Zuckerberg Throws $100 Mil Down a Newark New Jersey Sewer

Perhaps proving once and for all that rich people aren’t all that much smarter than most people, just luckier, Facebook founder/absconder/beneficiary Mark Zuckerberg was so naïve to think the Newark New Jersey school system could change just because he shows up and throws $100 Million dollars at it. I wish he had given me a call first. This is a classic head shaker.

The New Jersey teachers union only saw office make-overs, 10% annual raises and junkets to the Caribbean and not new school text books, fixed heating and ventilation systems and innovative teaching methods. I’ll bet they thought it was Christmas even though it’s possible they tried to ban that from the school curriculum.  So somehow, and I’m sure it was a tough job, the Newark schools managed to piss through most of the 100 large before anyone who cared noticed. Now , surprise, there is no will to root out the culprits, as if they’d ever turn themselves in, and Mr. “I’ve got my ideals” is left to ponder how he managed to get snookered. But I’m sure he wrote it off on his taxes so no worries there.

So now it’s clear. The problem with the Newark, NJ school system is just a microcosm of what is wrong with most of the public school systems in every major city in the country: Too much Federal Government, too many Union Bureaucrats and too much Tenure. 

It certainly isn't money. The money spent per pupil, many a study has shown, has no correlation to the success of the students. It’s the involvement of the teachers and the community. City schools are notorious for not listening to the parents since the teachers and the administrators are untouchable. Most can’t be fired. Witness New York City's “Rubber Rooms” where bad teachers, stupid teachers and sometimes even criminal teachers are put to wait out a “cooling off” period, with full pay, until the heat dies down and they can be re-assigned to another school.

No accountability means no change. The only people who are stuck going to these inner-city schools are poor people with jobs or welfare recipients who can’t move or it would jeopardize their government support payments. In other words; people without a culture of success. Everyone who knows better has moved on.

And here is where the “segregation” that Michelle Obama and the Political Left are trying to seize upon as a new race issue is prevalent.

How can it be that 60 years after the Brown vs. The Board of Education verdict, the nation’s schools are still considered segregated?  Where the previous instance of segregation that prompted the original Brown decision was because of the schools systems purposely separating the school children by race, the schools issues today is that they are self-segregating. 

The schools have gotten so bad because of their rigid nature, failure to adapt and just out-right not caring because the teacher’s union answers to NO ONE that if people have to pay twice to leave, they will and they HAVE.  In many instances parents who own a home in a failed school district for which their property taxes go to support will also bite the bullet and pay the tuition for a private school. Since the government did away with the voucher system, where taxpayers receive a voucher for the money they paid in property taxes to be used for ANY school they want to send their kids, only the people who can't pay twice are hurt, the working poor. People are voting by the only means left to them when faced with an unmovable object…THEY move. Parents will take the 2nd job or will move or rent an apartment in a "good school" town even if it means a longer drive to work. 

I have a friend whose daughter is in the Fall River, Massachusetts school system. She can’t get a grade changed on the girl’s transcript even though the teacher has said it’s wrong. She is on her third appointment with the head administrator of the high school to see if anything can be done since you can’t just walk in and see anybody at the high school. It's appointment only. This is time spent away from work, she has to work on their schedule and lord knows you can't get anybody on the phone. Imagine if this were a bigger problem. 

I think it's time for her to consider moving.