New Jersey School Board Association’s Executive Director, Marie Bilik, has issued a set of recommendations to Gov.-elect Christie, including “advancing merit pay,” “the elimination of lifetime tenure,” and “strengthening academic standards.”

Good move on the part of the usually-staid NJSBA, primarily because it aligns N.J.’s 600 school boards with at least a few of the Race To The Top criteria. Okay — maybe the document doesn’t specifically mention RTTT, but there’s enough overlap there to applaud NJSBA’s foresight. It also shifts the dynamic a bit. If out-going Ed Comm. Lucille Davy and the DOE pull those all-nighters and crank out some semblance of a RTTT application, they’ve already got official buy-in from local boards. What don’t they have? Buy-in from the leaders of NJEA, whom have relentlessly repeated on the record their opposition to reforms like merit pay and elimination of tenure.

Is the leadership of NJEA ready to bear responsibility for depriving N.J.’s public schools of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants? While lack of buy-in from presidents of local unions isn’t a deal-breaker, it certainly doesn’t help our chances for success. We’d like to see an set of recommendations to Christie from NJEA which indicates recognition of what’s at stake, and a willingness to accept, perhaps even embrace, necessary changes in the footprint of the teaching profession.