By Matt Rooney | The Save Jersey Blog
Yes, your little ghouls and gobblins were back at school this morning, Save Jersey, ready for another year of ruining new expensive sneakers, learning bad words at recess and, of course, having their sweet little heads packed full of liberal mush courtesy of the Common Core standards.
But in between the endless annual bus stop photo ops and after-school homework grumbling, please don’t lose sight of an all-important fact: you’re paying out the ass for a substandard product.
Assuming, of course, that you’re paying property taxes like I do.
The number crunchers over at NJ Spotlight recently broke down the latest statistics and what they found is staggering (though not surprising); on average, New Jersey spent $18,891 per pupil for the 2013-2014 school year, buoyed by $9 billion in direct aid from the state, representing a significant 4.8% overall spending increase from the 2011-2012 academic cycle. Since our genius politicians decided to tether property taxes and education funding, your taxes continue to climb (though somewhat less precipitously, on average, thanks to the 2.0 cap), to pay for an indoctrination program which leaves little Bobby and Susie ill-equipped to compete with the kids in China who are kicking your kids’ butts in mathematics.
Do the math. We’ve talked about it plenty of times before here at Save Jersey. That works out to almost $500,000 per class room. When the average teacher salary in N.J. is $60,000, then even when you take account of things like teacher benefits, electricity, chalk, etc., you still come nowhere close to justifying nearly $19,000 per student. Each of our kids should sport a solid gold laptop, Star Trek-style tricorder and 140 IQ score for that kind of money. But they’re not.
My amateur advice? Scrape together whatever money you’ve got left over (why are you laughing?) after paying Trenton and D.C., buy your kid a Mandarin Rosetta Stone program, and sign up for a frequent flyer program to visit them in North Carolina after you move to Pennsylvania. That’s where all of this is headed. That’s our reality.
Oh… and best of luck to your children for the new school term. They’re going to need it. Bullying and Michelle Obama-designed “lunches” are sadly the least of their problems.
