Earlier this week, in a story about Jersey City Public Schools’ habit of giving large bonuses to central office administrators, I neglected a key piece of why the city’s school budget problems are more complicated than reductions in state aid. While Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop is indeed a key player in district profligacy, to understand the current quagmire we have to go back three years when the school board was in negotiations with the local teachers union, the Jersey City Education Association (JCEA).

Let’s take a trip down memory lane. Back in 2019, then-Jersey City School Board president Sudhan Thomas was outed for privately negotiating with JCEA leaders about their pending contract, a very big no-no in school board governance. A former school board member, after some sleuthing, discovered that Thomas met nine separate times with the union’s negotiating team.

In doing so, Thomas violated several assurances within the New Jersey Board Member Code of Ethics, including “I will make no personal promises nor take any private action that may compromise the board.” (Full story here). Second, his campaign for a board seat was almost entirely paid for by JCEA and its mothership NJEA; of the $9,325 he raised, $8,200 came from teacher union dues. He even paid himself and his lawyer commissions from the haul! Conflict of interest, anyone?

That’s okay: In a blast of comeuppance, the following year Thomas was indicted on charges of embezzlement, money laundering, and fraud that had nothing to do with school district malfeasance.

Yet in the contract Thomas negotiated with union leaders in 2019, district finances took a big hit and the repercussions continue. In 2011 under the Christie Administration, the Legislature passed a bill called Chapter 78 that required public employees to make contributions to their health care benefits instead of the public paying the full premium. The new law required that teachers pay between 3%-35% of the premiums depending on their salaries: the higher the salary, the higher the contribution. Chapter 78 expired after six years yet the understanding was that districts would maintain the new premium schedules that had now become baked into their budgets. Upon the expiration date, the NJ School Board Association urged local boards to keep those increased premiums, advising this:

When faced with a proposed reduction in Chapter 78 contributions, the board could, and perhaps should, respond with a resounding ‘no.’ There is nothing illegal or inappropriate about rejecting a proposal. Maintaining Chapter 78 contributions should be a ‘die on the sword’ issue for the board.

But Thomas had no “resounding no” to reduced contributions. Instead he (and, later, most of the school board) agreed to a plan where teachers paid 3% of salary for a single plan, 4% for a parent with a child or for two adults, and 5% for a family. 

At the time, then-Senate President Stephen Sweeney blasted the terms of the new deal, saying the teachers will see $9 million in savings while taxpayers will not.

“The agreement is a giveaway to the local NJEA, and the consequences for the students, taxpayers and teachers of Jersey City will be harsh and they will be real,” Sweeney said. “The givebacks will take money out of the classrooms, force teacher layoffs and make the schools budget problems worse.”

Sweeney was prescient.

If you like everything wrapped in a ribbon, here’s the kicker: Thomas is a long-time ally of Mayor Fulop. From the Globe, courtesy of a whistle-blower:

Thomas, a close political ally of Mayor Steve Fulop, helped the mayor orchestrate the removal of former Gov. James E. McGreevey earlier this year.  Thomas later became acting executive director of the Jersey City Employment and Training Program before stepping down last month.

Neat enough for you?

Meanwhile among Jersey City’s 30,000 district students, more than half low-income, one out of two can’t read at grade-level and one out of three can’t do math at grade-level. But all is hunky-dory in the school board room and the central office. Here’s a comment from an inside source: “Steven Fulop deserves no kudos or credit for his statements now or ever. In fact, what he deserves is a nice cell next to Sudhan in whichever state or federal prison in which Sudhan ultimately lands.”

(Photo courtesy of New Jersey Globe.)