements in the future. Hopefully we’ll just handle them a little differently.

State Democratic lawmakers today said the governor made an "about-face" on the application that could jeopardize New Jersey's chances.

Teachers union president Barbara Keshishian in a statement said she felt “deep disappointment, utter frustration and total outrage” in the move, which she said would “greatly jeopardize” the state’s chances to get the federal money.

Keshishian also said that they heard about the changes in the application after union officials spoke to Schundler.

“In April, the governor wrote on his blog that he was hoping to submit a Race To The Top application with ‘sufficient support from New Jersey’s education stakeholders — including the NJEA,’” Keshishian said. “Now, we learn that despite all that hard work — and the long-overdue collaboration that New Jerseyans want between Gov. Christie and NJEA — the governor has once again chosen the path of conflict.”

Christie Round 2 Cover Letter for Race to the Top Funding