Actually it was 79.7% of the budgets were approved. This information and a more thorough recap are found courtesy of NJSBA. Historical statistics on school board elections can be accessed as well.
Archive for April, 2011
Everything You Need to Know About the Royal Wedding but Were Afraid to Ask
Try looking at the 13-page Media Briefing from St James’s Palace and the 28-page Royal Wedding Official Programme.
State Retirement Systems Lose 24% of Their Value in 2009
According to the Census Bureau’s latest figures, state pension systems were hard hit by the recession. Figures are available for the nation as an aggregate along with state tables. In 2009, New Jersey contributed $54M to the pension system, making it the fifth lowest in the nation, beating out only Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, and Vermont. (table 2) Six detailed tables with information back to 2007 can also be consulted. There is an informative article from The Washington Post that is well worth the read.
2011 New Jersey School Board/Budget Elections Results
Hudson County results are here; Jersey City’s budget was approved by a narrow margin. Other New Jersey counties can be found here; Bergen and Passaic counties are here. Along with the preceding links, you can find news/analysis/comments at: NJ Spotlight, Cherry Hill Post Courier,the Associated Press, and the Philadelphia Inquirer.
List of New Jersey School Districts Exceeding 2% Cap
Here is the list; Cape May exceeds its cap by 34% due to higher enrollment. An explanation of the list is also available.
New Jersey Has Set Aside Zero Dollars for Retiree Health Care
So says the Pew Center on the States Widening the Gap: The Great Recession’s Impact on State Pension and Retiree Health Care Costs. Not only does New Jersey still underfund its pension obligations to such an extent that the state is the twelfth worst in the country, but years of abuse and neglect have left the retiree health care funds with ZERO dollars. News, analysis, and commentary are at: The Star-Ledger, Wall Street Journal, CNN, and Asbury Park Press.
Election Results for Early America, 1787-1825
When the Constitution was still young, thousands of elections were held in this country from presidential to local races. However, there was no central repository for the elections results; they were scattered throughout public records housed in dozens of locations. A single individual, Philip Lampi, has devoted his life to compiling these records, more than 35,000 of them. Currently, more than half of these elections have been made accessible through A New Nation Votes: American Election Returns 1787-1825. You can search by candidate, office, year, and state; the advanced search allows limiting to party affiliation, such as the “Bucktail” party or name of office, such as “Clerk of the Market.” While New Jersey’s results are still being entered, you can still discover hundreds of races and their results; for example, who won the 1788 election for Essex County Sheriff or the 1790 race for governor (with links to Lampi’s original handwritten tabulations as well as a citation to the original source). Informative readings include: Voting the Early America (CW Journal); and Winning the Vote: A History of Voting Rights (History Now).
What Colleges are “Green”?
Princeton Review’s Guide to 311 Green Colleges lists over 300 colleges/universities it considers green based on certain criteria; among them are: percentage of food budget spent on local/organic foods; alternative transportation; formal campus sutainability committee; the availability of an environmental studies degree; use of energy from renewable sources; and green-certified cleaning products. Find out what New Jersey institutions qualified (on page 224).
New Jersey Ranks Among Lowest in Wireless-only Households
That is the conclusion reached by the Wireless Substitution: State-level Estimates from the National Health Interview Survey, January 2007 – June 2010 from the CDC. Only 12.8% of adults and 12.6% of children live in wireless households, and the increase from 2007 to 2010 was only 7.2%. This is in contrast to Arkansas where the figures are 35.2% for adults, 46.2% for children and an increase of 14.5% from 2007 to 2010. On the national level, 26.6% of households are wireless-only as opposed to 12.9% which are landline-only. Figures are broken down by state and by selected counties; for New Jersey, Essex County was featured. Data is also available about “mixed” households – those having both wireless and landline connections. Please go to the Cell Phones section of the Pew Research Center for more information on the adoption of wireless in households.
Economic Impact of the Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami
Some reports are: 2011 Impact Report of Japan Earthquake and Tsunami: Preliminary Business Impact Analysis for High Impact Areas of Japan (Dun & Bradstreet), Japan’s 2011 Earthquake and Tsunami: Economic Effects and Implications for the United States (CRS), Global Eonomic Impact of the Japanese Earthquake, Tsunami, and Nuclear Disaster (IHS); Economic Impacts Across Asia from Japan’s Disaster (Asia Foundation); and Earthquake, Tsunami Hit Japan: Assessing the Economic Impact (Council on Foreign Relations); and Japan’s Economic Outlook Following the 11 March 2011 Earthquake (OECD).
2011 Pulitzer Prizes Announced
The awards for journalism, letters, drama, and music have been announced. For the first category – journalism – links are provided to the winning stories. Amy Ellis Nutt of The Star-Ledger won for feature writing; her series starts here. For every winner, there is a biography, the citation, and the jury involved in each section.
Updated International Labor Statistics
Two updated versions of basic statistical information on international labor have recently been published: International Labor Comparisons from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Databook of International Labour Statistics 2011 from the Japanese Institute for Labour Policy and Training. The former title examines 36 countries in various degrees of intensity; i.e., the entry on Argentina is very brief, while China has an extensive page with graphs, charts, and additional sources of information appended. For some reason, Russia is not included in this list. The latter title has 146 tables spread through nine major categories ranging from “Economy and Business” to “Worklife and Welfare.” The format can be a little confusing as the figures are presented in Japanese with English subtitles and country abbreviations. But the diligent reader will be rewarded with a massive amount of data. 21 countries/regions are highlighted, including Russia. The BLS presents the information by country, while the JILPT volume presents the data by sector.
New Diagnostic Criteria for Alzheimer’s Disease Released
The underlying papers outlining new criteria can be found here along with an FAQ. News reports are available from The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. Other sites worth visiting include: Alzheimer’s Disease (MedlinePlus); Alzheimer’s Disease Fact Sheet and Caregiver Guide(National Institute on Aging); and Alzheimer’s Association Greater New Jersey Chapter.
New Jerseyans Who Finished the 2011 Boston Marathon
For those interested, the official race site has a searchable page where you can see who finished, their checkpoint times, and their official times. You can search by name, bib number, and by city and state as well. See who crossed the finish line from New Jersey; even more specifically, see if Jersey City was represented.(BTW, we were.)
2011 Baseball Salaries
Thanks to Cot’s Baseball Contracts, all the opening day player salaries are available by team. In addition, each player on every team has his contract history displayed, along with percs that some have negotiated. (The most usual seems to be having a hotel suite for away games, but Red Sox pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka’s percs go far beyond that.) Listings for managers are also included along with team valuations and a plethora of additional information.
Governor Christie’s Proposed Teacher Tenure Bills
Governor Christie has drafted seven bills dealing with teacher tenure; copies of the draft proposals are available, and a more language-friendly summation is found in this press release from his office. News, analyses, and commentaries can be found at: NJEA, New Jersey School Boards Association, New Jersey Association of School Administrators, NJ Spotlight, Philadelphia Inquirer, The Star-Ledger, GovMonitor, and Bergen Record. The Education Bill Tracking Database from the National Conference of State Legislatures allows perusal of bills for all the states for comparative purposes; here are the results for New Jersey. It also has a separate section on enacted legislation for the evaluation of teachers/principals. This article from the Christian Science Monitor discusses tenure reform in other states.
Access to Foundation-Sponsored Reports
PubHub, from the Foundation Center, offers subject-specific or keyword searching across thousands of reports from foundations ranging from AARP to Zero to Three Policy Center. The results are listed in reverse chronological order and provide links to the entire report(s). As an example, searching under “higher education, access/cost” produces 68 reports from such diverse groups as Working Poor Families Project, the Public Policy Institute of California, and the Center for Law and Social Policy. Other access points include by type of document, year of publication, or publisher/funder. Searching under “Carnegie Corporation” generates 126 reports on a wide variety of subjects, such as A Five-Year Review of Scholarship on Islam, 2005-2009; “RAND Corporation” yields 68 reports, such as Building a More Resilient Haitian State ; and the “Ford Foundation” presents 425 reports with the March 2011 Global Report on the Status of Women in the News Media, a 400 page document, leading the list. This site also has many other features, among them FC Stats – Grants which provides various lists and enumerations of grants, grant makers, and grant recipients. Find out the top 50 recipients of grants in New Jersey for 2009 (you can search by year back to 1998). The homepage always highlights the most recent reports to be included in this database, so you have a current alerting service built in. A site well worth examining.
The Civil War is Still Divisive
At least that is what this Pew Research Center survey – Civil War at 150: Still Relevant, Still Divisive – reports. The response to questions reveals a great divide presently exists in this country over the Civil War’s legacy; for example, 46% of the respondents said it was appropriate for public officials to praise Confederate leaders, while 36% did not share that view. On another question, 48% opined that the Civil War was about states’ rights, while 38% maintained that slavery was the primary cause of the war. These and other questions show us that the Civil War did not end in 1865.
Today in History: Yuri Gargarin Becomes First Person in Space
Yuri Gargarin, a Soviet fighter pilot, became the first person in space, riding in the six-foot wide Vostok-1 for 108 minutes. He became an instant celebrity and was instrumental in training the first corps of cosmonauts. Tragically, he died in a jet crash a few years after his historic flight. More biographical information is here and here. Monographs about the Soviet space program include: Challenge to Apollo: The Soviet Union and the Space Race, 1945-1974: Part One and Part Two; Rockets and People, a multi-volume memoir by one of the most important figures in the Soviet space program, Boris Chertok; and The Difficult Road to Mars: A Brief History of Mars Exploration in the Soviet Union. This informative, hyperlinked essay hosted by the U.S. Centennial of Flight Commission – Early Soviet Human Spaceflight Program – is a must read as well; this site also contains a biography of Sergei Korolev, the chief designer of the Soviet rocket program. In addition, multiple CIA documents on the Soviet program can also be perused, and this article is also worth a go-through “Historical aspects of the early Soviet/Russian manned space program” from the Journal of Applied Physiology. This author, Asif Siddiqi, has published extensively on the Soviet space program (the first monograph mentioned above is his), and his homepage has links to many full-text articles of value. He has translated some Soviet Documents available at NASA.
2011 State of America’s Libraries
As libraries across the board (special, public, academic) continue to be pummeled by budget reductions and a concomitant decrease in staffing, libraries still provide exemplary service to their diverse communities. To read about the current situation in libraries, along with links to additional reports and news sources, please come examine this American Library Association document. Libraries are considered the second largest target when it comes to funding reductions (only maintenance departments are targeted more frequently), yet patrons continue to highly value the services provided and 93% agree that library services should continue to be free. Please review these articles from the past six months from The Star-Ledger to see how libraries are faring in New Jersey.
Congressman Frank J. Guarini Library Blog 