GORDON SAYS BERGEN SCHOOLS MUST CLOSE

COLLETTI FOR SENATE

 38th District – Bergen County

GORDON SAYS BERGEN SCHOOLS MUST CLOSE

GORDON SUPPORTS PLAN TO  BUS STUDENTS TO LARGE URBAN- STYLE SCHOOLS

Elmwood Park-- State Senate candidate Bob Gordon said yesterday that he will support forced regionalization of school districts in Bergen County and close neighborhood schools.  

In an interview yesterday on NJN news, Gordon, running in place of State Sen. Joseph Coniglio (D-38th District), who is under a federal criminal investigation, told NJN that there are too many school districts in Bergen County.  Gordon is the author of legislation to forcibly close school districts and create a new, costly layer of educational bureaucracy headed by 21 new county executive school superintendents who will impose their will on local school districts. 

Gordon’s opponent, Republican Robert Colletti said Gordon’s legislation will mean the end to the small, efficiently run school districts and the beginning of busing of students throughout Bergen County.” 

“Bob Gordon should tell the voters right now which school districts in Bergen County he wants to target for extinction.  Which parents are going to be forced to put their sons and daughters on a bus each morning and send them to another town to attend bigger schools with more crowded classrooms,” said Colletti.

Colletti, a former Elmwood Park councilman, said Gordon’s social engineering plan will destroy locally controlled schools and replace them with massive, urban-style schools that will harm the quality of education and increase, rather than decrease, costs.

“I want Bob Gordon to look the mothers of school-age children in the eye and tell them that their child is going to get up at 6 a.m. and be forced to take a bus from Fort Lee of Fair Lawn to a school in Englewood.”

“Mr. Gordon should be honest and tell the parents that if he is elected their local school in Elmwood Park or Little Ferry or Saddle Brook is going to be closed by the state and their kids are going to be bused to a school in Hackensack,” said Colletti.

Colletti said New Jersey has already demonstrated that bigger schools are not better or cheaper. In fact the opposite is true. “Large urban-style schools are more costly to run than local schools and the quality of education and the quality of the students’ lives is lower,” said Colletti.

Colletti noted the most costly school in the county is Bergen County Vocational High School, a regional school like those that Assemblyman Gordon proposes to create more of in the county. The cost per pupil at Bergen Technical High School is $22,595 according to 2005-2006 figures available on the state’s education department web site.

Englewood’s Dwight Morrow High School – another large urban-style school preferred by Gordon, costs $17,470 per student. In contrast Saddle Brook H.S. has a per pupil cost of just $11,936 and Fort Lee High School’s per pupil cost is $12,861.

Little Ferry’s Memorial grammar school cost is $11,414 per pupil and the Elmwood Park middle school per pupil cost is $11,633. But the larger, more urban Hackensack Fairmont School has a per pupil cost of  $2,000 more per student at $13,566.

“Given the facts, I would like Mr. Gordon to tell us where he envisions there to be any taxpayer savings from his grand scheme to close neighborhood schools and forcibly bus students to schools miles from their home,” said Colletti

“Gordon’s social engineering plan will disrupt families and create a bigger education bureaucracy, while lowering the quality of education in Bergen County,” said Colletti.