The Morning Briefing - January 8, 2016
TRENTON - With the lame-duck session careening toward its conclusion on Monday, the New Jersey Education Association is ginning up its membership to take a break from the classroom and c'mon down to the Statehouse. The union wants the Legislature to know where it stands on the state's pension system - which it wants continuously funded - and wants to tell lawmakers what it thinks of the controversial PARCC test, hating the fact that teacher evaluations hinge on student performance. The union has about 195,000 members in the state, the Record notes. Heck, if the NJEA could somehow wrangle 5 percent to show in Trenton, it could be a mob scene.
TRENTON - Not only the NJEA is demanding solutions for the struggling, ever-shorted pension system. Democratic lawmakers are hitting the streets to hype their proposal to amend the state constitution, inserting one-of-a-kind language that would require quarterly payments from the state budget into the pension system for state workers. Of course, such a drastic move would require voter approval, with plenty of questions if such a move is realistic, right or responsible.
TRENTON - And if this is not enough drama for your typical lame duck, there's also more talk of legislative redistricting. OK, try to stifle the yawn for a second, as opponents claim this is just a Democratic power grab. Democrats want to overhaul the formula for redrawing the state's legislative map every 10 years, claiming they simply want to make elections more competitive. Maps would be concocted based on election data from presidential, gubernatorial and U.S. Senate contests, the Record reports. But, because New Jersey loves its Democrats, the GOP is howling that such a move would make the elections even less competitive and further slant the advantage to the left. Perhaps such ingenuity can be applied to the Transportation Trust Fund.
TRENTON - Body cameras won't be made mandatory for every New Jersey police officer. At least, not in the lame duck session. A bill requiring body cameras for all 35,000 cops didn't clear the Senate Law and Public Safety Committee. Sen. Nick Sacco cast the deciding vote that put the kibosh on a bill, telling N.J. Advance Media while he supports body cameras, he doesn't like unfunded mandates. Sacco, also mayor of North Bergen, said: "All I see is tax increases." Sacco's not wrong. The state Office of Legislative Services (OLS) estimates the first-year price tag to put a body camera on every cop at a whopping $88.5 million.
BOGOTA - Sounds more like a lottery payout than an out-of-court settlement. Officials in this tiny Bergen County borough agreed to cough up $2.25 million to end a three-year legal fight over the 2012 dismissal of its first female police officer. She will get tidy, lump-sum checks of $125,000 this year and next; after that she gets $3,959 a month for 20 years. Her two law firms will divvy up $935,000, NorthJersey.com reports. Last year, a state judge said Bogota officials and police brass improperly disciplined, suspended, and then fired the officer, committing a host of blunders that will cost taxpayers for years to come.
PATERSON - He did the crime, served the time, and got elected to the school board. But district officials refuse to swear in Kevin M. Henry. And, they had cops escort him from Wednesday night's meeting after Henry stormed onto an auditorium stage to dispute being blocked because of his 1991 conviction for theft by deception and forgery, the Record says. Released from jail in 2004, Henry is now a church deacon who runs a prison reentry program. With little campaigning, he won one of three city school board seats. Even a former board member, who Henry defeated, rose to his defense saying: "The man served his time. He should have an opportunity to lead the community. He won fair and square."
STATEWIDE - For towns where kids are struggling to read and write, some state officials are calling for extended school days to require remedial Language Arts classes. The measure, sponsored by Assembly members Reed Gusciora and L. Grace Spencer, would allow the state to declare an "educational state of emergency" for districts where a large majority of younger students are botching English Language Arts on state exams. The bill comes with a price tag, of course, as the districts would receive extra state money to run mandatory two-and-a-half-hour after-school programs for grades K-3 and other supports. Based on the NJASK scores, there are 26 districts currently in crisis, the Record reports.
STATEWIDE - Maybe these kids don't need to read after all. Perhaps their parents will somehow be able to win the $700 million Powerball lottery - the largest, 44-state prize that ever existed. But some caution for those who are already planning how they will spend their fortune: The odds of winning are about 292 million to one. A number that is all-too-familiar for the "Martin O'Malley for President" campaign. (Insert "Who?" here.)
NEWARK - The Newark City Council isn't exactly applauding Mayor Baraka's call to limit charter school growth in the city. In a letter to Education Commissioner David Hespe, Baraka wrote that the state should not approve expansion of any more charter schools "until Newark Public Schools' budget shortfalls can be addressed." In their own letter to the commissioner, the council agreed with the mayor that NPS should not be shortchanged, but argued that limiting the growth of high-quality charters is not the solution. "Parents in Newark should have the option of sending their children to the school of their choice," they wrote. The mayor seems to have forgotten that his own administration just gave approval to one of the city's top performing charter schools to build a new school in the parking lot of the former Star-Ledger building.
IN OTHER IMPORTANT NEWS
STATEWIDE - Now here is something to cry about: Because of the ridiculous cost of baby formula these days, police are reporting an uptick in the number of shoplifting cases. Apparently, there are people across the country who are piling baby formula into their shopping baskets and darting for the door. Investigators working on a sting in Florida - called "Operation Hot Milk" - reported thieves were paid up to $300 a day and used multiple lookouts while filling bags with formula. They hit 15 or more stores a day and later repackaged the formula and sold it online or in other states, pilfering $2 million annually. With formula costing $30 or more for a 1-pound can, and parents desperate to find a cost-effective solution, expect plenty more news from Operation Hot Milk.
PLANO, TX - Sounds like a "Back to the Future" temporal paradox, but a 53-year-old grandmother really did give birth to her own granddaughter on Wednesday, the Plano Star-Courier reported. Tracey Thompson was a surrogate for her 28-year-old daughter who struggled for years with infertility. Although she was postmenopausal, Thompson underwent a procedure to implant her daughter's embryo in April and received special medical care for late-life surrogacy. The result: A healthy baby girl weighing 6 pounds, 11 ounces. "Grandma-Mom" and "Mom-Sister" are both well, already preparing for lengthy explanations.
THIS DAY IN HISTORY
It was this day in 1935 that the spectrophotometer was patented by A.C. Hardy. And, what the heck is a spectrophotometer?
WORD OF THE DAY
Spectrophotometer - noun
Definition: An instrument that measures the amount of light of a specific wavelength that passes through a medium. According to Beer's law, the amount of light absorbed by a medium is proportional to the concentration of the absorbing material or solute present.
Example: "After reading all this, I still I have absolutely no idea what a spectrophotometer is or what it does."