By Deborah Yaffe

In the months before the February 1981 FILING of Abbott v. Burke, the Newark-based Education Law Center went looking for plaintiffs: families willing to put their children’s names on a lawsuit challenging the way the state paid for its schools. Although one parent heard that ELC wanted a cross-section of educational backgrounds and economic circumstances, the only essential legal element was that the children attend public school in the four cities the suit would take as case studies in urban educational misery–Camden, East Orange, Irvington and Jersey City.

The plaintiffs were chosen and the suit was filed; over the next 26 years, the Abbott case spawned more than a dozen state Supreme Court rulings and transformed the state’s economic and political landscape. As lawyers, judges and politicians took center stage, almost no one remembered the 20 children from 10 families whose names still headed the case. A hallmark of Abbott became the near-total separation between the public reality of the lawsuit and the private realities of the individuals who were nominally at its center.

In her new book, Other People’s Children: The Battle for Justice and Equality in New Jersey’s Schools, Deborah Yaffe tells the stories of the Abbott plaintiffs--private stories that, like a subterranean river, flowed unseen beneath the ground on which the public drama was enacted. The children of Abbott are individuals, not types, but their life stories illuminate the complex interactions among public institutions, private choices and social conditions that reformers inevitably confront. Bringing their stories into the light reveals the true dimensions of the public battle, for, as Robert Wilentz, then-chief justice of New Jersey’s Supreme Court, wrote in his 1990 Abbott ruling, “After all the analyses are completed, we are still left with these students and their lives.”

In this excerpt, Yaffe begins the stories of two of the plaintiff children: Raymond Abbott, the only white child in the group, a Camden sixth grader who became the lead plaintiff by alphabetical happenstance; and Liana Diaz, a Jersey City fifth grader.

Raymond Abbott The Abbotts had a natural link to the Education Law Center’s case: they were old acquaintances of ELC board member Samuel Appel, a minister who had spent 20 years immersed in reform efforts in Camden. Appel had originally come to Camden to oversee a group of struggling Presbyterian churches, and Howard Abbott eventually became pastor of one of them.

Howard Abbott and Frances Bell had met in Nevada, her home state, in the late 1960s, when both were in their twenties; by the time the church sent Howard to Camden in 1969, they were married and the parents of a baby boy, Raymond. The family lived in the manse next to Howard’s church, in an eastern Camden neighborhood evolving from all-white to predominantly minority. Frances--a heavy-set, dark-haired woman known since childhood as Luci, after her middle name, Lucille–taught social studies in a Camden school, Veterans Memorial Middle School. Howard, a white pastor in a city with fewer and fewer white residents, was deeply frustrated by his work at a church that was obviously dying.

Although Luci hid the truth from her family, he had been an alcoholic throughout their marriage, and soon his anger and disappointment spilled out in verbal abuse. They separated when their son Ray was in second grade, and Luci moved out of the church manse. The separation was far from amicable, and for a child, the situation was confusing: Ray’s mother told him his father drank, his father insisted he didn’t, and from what nine-year-old Ray could see, Howard was still functioning, still writing sermons. One weekend, the little boy, angry over something he couldn’t remember years later, refused to pay his regular visit to his father’s house. A day or two later, the family was told that Howard was dead–an alcohol fatality, they learned.

Luci Abbott stayed on in Camden, committed to her teaching and compelled to minister to more than just the intellectual needs of her students. One year, she started a coat and galoshes exchange; later, when she began working as a school librarian, she helped students get jobs assisting her. Once, when she was hospitalized for a minor operation, an orderly dropped by to thank her for all she had done for him when he was her student. “If it hadn’t been for you, Mrs. Abbott, I would have been in a gang,” he said. In those days, Luci and Ray, too, were close: they had season tickets to Philadelphia Phillies baseball games, and Luci taught Ray to calculate a batting average.

Luci had also formed a romantic bond with George Cherry, an administrator at another Camden middle school. Cherry–African-American and nearly 19 years older than Luci, with five children from his first marriage–was a kind man, and Ray was soon calling him Pop, blocking out the memories of his life with Howard. Luci’s mother, now living on Long Island, did not worry about the racial difference between Luci and George, but she did wonder about the age difference. Luci had just buried one husband, and her mother hated to think of her burying another.

Although Luci Abbott was committed to her work in Camden, she was hardly blind to the district’s many shortcomings. At a seminar one year, she heard about the school music program in the affluent north Jersey town of Montclair, where students could choose among classical violin, ballet, tap dancing, choral music, guitar and singing lessons. That same year, the principal of Ray’s elementary school told parents that music, art and gym classes were being discontinued to save money. The vivid contrast made her angry. “Raymond may not be talented in music,” she thought, “but how will I ever know, if he can’t have a music class?”

She had less theoretical worries about Ray, however. He had always floundered in school, struggling to sound out letters and words. It took Luci Abbott a year to get him evaluated for special education placement; eventually, he was diagnosed as marginally perceptually impaired. In the meantime, the other kids noticed his struggles and called him stupid and dummy and peanut-head. Ray learned to wall off his emotions and block out the hurt, but from time to time, he also tried to win the other kids’ temporary approval: he would take a few dollars from his mother’s purse, without permission, to buy bags of penny candy that he would pass out to his classmates, like a pint-size lord of the manor.

Though ultimately he learned to read, the process was always slow and hard. At Veterans Memorial Middle School, where his mother taught, he started out planning to keep up, but it took him so long to get through his work that the teachers became convinced he wasn’t even trying. Eventually, he wasn’t. Vets was a tough, dirty place, where you had to keep your guard up to avoid losing your lunch money or the jacket you had draped over the back of your chair, but for Ray, the teacher’s son, Vets was tougher than average. Every day, it seemed, somebody his mom had scolded in social studies class would pick a fight with him. He could defend himself well enough, and if his mother asked about a bump or bruise, he made something up–“I fell while I was playing handball,” that kind of thing.

When Luci Abbott signed Ray on to the Education Law Center’s lawsuit, she might not have known about the fights, the lies, the petty thefts, or the nights Ray sneaked out his bedroom window when she thought he was sleeping to play stickball on the school playground or basketball in the park. But it seemed clear to her that her 12-year-old son was still suffering from the twin blows of his parents’ split and his father’s death. “Potential of child camouflaged,” an ELC staffer noted on the center’s intake form. “Had she not known her rights child would have been lost.”

Liana Diaz Lucila Rivera hated growing up on welfare, with investigators opening your closets, combing through your family’s property, forcing you to justify every possession. Yet one day in 1970, here she was–20 years old, a new mother, with an on-again-off-again relationship with her baby’s father and a welfare check to cash. As she waited at the bank with all the other welfare mothers, one in particular caught her eye, a heavy-set woman in tight polyester pants. That image of everything she did not want to be seared itself into her memory. Six months after her daughter’s birth, Lucila got a job and told welfare she no longer needed their services.

In her two decades of life, Lucila had already weathered plenty of hardship. Her mother, originally from Puerto Rico, was a troubled woman: manic-depressive, sometimes given to drinking binges, sometimes physically abusive to the eight children she had borne to five different men. Lucila had finished high school in Brooklyn and, with the help of a special program for minority students, had gone on to Hunter College, but she felt insecure and out of place in that world and dropped out after a year. She was working for a New York bank when, at a free salsa concert in Central Park, she met the man who would become the father of her daughter Liana.

After her brief detour into welfare, Lucila returned to her bank job and, when Liana was four, married Justo Diaz, a Peruvian immigrant who worked at an envelope factory in Jersey City. Justo adopted Liana, and the family bought a house in Jersey City; another daughter and a son arrived over the next couple of years. Liana began Catholic school, but not until first grade. Her mother, remembering her own acute childhood shame at her family’s multitude of last names, did not want to enroll Liana until her adoption was final and she had taken Justo’s name.

In 1979, Lucila Diaz parlayed her acquaintance with a politically connected neighbor into a secretarial job at the Jersey City school district’s central office, and her boss there encouraged her to enroll in a public policy course St. Peter’s College was running for older students returning to school. Lucila began cramming a week’s worth of classes into each Saturday, while Justo watched the children. But the marriage was failing; by the time Liana started fifth grade in 1980, her parents were separating, and with money tight, they took Liana out of Catholic school and enrolled her in public school. Lucila got special permission to bypass aging and overcrowded School 3, their neighborhood school, and send Liana to small and well-regarded School 16.

Although School 16, too, had its drawbacks–it lacked a lunchroom, and Liana’s class had 27 students–years later Lucila could not remember feeling particularly discontented with Liana’s education. Still, she was receptive when the director of her St. Peter’s program, an old friend of an ELC staffer, suggested she add 10-year-old Liana’s name to ELC’s lawsuit. If better educational opportunity for minority students was the cause, Lucila Diaz thought, she was glad to help.

Editor’s Note: For more on the Abbott plaintiffs and how their lives unfolded as the lawsuit progressed, see Other People’s Children: The Battle for Justice and Equality in New Jersey’s Schools (Rutgers University Press, 2007).

Deborah Yaffe has worked as a reporter for the Asbury Park Press, the Jersey Journal, the Recorder of San Francisco, and the Gannett state bureau in Trenton. She has a B.A. from Yale University and an M.A. from Oxford University.

Arts education for every child is within our power

By Kristin Wenger

There is little doubt that students who have the opportunity to learn about and experience the arts benefit in a variety of ways. National studies have shown that children with high arts involvement performed better in standardized achievement tests than those with a low level of involvement in the arts and that schools that integrate arts into their curriculum have reported positive changes in the school environment.

New Jersey recognized the importance of arts education 20 years ago when the Literacy in Arts Task Force was commissioned to do an 18-month study of arts education. Its conclusion at that time: “arts education in New Jersey deserves barely a passing grade.” Ten years ago, the state’s Core Curriculum Content Standards established expectations for essential subjects including visual and performing arts, setting the stage for New Jersey schools to incorporate arts education into their programs.

Where does access to arts education in New Jersey stand now? A definitive report on the state of arts education in New Jersey schools answers that important question. Within Our Power: The Progress, Plight and Promise of Arts Education for Every Child was released in September. It represents two years of work to gather information from more than 98 percent of New Jersey’s schools. The New Jersey Arts Education Census Project (NJAEC) was designed to document arts education in every school through a comprehensive statewide survey; combine the survey findings with other information to create a 360-degree view of arts education; broadly disseminate the results of the survey; create a model that may be deployed in other states; and develop an ongoing system to update, maintain and distribute arts education information.

The NJAEC is a collaborative partnership of the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, the New Jersey Department of Education, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey and Music For All.

According to Bob Morrison, an executive vice president at Music for All, and the director of the New Jersey Arts Education Census Project, taking on this monumental study was an opportunity for New Jersey to take a leadership role. “There exists a large void regarding data about arts education in this country, Morrison stated. “There is no meaningful information on the true state of arts education on a large scale anywhere. Our involvement was born out of frustration regarding this lack of data and coming to the realization that if we truly believe arts education should be available to all… how will we ever know when we achieve this goal if we never bother to count?”

The report looks at how arts education has changed in the last twenty years in New Jersey and concludes that while we have come very far, we still have much work to do.

State Board of Education Member Maud Dahme has seen changes during her tenure on the Board. “I believe that during my 24 years on the NJ State Board of Education there has been less emphasis on the arts disciplines.” Dahme continued, “I believe part of the problem is that the federal government and states are making courses more rigorous by demanding more years in the math, science and history courses. This leaves little time to pursue the arts, which we should not forget is also a requirement.”

What did the report reveal? Some of the key findings are in the box below.

When asked what he considered the most important findings of the report, Bob Morrison replied, “Responsibility without accountability is meaningless. We have great policies for arts education in New Jersey but very little accountability to ensure students are receiving the type of instruction that is part of the Core Curriculum Content Standards.”

The report includes an “index” of arts education for each school. The index is a combination of scores related to survey responses on various components of arts education. What this analysis reveals is that school size, along with professional and personal influence of educators and parents, impacts the level of arts in schools. Larger schools tended to have more arts programs. A color-coded map (see map below) allows viewers to quickly ascertain where their district falls in the index.

According to Morrison, this index revealed another major finding. “The second, and equally important finding is that the socio-economic status of a community has no bearing on whether or not a school or district offer arts education. We have great programs in our poorer communities and weak programs in some of our wealthier areas. At the end of the day it comes down to the commitment and will of the leaders and the community. Where there’s a will there’s a way.”

Maud Dahme expressed surprise at some of the findings. “What I found shocking was the finding that more than 75,000 of our students have no access to arts education. I think what also surprised me is that only 3 percent of elementary, 6 percent of middle and 14 percent of high schools offer arts education in all four disciplines as required. This is shocking,” Dahme concluded.

The report is indispensable for local districts that want to see how their programs measure up. In Ewing Township, the Census Report, “affirms and confirms that Ewing has a long tradition of quality music programs—instrumental and vocal,” according to Superintendent Raymond Broach. “However, we can not rest on our laurels. We need to keep things at a high level—we need to work to keep theatre and dance at as high a level as music and the visual arts,” Broach stated.

The report is divided into sections entitled: policies, students, teachers, resources and community. In each section there is a list of findings followed by recommendations on how those findings can be implemented.

What are the key recommendations? “They are all-important and need to be looked at comprehensively,” stated Bob Morrison. “That said, the accountability issue must be addressed and we need to quickly address those areas where students have no access to arts education and, as a result, are denied the many benefits an education in the arts provides,” he said.

How do we start to address the issue of accountability? According to Maud Dahme, “Schools can become more accountable by enforcing the Core Curriculum Standards on the Arts. The second part to that is that the Department of Education must monitor the schools more closely.” She continued, “I do believe that we now have the NJQSAC (New Jersey Quality Single Accountability Continuum) in place and more attention will be placed on monitoring. Hopefully every child will have access to the arts.”

Other key recommendations include:

• The New Jersey State Board of Education(NJDOE) should require schools to publicly report on an annual basis information regarding access to, level of participation in and quality of visual and performing arts education and that this information be included as part of a state accountability system.
  
  
• The NJDOE, with the Census Project Partners, should begin a review of schools where no arts instruction is available so information, policies and resources may be aligned to support the restoration of arts education in these schools.
  
  
• NJDOE should work with the appropriate professional organizations to increase professional development for school and district administrators regarding the importance of visual and performing arts.
  
  
• School districts should allocate a minimum of 5 percent of the total school budget to support visual and performing arts instruction.
  
  
• The state should increase funding for the NJDOE and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts (NJSCA) to support arts education initiatives. The NJSCA has encouraged and supported cultural organizations to become vital collaborative resources to schools. These types of collaborations should be celebrated and expanded.

According to Bob Morrison moving these goals to reality will occur with, “the will of our leaders and our citizens and a true commitment to educational excellence, which must include the arts for all New Jersey students.”

Superintendent Broach added, “The will of the leaders is essential. The Ewing School Board has been able to maintain a high quality arts program for all of our students even in difficult budget times.” He continued, “The Census Report should motivate local school boards to review and evaluate whether the Core Curriculum Content Standards are being realized—K- 12 across all subject areas.” Broach added that school boards should continue to consider whether the arts teachers are certified and qualified, and what staff development might need to take place to carry out the mission of the standards.

To move the recommendations of the report forward, the Census Project Partners announced the creation of the New Jersey Arts Education Partnership (NJAEP) as a centralized clearinghouse for information about visual and performing arts education programs, policies, best practices, models, certified arts specialists, news and information to assist schools, districts and communities.

The NJAEP’s mission is to provide a unified voice for a diverse group of constituents who agree on the educational benefits and impact of the arts, specifically the contribution they make to student achievement and a civilized, sustainable society.

We are at a very special time for arts education in our state. This report provides the comprehensive information necessary to provide access to a quality education in the arts for all New Jersey’s students.

The complete report and supporting documents can be viewed and downloaded at www.artsednj.org.

Arts in New Jersey Schools

Below are some of the key findings from the report, Within Our Power: The Progress, Plight and Promise of Arts Education for Every Child. While 94 percent of our students have access to some arts education in their schools, the majority of New Jersey public schools fail to offer instruction in all four arts disciplines (Dance, Music, Theatre and Visual Arts). More than 75,000 students attend school every day with no access to arts education. While 81 percent of schools have updated curricula to reflect the New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards in the Visual and Performing Arts, 19 percent of schools have not. 95 percent of all schools use appropriately certified arts specialists as the primary provider of music and visual arts instruction. But in theatre instruction, no more that 59 percent of schools in any grade use appropriately certified arts specialists. In dance, the percentage falls to 44 percent. Per-pupil spending (spending on materials and supplies) is a key factor in determining the level of visual and performing arts. Nearly 42 percent of the total spending on elementary arts education came from outside sources. Nearly 90 percent of New Jersey Public Schools interact with more than 1000 arts organizations to enhance visual and performing arts in the schools. –K.W.

New Jersey Elementary School Arts Education Index by District

Kristin Wenger is director of the New Jersey Arts Education Partnership (NJAEP).She can be reached at kris@artsednj.org

As concerns about the safety of students’ online activities increase, legal and policy issues prove vexing for school leaders

By Thomas Hutton

Concerns over student expression are nothing new in American culture and education. Think sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll. But even if every generation believes its own challenges to be unique in history—and the latest youthful improprieties the worst—our dizzying telecommunications revolution does pose unprecedented challenges for educators. Like other aspects of society, school law and policies are having trouble keeping pace with changes.

The “dark side” of student online expression, including some aspects of social networking sites like MySpace, confronts school officials with issues that place schools on uncertain legal ground and at the crux of conflicting societal demands. Concerns over what students do online have attracted intense interest from advocacy groups, elected officials, and the news media. But schools have serious legal limitations when it comes to freedom of expression and off-campus conduct.

Here are the major areas of concern, roughly arranged according to how much discretion a school has to intervene.

Threats and warning signs School authority over online expression is greatest when it comes to “true threats.” In the wake of the Columbine tragedy, and the shooters’ online admonitions, much advice for schools focused on becoming better attuned to the warning signs that, with benefit of hindsight, seem apparent. The recent Virginia Tech shootings have the whole country revisiting these lessons.

Online student expression provides a relatively easy means of monitoring for warning signs. Recent headlines about swift responses to perceived online threats by students are a testament to how seriously schools have taken the post-Columbine admonition to heart.

Courts vary in precisely how they evaluate a “true threat,” but typically they look at factors like:

• Whether the speaker reasonably could have foreseen that the speech would be perceived as a threat
  
  
• Whether a reasonable recipient would perceive it as such
  
  
• Whether the speaker communicated the threat directly to a “victim.”

It’s hard to fathom how posting threatening expression online is “not communicating the threat to anyone.” But some courts have found that a general online posting is not “direct” communication “to the object of the threat or a third person” and thus was protected speech.

In one case, a court determined that a student’s violent lyrics, which he sold online, were not a true threat but mere “imagery.” There was no “direct” communication to any intended “victim,” the court found, nor was there evidence the student had any violent tendencies. This case featured another key lesson: The court noted that the school took no action, other than disciplining the student, consistent with a genuine fear of a threat.

In contrast, another court found a student’s instant message that showed a gun shooting a bullet into a head with blood splattering and the words “Kill Mr. VanderMolen” constituted a true threat. The student had no reasonable ground to believe his message would not come to the attention of school officials, the court found.

The bottom line is that courts often express sympathy with the tough and fast judgment calls schools must make and often will give them the benefit of the doubt in borderline situations. But sometimes a court may rule that a school simply overreacted to the violent speech that now is commonplace in our culture.

Disruption Setting on-campus rules is one thing, but what kind of off-campus expression might constitute sufficient disruption to justify disciplinary action? One court upheld the disciplining of students who published an underground newspaper article about hacking into the district’s computer system. The disruption that resulted—the breach of security and cost to reestablish it—was reasonably foreseeable, the court found. Besides, the article advocated illegal acts.

Other courts, however, have been more skeptical when schools can’t produce evidence of significant disruption or a convincing explanation of why they feared such disruption. Mere vulgarity, profanity, or other offensiveness may not have direct enough a connection with the school to persuade a court that the school action is justified.

In one case involving a student who posted insulting comments about his “loser” classmates, the court held that if school officials had disciplined him “for the expressive content of his Web site and not for having viewed it at school,” the action would be invalid.

Another district ran into trouble over student Web sites that denigrated athletes and band members. A parent called to complain, the students were disciplined, and the principal later justified his action by indicating the students had made online threats. The court found no threat existed, so there was no reasonable forecast of disruption, and teachers handled the situation so well they prevented any actual disruption. This case highlights the peril of reacting precipitously to offensive content or parental complaints.

Online Safety If you’ve seen a demonstration by an Internet safety expert, you know how easy it is for predators to deduce a lot about a child from a few minor online details.

In 2006, federal legislation was introduced that would have required every school district receiving E-Rate funds to use filtering software to screen out social networking sites. The proposal was opposed by the National School Boards Association and other education organizations as ineffective.

New federal legislation has been introduced to require sex offenders to register e-mail and instant message addresses with the federal government, which would provide the information to social networking sites. It also would be a crime for anyone over 18 to misrepresent his or her age with the intent to use the Internet to engage in criminal sexual conduct with a minor.

Cyberbullying Last fall, the organization Fight Crime: Invest in Kids released survey results that one in three teens and one in six pre-teens have been cyberbullied. Lawmakers in several states picked up on the issue and introduced legislation to add cyberbullying to the states’ anti-harassment code or require school boards to address cyberbullying in their own policies.

Under existing federal and state laws, a school invites liability when it ignores bullying or harassment. But when the torment occurs off campus, the school’s authority and its liability are less clear.

Here’s an issue to watch: Research continues to establish a strong link between bullying and adverse academic outcomes. In a high-stakes No Child Left Behind world, one might argue that the discretion standard that a school must show to justify action against cyberbullying should be more lenient than what courts have applied to other kinds of off-campus expression or conduct.

Disrespect (or worse) for School Personnel A school district is on somewhat thinner ice when cracking down on online disparagement of educators. So far courts have been unsympathetic to the umbrage school officials take from mere disrespect—even in its more outrageous forms—without some evidence ofdisruption at school.

One student’s Web site depicted his assistant principal in a Viagra ad, as a cartoon character having sex, and as a participant in a Nazi book burning. “Appalling and inappropriate,” the court conceded. But no disruption, no grounds for discipline.

In contrast, a Web site about a teacher that indicated “Why She Should Die” and solicited contributions for a “hit man” led to a different outcome. Here the court found there was substantial disruption, because the teacher was so upset she had to take leave.

A common scenario of late has been students establishing false online profiles of administrators or teachers. In a Pennsylvania case that was ongoing at press time, a court declined to bar a district from disciplining students whose parody profile of their principal drew such attention from classmates at school that the district felt compelled to shut down its computer system for five days. The court found this probably was sufficient disruption to warrant action.

Three Tennessee high school students have filed a lawsuit after they were disciplined for a MySpace page poking fun at their teacher. Classmates posted comments suggesting impropriety between the teacher and female students. The suit seeks $1 million for each student, giving a whole new meaning to the term “Internet entrepreneur.”

Victimized school personnel sometimes bring their own legal actions against those responsible. In the “Why She Should Die” case, the teacher sued the students for defamation and invasion of privacy and won $500,000. An assistant principal at a San Antonio area school sued over a hair-raising fake profile. Proving that no good deed goes unpunished, the students’ parents tried to sue the teacher who had first noticed the profile for the apparent offense of bringing it to the school’s attention.

In some instances, authorities have charged students with criminal impersonation for fake profiles. They note that parents or students who wrongly believe the site is legitimate might unwittingly disclose sensitive personal information.

Evidence of Other Misbehavior Some boards have adopted policies stating that Web sites where students post information will be monitored. If students engage in improper or illegal activity, such as underage drinking, a school may be justified in taking action if state law permits it to do so against the off-campus conduct itself. This is a big “if.” School discipline is not unlimited in its reach.

A few boards instead require students to agree to a code of conduct to participate in athletics or extracurricular activities. The code may prohibit irresponsible Internet use, or it may be invoked if school officials discover online evidence of some other violation. Such policies are analogous to student consent to random drug testing, which the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld as a condition for participation in athletics and extracurricular activities.

It’s unclear whether this kind of policy would survive constitutional challenge. At a minimum, it would be relatively more defensible if the consequence for a violation merely concerns eligibility for the activity, rather than more serious disciplinary consequences.

The Flip Side of the Coin Against these concerns, school officials must weigh other factors. Teachers are using Internet sites, blogs, and podcasts as ways to engage students in learning. Some even use the social networking sites themselves because they provide powerful and user-friendly platforms.
For many young people, social networking has become a pervasive part of growing up. This is not all bad. It can be a wellspring of creativity. Students can interact quickly and easily with peers of very different backgrounds, including from different countries.

Add to these factors a compelling reality about public education: In a nation that still has a digital divide based on race and class, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) confirms that public schools once again are the great equalizer. A 2006 NCES report found that among the 20 percent of American students who access the Internet at only one location, 60 percent of those from families in poverty and 63 percent of those whose parents have not earned at least a high school diploma do so at school.

The sheer pace of innovation and its more ready adoption by young people mean that the rest of us inevitably will continue to play catch-up. The implication of this reality is true of many issues of student behavior: The best defense for education—the first defense, at least—is education itself. A useful starting premise for addressing concerns related to student expression is to acknowledge that public schools are in the business of preparing young adults and bear part of the responsibility for developing the whole child.

The desire of school officials to minimize distractions, controversy, and disrespect for their authority is understandable. But sometimes this desire bumps up against other considerations, such as freedom of expression. The most meaningful and engaging learning often entails controversy and demands relevance to the adult world outside school. Educators and their attorneys grappling with related legal questions are well-advised to consider how courts, other policymakers, and news reporters—comfortably removed as they are from day-to-day responsibility for large numbers of children—may think about the appropriate balance among these considerations.

None of this means that adults in education should abdicate their responsibilities, especially where safety is concerned. Thoughtfully and effectively fulfilling those responsibilities, however, requires school leaders to think about these questions, to understand the technology, to recognize the enormous role it already plays in the lives of young people, and to anticipate the even greater role it will play in their futures.

The challenge is to take full advantage of technology’s educational potential while managing the problems it poses. At a time when the entire education system in this country is under enormous pressure to align itself better with a range of 21st century realities, meeting this challenge can provide a valuable test case for our schools.

Thomas Hutton is a senior staff attorney for the National School Boards Association. He can be reached at thutton@nsba.org

Reprinted with permission from American School Board Journal, July 2007. Copyright 2007 National School Boards Association. All rights reserved.

An interview with NJSBA’s new executive director

By Janet Bamford

While growing up in Nutley, Marie Bilik learned the value of communication and collaboration. “I come from a big Irish family,” she said, laughing, “and you talked everything out in our family.” 

That style will serve Bilik well in her new position as executive director of the New Jersey School Boards Association. Effective November 1, Bilik replaced Edwina M. Lee, who retired after more than 20 years at NJSBA.

Like many other current and former board members before her, Bilik was first drawn into volunteering in the school system when her five children were young. “My kids went to Green Hills School,” she said, “I was a room mother and was involved with the PTA. I think I held every PTA office there was.” Community service ran in the family; Marie’s husband Paul was the family’s first member to serve on the Green Township Board of Education, a K-8 district in Sussex County. After six years on the board, Paul Bilik decided to leave to serve on the Green Township’s planning board, and Marie Bilik ran for the school board and won. She spent seven years on the school board, then was appointed to Green Township’s town council. She served five years in that capacity, including as the town’s first woman mayor.

During this time, Bilik had an active career in business; serving as vice president of administration for PAB Aviation, a charter aircraft company in Morristown, NJ, and then working for American Cyanamid’s air transport division, which was based at Teterboro Airport. It was while she was working at Teterboro that a job opening as a county program coordinator for NJSBA’s West Caldwell office caught her interest. She knew the organization well. “When I was on the school board, we really took full advantage of all the services that were provided. Our field service representatives were invaluable resources for us and our board was a great supporter of the Sussex County association.”

There was another reason the job opening interested Bilik. “At the time my husband was facing heart surgery and when you’re dealing with that type of trauma you do a lot of re-assessment of your life. My school board days were very happy days for me, and I thought it might be nice to work in the education arena,” she said, “after all, you’re working to improve things for kids and it doesn’t get better than that.”

Bilik’s husband successfully recuperated from his heart surgery, just in time for her to join NJSBA staff. She moved through the ranks of the organization, being promoted to principal county program coordinator. Then Bilik moved to a position as a Field Service Representative. After several years, she pioneered a new position for NJSBA as Membership Advocacy Coordinator, where she was the liaison between the governmental relations functions and local school boards. She was also the coordinator of NJSBA’s long range plan. Most recently, she served as director of field services, a unit that includes 25 percent of NJSBA’s staff, and which specializes in assisting local school boards in their governance of public school districts throughout the state.

“Her fourteen years of dedicated employment as a Field Service Representative, Membership Advocacy Coordinator and Director of Field Services, combined with her seven years as a local school board member and five years of municipal government service (concluding as Mayor) have prepared Marie well to take the helm as the next leader of our organization,” said Kevin E. Ciak, president of NJSBA, in announcing the choice of Marie to lead the organization.

School Leader magazine recently sat down with Marie Bilik to find out a little more about her, her goals for NJSBA and her thoughts about the future of public education in New Jersey.

You first became involved with your local schools when your children entered the school system. How did you decide to join the school board?

Actually my husband Paul was on the school board before I was. He was on the board for six years, and was president. This is when I was the PTA president. It actually happened once that when I was PTA president and he was board president, the paper reported that “Board President Bilik” said one thing, and PTA President Bilik disagreed with him. From that point on we agreed to disagree. Not long after that he decided to join the town planning board, and I decided I wanted to be involved in the school board.

When you served as a school board member what were your biggest challenges?

I was chairman of the finance committee for my school board, and busing was a big issue at the time. The question was should we own or lease buses. We decided to get out of the bus business and lease them. We also went through a building expansion that doubled the size of our school. We passed the referendum, although as in many districts, it failed the first time. But we learned from our mistakes and it passed the second time.

One of the big challenges was building a positive climate in the community. The community started as mostly farmland, but as the expansion moved west, it became less rural and more suburban. Enrollment was increasing. That was the beginning of the changing of the educational culture in Sussex County. Many of the people moving in wanted a higher level of education for their tax dollars and we needed to gain public support for that and for facilities. That district has grown to provide that outstanding education.

You spent time serving on your local school board and also as a township committee person and the Mayor. What’s the difference between serving on a school board and at the municipal level?

As a board member, you work hard, you argue and reach common ground with adults, but you do good things for kids. At the municipal level you work really hard and you argue with everyone. It’s much more frustrating and there is no graduation to attend. As a school board member, when you go to graduation, you get the immediate gratification of knowing that your hours of community service have been well invested. It’s great to see the kids standing there with so much promise and hope.

What were your proudest accomplishments as a school board member?

The new school addition was a real accomplishment, and leasing the buses had a favorable impact on the budget. I’m also proud of the higher academic standards that were put into place, and the expansion of the faculty. Also, I’d say I’m proud of our support for the arts. Being in a rural community, it was important that we maintain the arts, because in a rural community there may not be other opportunities for kids to get exposure to the arts.

You were a school board member in the 1980s. What has changed since then for board members?

I think the biggest difference now is that there are more difficulties with funding. Back then, it wasn’t unusual to have eight or nine or ten percent raises for teachers. Those raises resulted from a 1985 state law that mandated a higher minimum salary for teachers. In general, times were different. School boards didn’t have to deal with questions on guns and bullying. When we would get training on risk, it might be about staff issues and sexual harassment. Now boards deal with threats and issues of a much greater magnitude of seriousness.

What changes do you see ahead for local schools boards and for NJSBA?

I believe we will be facing some consolidation and regionalization over the next five years. There will not be 603 districts as there are today. It’s not that I think that any one of them should go away, but it’s the political reality we face. But this is a very strong association that is based on association beliefs, and those beliefs and policies will see us through.

What do you think are the most pressing issues that public education faces right now?

Right now, it’s all about the money. The other day I was reading that next year the state budget deficit could be more than $3 billion. That’s going to hit education—it has to. Education is the largest dollar value in that budget. But it’s our job to make sure that all children receive a fair and equitable education.

What are your goals for the New Jersey School Boards Association?

I look at this organization as a federation of school districts that is designed to serve those districts. We provide advocacy services; we’re the voice for all the school boards in the state in dealing with the legislature. We provide the training and resources and the information that is necessary for boards, so they can provide the best education for their students. We want to be an organization that rapidly identifies new challenges facing schools boards and quickly delivers services to help our members confront them.

The state’s new monitoring system, the New Jersey Quality Single Accountability Continuum, provides a set of standards for accountability which is totally centered on student achievement. We can offer opportunities for our membership to have a better understanding of the standards and assessments, of funding and facilities and how cooperative governance works. Boards will have the basis to make sound decisions. All the motions on a board agenda may not look like they directly affect student achievement, but we know that everything is tied to what is best for the children.

There is discussion in Trenton that the Legislature will revisit the issue of school financing. What are NJSBA’s goals if that happens?

Our goals are to provide everyone with accurate information to allow good deliberation and, second, to be a viable contributor to the process. Our influence is wielded in a very different way, since we’re not a lobbying group with a Political Action Committee that can contribute to campaigns. A major component is information. The commissioning and publishing of our special education survey and our shared services surveys will be excellent resources for those making the decisions on school financing.

NJSBA did a member survey recently. From that, and from your informal discussions with School Board members, what is your sense of what members need and want most from NJSBA?

The survey indicated that board members take their roles and responsibilities very seriously. The number one service they want is help with the facilitation of goal setting, so that there is a structure and a plan in place in their district. Strategic planning allows board members to be strategic financiers. Strategic planning also involves community members, so there’s up-front buy-in on what our values are for our children and what we’re willing to support financially.

What have been the biggest career challenges you have faced and how have they prepared you for the challenges you will face as executive director?

There’s no doubt that the biggest challenge in my life has been raising five children in an ever-changing global society. But one of the most significant life lessons I’ve had was when I worked for PAB Aviation as vice president for administration. It was a charter airplane company, and there was no such thing as saying “no” to the clients. You had to make it happen. That includes the time we had to arrange for a last minute flight on the night before Easter or the night before Thanksgiving when I was trying to get ready to have 38 people for dinner the next day and also close a deal to buy a 737 aircraft for Doris Duke. The whole experience was very helpful in teaching me about problem solving and getting things done.

You have a long commute, since you live in Sussex County and you work in Trenton. How do you deal with that?

My drive is 120 miles round trip. I live in Green Township, but the area I live in is Lake Tranquility, so I go from Trenton to Tranquility. Several of our children and grandchildren live near us, so we get the opportunity to spend time with them, I don’t mind the commute at all. It allows me plenty of time to think.

In your time off, what hobbies do you pursue, and what do you do for relaxation?

First of all, I love to knit. I find it very relaxing. I also enjoy sitting on a beach in Cape Cod. Another thing my husband and I get tremendous enjoyment out of is vacationing and going on cruises with a group of dear friends we’ve been getting together with for 42 years.

If you could speak to a room full of board members, teachers, administrators and parents on behalf of the 1.4 million school children of New Jersey, what would you say?

I’d tell them to please stay true to your vocation. It’s not easy being a professional in education today and it’s not easy being an elected official in education today, but it’s also not easy being a child today.

Janet Bamford is an editor/writer for the New Jersey School Boards Association. She can be reached at jbamford@njsba.org.

An innovative kindergarten literacy program in Livingston gets children and parents working together to improve reading and writing readiness

By Janet Bamford

Once a week, kindergartners at Hillside Elementary School in Livingston bring home a tote bag that has been selected for them by their teacher. Each bag holds books and activities for the students as well as detailed information sheets for parents. Each bag has a different focus, and addresses specific education goals. It might be a tote bag containing an anthology of Mother Goose Rhymes, puppets and a rhyming card game, or perhaps it’s a bag with the book “Chicka Chicka Boom Boom” along with a CD, a felt “tree” and Velcro letters.

For the next week, parents and children will sit together and enjoy the activities in the bag, all of which have been designed to increase phonological awareness through repeated experiences with language, rhythmic patterns, letters and sounds.

The program, “Literacy Adventures,” which began in 2005, was selected this year by the New Jersey School Boards Association as the Exemplary entry in the 22nd Annual School Leader Award Competition. The contest is designed to highlight the most creative and innovative programs in New Jersey public schools.

According to Karen Kautz, a K-5 reading specialist at the school, the program had its genesis in a request from the school’s kindergarten teachers. “They came to me and asked if we could form a professional study group. They were interested in making the kindergarten program more effective,” said Kautz.

A team that included Kautz, Cynthia Augello, a literacy coach, and kindergarten teachers Jennifer McQuaid, Keri Shaw and Sylvia D’Anna, studied the New Jersey Content Curriculum Standards and literacy research. Among the group’s conclusions was the significant value of children getting experience in rhyming. “If you’re able to recognize that words rhyme, you get a sense of how words are put together,” said Kautz.

The group also identified other crucial components. “We also talked about the ability to recognize letters quickly and automatically, about beginning sounds of words, and also about the importance of oral language. It’s important for kids to be able to re-tell a story in a sequenced manner,” said Kautz.

After conducting its research, the team developed the take-home tote bag program. The Hillside group decided to incorporate the take-home aspect after discussion. “Parents often question us as to the best way to help their children read. We felt that we needed the parental piece of this to be successful,” said Kautz.

The team started small, creating three sets of bags with five bags in each set. The first set of bags was developed to promote phonemic awareness. The second had letter learning as its primary focus.The goal of the third set of bags was to foster a joy of stories through reading aloud. All bags include activities such as puppets, flannel boards, CDs, magnetic letters and puzzles.

The response to the program from both kids and parents has been overwhelmingly positive. One parent wrote back a note that said “Isabella so loved this book that every night before bed she had to read it and listen to the CD ‘one more time.’’’ A grandparent lent a different view: “It was great to see how they can read, which is so important, but it is greater that parents and grandparents can be part of this.” Before-and-after academic assessments of the students have also been positive, indicating that 94 percent of kindergarten students retained or increased their ability to rhyme, and 91 percent showed similar results for concepts about print.

Funding for the program has come from in-house PTA grants, as well as a grant from Montclair State University.

Looking forward, the team at Hillside Elementary wants to add a fourth set of tote bags, one that focuses on literacy and mathematics. “We are just in the developmental stage with this but it’s where we want to go next,” said Kautz.

Kindergarten teacher Sylvia D'Anna and reading specialist Karen Kautz with Hillside Elementary School kindergartners Samantha Belcuore, Sean McDonald and Jayce Grabelle.

Janet Bamford is an editor/writer for the New Jersey School Boards Association. She can be reached at jbamford@njsba.org.