NJEA President Barbara Keshishian responded swiftly to comments Gov. Chris Christie made in an interview with ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer earlier today.
“Governor Christie’s name-calling is a tired attempt to draw attention away from the fact that he chose to cut taxes for millionaires, rather than fund the state’s public schools,” said Keshishian.
Christie reportedly referred to NJEA’s leaders as “political thugs,” and once again insisted that if the state’s teachers had taken a pay freeze this year, there would have been no layoffs or program cuts in the wake of his more than $1 billion in cuts in state school funding.
“His insistence that the 10,000 teachers and school staff laid off as a result of his cuts would still be working if teachers had taken a pay freeze is simply not true, and he knows it,” she said.
“The state’s independent Office of Legislative Services issued a report (see pages 25-26) last April saying that if every teacher in New Jersey took a pay freeze, $850 million of the governor’s education cuts would still have to be made. And the math clearly supports that finding,” Keshishian said.
“Once again, Christie is resorting to name-calling because he’s ducking responsibility for his own misguided priorities,” she said. “His cuts to education were so deep – and so harmful to the futures of New Jersey’s students – that a state judge found they failed to meet the requirements of the state constitution. The state Supreme Court is now poised to rule on their constitutionality.
“No amount of attacks or name-calling can change those fundamental facts,” Keshishian said.