To Getting It’s Bullying Law.
From Thursday’s Asbury Park Press:
On Wednesday, Gov. Chris Christie and gay rights activist Steven Goldstein, chairman of Garden State Equality, stood together to announce a fix for New Jersey’s imperiled anti-bullying law.
Their differences on marriage equality are deep and long-standing. But when it comes to the victimization of young people, getting this law right must take priority. Christie announced that the state will award $1 million in grants, and a new task force will be appointed to resolve objections to the law.
The action comes after the state Council on Local Mandates ruled in January that the new anti-bullying law imposed an unfunded mandate from the state. The law requires school principals to assign a staff member, such as a guidance counselor or school psychologist, to serve as an anti-bullying specialist. Other faculty members must be assigned as an anti-bullying coordinator and members of a school safety team. That is an added expense for school districts, but surely not a budget-busting one.
This is turning into a complete disaster. Instead of simply forcing the towns to tax us for this bureaucratic nightmare, it is going to also tax us directly for it. Of course there is no way that $1 million is going to cover anything close to what the law will actually cost.
From pressofAtlanticCity:
More than 200 school districts in the state are spending more than $2 million this year to implement the state’s new anti-bullying law, according to survey results released Thursday by the New Jersey School Boards Association.
That’s twice what the state Legislature and Gov. Chris Christie agreed Wednesday to put into a state Bullying Prevention Fund, and raises questions about whether, even with the new money, the law might still be considered unconstitutional under the State Mandate/State Pay provision.
I’m quite sure the state will distribute it’s anti-bullying aid just as fairly as it does it’s other education aid. In other words we will get nothing. We will pay to implement this foolishness here in Belmar, and we, as state tax payers, will now also pay to implement it in the state’s pet districts, also known as the “dirty thirty”. This is what Trenton calls a “compromise”.
And by the way, I don’t think Trenton is going to pay for all the lawsuits against school districts that will surely result from the enactment of this law. Well, they won’t pay for Belmar’s anyway.
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