Monday Morning News Roundup

By • Jul 26th, 2010 • Category: Blog

- Schundler Recommends National Superintendent Search: State education commissioner Bret Schundler is personally calling Jersey City school board members to say it’s not too late to conduct a nationwide superintendent search, and he’s called Superintendent Charles Epps to inform him that he’d be recommending such a search to board members. The Wall Street Journal also weighs in with a story on the continued controversy over Epps, and the Insider reports that Epps is busy trying to shore up the support of Jersey City’s black community.

- New Charges for Alleged Shooter: The 18-year-old Jersey City man charged with critically injuring a 5-year-old girl with a stray bullet has also been charged with attempted murder and aggravated assault in connection with a shooting two weeks earlier. Cops say the intended target — a 16-year-old boy — was the same in both shootings.

- Turnpike Dump Site Cleaned Up: The city-owned contaminated site at the southern end of Monmouth Street is clean and ready for development, but officials say there are no longer plans to create a City Hall Annex there.

- Probe Clears Former Prosecutor & FBI Agent: Federal investigators say New Jersey’s former top federal prosecutor and the former special agent in charge of the FBI’s Newark office did not commit any wrongdoing in their handling of last summer’s corruption probe.

- Puerto Rican Parade Honorees: The 22 people who will be honored during the 50th Jersey City Puerto Rican Heritage Festival and Parade in August were presented yesterday at a ceremony at Puccini’s.

- Fire Displaces More than 20: An early morning blaze in a three-story, multi-family house on Ege Avenue has left 21 residents without homes, according to a report on News 12 New Jersey.

- Honor Students Visit D.C.: More than 200 honor students from Jersey City and Plainfield visited with U.S. Rep. Donald Payne in D.C. last month for a special day on Capitol Hill.

- Ginuwine Talks to Boys & Girls Club: R&B singer Ginuwine told children about beating his own demons and counseled kids to be strong in face of struggle during a Thursday visit to Jersey City’s Boys and Girls Clubs of Hudson County.

- Summer Program for Teachers: About 200 teachers participated last week in the Mickelson ExxonMobil Teachers Academy at the Liberty Science Center — a weeklong program in which the teachers’ knowledge of science and mathematics is reinforced and they are encouraged to find innovative ways to capture the attention of their students.

- Flooding at Medical Center: A water pipe at the Jersey City Medical Center broke Friday, causing flooding on three floors of the hospital and closing the emergency room for hours.

- A Hamilton Park Wedding: The newly renovated Hamilton Park in Jersey City has hosted its first wedding.

- Cleaning an Old Chandelier at the Loew’s: Volunteers gathered at the Landmark Loew’s Jersey City Theatre on Saturday to clean the cinema’s 81-year-old chandelier.

In Statewide News:

- Rutgers Says ‘No Thanks’ to Pot-Growing Plan: Rutgers University has declined a request from the Christie administration to be the lone grower of New Jersey’s medical marijuana crop because the drug’s illegal status would jeopardize millions of dollars in federal funding.

- Christie Vetoes Family Planning Bill: Gov. Christie has vetoed a bill that would have restored $7.5 million for family planning clinics that provide birth control and health screenings to thousands of uninsured women, saying “the state simply cannot fund every worthy program.”

- Broken Pension Promises: Experts and officials have begun to say it more clearly: There is no way New Jersey will ever be able to pay for the promises it has made to current and retired workers.

- Inmate Lawsuits: The number of suits filed by New Jersey inmates has been climbing steadily, up 45 percent since 2006. Last year prisoners filed more than 1,100.

- Call to Share Rail Tunnels: A New Jersey lawmaker and a group of rail advocates are asking Amtrak and NJ Transit officials to find a way to share a set of new tunnels between them to save money, after Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor Master Plan called for construction of its own set of new tunnels to Penn Station.

- Congressional Redistricting: The 2010 Census is triggering the re-drawing of voting districts, as it does every 10 years, and that represents a political challenge for the state. New Jersey might lose a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, further muddying any understanding about which of the state’s members of Congress, and lawmakers at the state level, represent which municipalities.

- NJ’s Seafood Industry & the Oil Spill: The Gulf Coast oil spill is rippling through the nation’s economy and pinching New Jersey’s $168 million seafood industry.

- Smart Growth Office Moved, Renamed: Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno announced Friday that the Office of Smart Growth will now be named the Office of Planning Advocacy and is being moved from the Department of Community Affairs to the Secretary of State’s office, the agency headed by New Jersey’s first lieutenant governor.

- Christie on ‘This Week’: Gov. Christie made his first foray into national Sunday morning political programming, sitting for a 10-minute interview yesterday with ABC’s Jake Tapper on This Week.

- Basil & Downy Mildew: South Jersey farmers are once again contending with downy mildew, a fungus that wiped out much of the basil crop on East Coast farms, including those in New Jersey, last summer.

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is the founding editor of the Jersey City Independent; he now works for a public-policy nonprofit in Trenton.
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  • Alb

    I was looking at various articles and contracts about the Epps contract.

    My impression is that the Jersey City schools are annoying and faddish, but that, at least at the elementary school level, they do a great job of getting enthusiastic, well-qualified teachers in the classroom.

    The test scores are mediocre, but, for urban schools, they’re really not that bad.

    When I ask people who work closely with the JCBOE, “So, what’s really wrong with Epps?”, they say, “He gets into work kind of late, and he used school money for that junket in England a few years back, ” and those are about the only specific criticisms I’ve heard of his management style. Maybe he plays favorites, lets important e-mails pile up without answering them, refuses to make decisions, makes dumb decisions, picks lousy school improvement consultants, etc., but I just haven’t heard anyone say those things.

    But I think the current controversy shows that Epps clearly has screwed up efforts to communicate with parents who live downtown.

    Healy might have issues, but he went to the Hamilton Park opening ceremony, right in the middle of Fulop land, and he put on a show. Along the same lines: I’m kind of scared of Sean Connors, now, but I’ve seen him plenty. I don’t know what deals he’s cutting with the Machine, but he seems to make an effort to find out what people downtown think.

    Epps, in contrast, doesn’t seem to make any effort to reach out and mend fences. Sue Mack used to go to the Better Schools meetings, but Epps never went, and, as far as I could tell, he never sent a representative. I never see Epps or one of his representatives communicating here, on JC List or Wired JC, and I don’t see Epps in the Jersey Journal or the Jersey Reporter except when there’s a fight going on. I don’t have the sense that Epps has exchanged ideas with anyone at any of the charter schools.

    The JCBOE recently sent out a newsletter that mentioned that FOUR McNair graduates, all of whom spent at least some time in JCBOE elementary schools, are graduating from Harvard this year. That’s actually an amazing statistic. But I think the only people who would know about that fact are insomniacs who read the JCBOE newsletter at 4 a.m.; I don’t remember seeing that information in any of the local print or online news publications.

    One result of the lack of attention to downtown communications is that downtown parents know nothing about Epps. I think parents elsewhere in the city at least understand the part about Epps being from an old-time Jersey City family, but I don’t think many parents downtown know that.

    I think Jersey City needs a superintendent who’s comfortable with communicating with parents downtown and doesn’t automatically view us as enemies to be ignored or scowled at.