Friday, April 23, 2010

How Abbott Districts Affect You and Me


The Abbott School Districts are school districts that are provided remedies to ensure that their students receive public education in accordance with New Jersey Supreme Court's rulings in Abbott v. Burke, a case filed by the Education Law Center. This ruling essentially asserted that the public primary and secondary education in poorer communities throughout the State of New Jersey was unconstitutionally substandard and mandated that State funding for these districts should be equal to that spent in the wealthiest districts in the State.

The Court, in Abbott II, and in subsequent rulings, ordered the State to see that these children received an adequate education thorough the implementation of reforms, including standards-based education which is supported by parity funding. This includes various supplemental programs and school facilities improvements, including Head Start and early education programs.

There are currently thirty-one Abbott Districts in the State of New Jersey. Paterson is one of these Abbott Districts.

There is a preschool and child-care agency in Paterson, the B.J. Wilkerson Child Development Center, mainly funded by (our) tax dollars. Their Board of Directors have graciously decided that their Executive Director, Ron Williams, should get $300,000.00 a year, according to a report from NorthJersey.com. (I should note here that the Board of Directors includes Mr. Williams' wife and daughter. )

He gets $300,000.00 for essentially running a daycare that has 350 kids enrolled.

Oh, and the B.J. Wilkerson Child Development Center got $4.3 million in revenue in 2008, which included $4.2 million in (our tax dollars) government funds, while the remainder was from tuition and donations.

(Did I say this was all for 350 kids?)

Here's the article in NorthJersey.com:

http://www.northjersey.com/news/042310_Preschool_chief_gets_300000.html

This is just one little Abbott District daycare that is getting mega tax dollars - our tax dollars (and not for nothing but for all that, these kids better be little Einsteins or at least especially "gifted and talented" with this amount of monetary advantage going for them. Heck - I wonder if the kids in the really affluent areas that are helping to fund the Abbott Districts have this much money spent on them per student....?).

How many more of these are out there using up precious resources that should be spent on all children equally and not on someone like Mr. Williams, so he can put on a nice designer suit and cheese for the camera?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

One word - OBSCENE!!!

NFS said...

Intereting tidbit from the article:

"Williams became executive director in 1994 — three years after the center was founded by the Seminary Baptist Church in Paterson, where Alfred E. Steele was the pastor. Steele would go on to become a city councilman and state assemblyman before being forced out of office following his arrest and conviction on bribery charges."

I think it's a total joke to even call these outfits "non-profits". Clearly, people are certainly profiting off of them. Poor, stupid taxpayers.

dougman said...

Tax payers:

Certainly poor......
and even more certainly stupid!!!