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Health & Fitness

The B.O.E. is Just a Distraction

Maybe this will not sit right with some but the fact is that the main problem with our schools is not necessarily the B.O.E. (Board of Education). In the end, the B.O.E. is more of a minor distraction, what I like to call a Halloween Moment.

Okay, what’s the mean? Back in October the word came out that Township Council was setting an early curfew for Halloween trick-or-treaters and publishing a set of guidelines concerning how to do Halloween. That didn’t sit right with many parents and more people showed up at Township Council than I’ve ever seen. The problem is that while there was a wave of concern over the issue of being instructed by government on how to do Halloween that swept over parents with young children, which was nothing more than a suggestion anyway, residents were being told what we could and couldn’t grow on our property and a contract for insurance administration was being awarded to a politically connected group after it was the only group that bid the contract. One insurance broker present suggested it would have made sense to solicit a few organizations that might not have seen the scant notice posted in two places. Council looked the other way and voted “Yea” to the award. What else is new?

Anyway, a whole lot of hot air was raised over this Halloween non-issue but business as usual, the real business of overspending thousands of dollars in GT, continued on under the radar. Nobody but a mere handful of people was even paying attention.

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So, moving onto the B.O.E…There has been a lot of heat and light generated lately at the B.O.E. meetings especially since this past summer; teacher’s contracts, service worker’s contracts, mold in the schools, questions about hiring practices, and curriculum issues.

I don’t question the validity of the issues but they rightly are all local issues and should be dealt with locally and for that, yes, we need local people with integrity to replace the time-worn political hacks that have populated our township’s regulatory boards of all kinds. And such is the work of the B.O.E., but, unfortunately, while curriculum should be a local issue handled by local school officials with the aid of local parents, that is not the case and “there-in lies the rub.” At the end of the day the issue that will kill the chances of all of our children getting the decent educations they are entitled to under our present system of education is the Common Core. Yes, the real long-term danger to our educational system is the Common Core; a heavy-handed, top-down edict that removes the ability of local people to control local problems and issues in local education.

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This writer stood in a B.O.E. meeting and spoke to Dr. Acerba concerning my understanding that New Jersey was just getting on-board with the Common Core but that a number of those states that had gotten on early had now put on the brakes and were either putting things on hold or backing out altogether. I then asked why, in light of such revelations, we would rush into such a questionable system.

It is very important to note at this juncture that Dr. Acerba did not answer my question by attempting to calm the fears of parents concerning the rumors of this system or by expressing her confidence in the Common Core Curriculum. No, Dr. Acerba answered that question only by informing those of us there that the Common Core was mandated by the state and that therefore she had no control over its implementation.

Beware parents of Gloucester Township school children, the Common Core is only common in that it will wreak havoc in education everywhere it is allowed to play out. Do you really want your child used as a guinea pig in another failed attempt to standardize education across the nation which is nothing more that universal indoctrination?

I would welcome responses from any teachers that can correct me and defend the Common Core.

More to come on the Common Core…stay tuned.

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