Dr. Marc Gaswirth is a retired public school administrator who has written extensively for more than 40 years about public sector bargaining and school human resources.

This June a small number of the state’s registered Democratic voters will head to the polls to decide their party’s nominee to replace the current governor, Phil Murphy, who is term-limited from running again. 

So far we have heard only vague and general comments about education policies from any of the competitors in the race. But the one who should be under the greatest scrutiny is Sean Spiller, president of the New Jersey Education Association.

Spiller leads a 200,000 member union whose interlocking political action committees have committed to spending $35 million dollars of its members’ dues on his campaign and is the only candidate of either party leading a major lobbying group that has long been influential in the development and implementation of the state’s education policies.

Spiller’s announced positions seem to generally align with a liberal agenda ostensibly in support of middle class values, whatever that may mean. His education agenda almost assuredly will replicate that of the union he has led for years and likely parallel that of the Murphy Administration’s but with even greater zeal. 

Murphy’s policies have been light on teacher accountability and accepting of lower standards for student performance; heavy on pro-teacher union goals, including full funding of the pension formula, increased school employee bargaining rights, and job protections; and, until recently, hostile to public charter school expansion.   

Spiller co-chaired a state task force on the teacher shortage that generated lots of rhetoric but little in the way of results or permanent reforms. Nor has it substantially increased the number and quality of individuals entering the profession, especially in hard-to-fill fields, leaving many students, particularly those in underserved areas, without properly certificated teachers.

His position that all school employees be enrolled in a single-tiered, more expensive pension program, dating before the 2007 reforms, would dig a deeper hole in the state’s currently underfunded pension system.

In addition, Spiller is dedicated to NJEA’s long standing positions to: increase state education funding without any greater accountability levels for teachers or performance standards for students; further shift the balance of power favoring local unions bargaining with school boards; retain the nearly 600 operating school districts despite known efficiencies that might be gained by their consolidation; and  lift the requirements for school employees to share the rising costs of medical coverage. As such, NJEA’s  leader will be hard pressed not to advocate positions that will result in higher property and other taxes for the middle class he purports to represent.  

Almost assuredly with these policies in place, New Jersey will remain the most expensive state in which to reside. Spiller’s advocacy for them will  play into the hands of the Republicans who, consistent with the current climate in Washington, will argue that that the state exemplifies what is wrong with the national government as a whole—an entrenched bureaucracy, a bloated government, and a gross misunderstanding of the political mood.

Notwithstanding the truth about these beliefs, Spiller’s candidacy would be a boon to any Republican gubernatorial hopeful as it highlights the excesses of government at odds with itself: a desire to provide more public services at a level that the public is unwilling to pay and without any degree of serious examination and permanent reform.

Before voters cast their ballots this year, they should ask themselves whether local annual property taxes, now averaging statewide $10,000 driven mostly by education costs, have overall improved student outcomes and well-being. The great challenges that began with the Covid pandemic five years ago have recently revealed the disparity in outcomes among students attending New Jersey’s public schools. Some, as expected, have continued to do quite well while the scores of others, especially Black and Hispanic students, lag seriously behind by differentials as high as 40 to 50 percent over their white and Asian counterparts. 

Voters in this June’s primary, and again in November’s general election, will have to decide which candidates, if any, are  willing to confront these issues and which ones, most likely most, will just  “kick the can down the road.” More important, we should not select a candidate whose education agenda replicates that of a certain special interest group.