Huh? YOU decided to opt-out of the public schools and we STILL pay transportation?

What about lunch? Do we pay for that too? Books? ... At some point, perhaps we'll just convert them all to Charters.

Given the state of Montclair schools and our inability to even crack the top 100 schools in the state - I would love to have the option of a Charter. We would be in a fine mess if we had to educate all of the Montclair children that currently attend private schools. We should be grateful that these parents are paying to educate their children without our tax dollars.

With apologies to people who have seen me post this before, I feel duty-bound to reply whenever comments along the lines of Laura's comment above are made.

In my experience so far in Montclair, the parents who worry about the "mediocre" performance of the Montclair schools are generally middle-class or higher. The schools they tout as comparatively better are districts such as Glen Ridge, Millburn, and Tenafly--all three of which are largely white, upper-middle-class communities.

These three Google docs linked to below compare Glen Ridge, Millburn, and Tenafly to Montclair, based on the performance of each district's population of white students (which is the closest proxy we have to "upper-middle-class" students) in the NJASK and HSPA tests:

Glen Ridge:
http://bit.ly/GW6bt3

Millburn:
http://bit.ly/GYsiUb

Tenafly:
http://bit.ly/H10gZ9

As you can see, the results are essentially equivalent in these four districts (in fact, Montclair outperforms Glen Ridge). The takeaway? : for students from middle-class and higher households, the schools in Montclair are performing as well as those in the top ten.

However, the Montclair schools clearly have work to do for poor and near-poor students in the system. Montclair has many more such children than the "top 100" school districts do, a fact that NJM doesn't factor into its rankings. NJM is comparing apples and oranges, to the oranges' disadvantage.

If busing children to school is for their safety, then why should we ignore the safety of some of the students. If the busing is simply a convenience, then we should probably stop the whole busing concept and save a lot of money. It would particularly save money for the tax payer with no children in the system

Peter,

Thank you for setting the facts straight. Charter advocates like Laura often use the apples-to-oranges comparison when starting that Montclair schools are only mediocre.

Peter Simon.....why do the 46% of student body in MHS taking AP classes (primarily white, middle/upper middle class) have such a low passing rate? I believe around 65% of students (taking the exams) pass as opposed to the other districts (ie glen ridge) that have 90% or better passing.

Peter Simon, Prof Williams, we live in a community where we have to "parse" out out our school achievement scores. The people who are considering Montclair as a place to live are probably not going to be so generous. The fact that we want to "penalize" parents of private schools by making them pay for transportation is quite telling of our true motivations and hypocrisy. Unfortunately, there has been little improvement over the past twenty years in Montclair Public achievement scores. Maybe our money would be better spent on early education and parent support programs. Val, I know first hand that your statistics are correct regarding AP achievement.

We "have to" parse out the data because nearly every other high-performing district in the state is de facto segregated. This isn't that difficult to understand.

Regarding AP, I honestly don't have a response handy, so I'll leave it to another brainiac (or perhaps you?) to posit a theory about the difference in AP results. I tend to wait to say something until I have thought about the issue a bit and maybe even looked more carefully at the numbers, and I simply haven't done that yet re: AP. So, I'll pass on the opportunity to respond to your question.

Did anyone notice this article in the Star Ledger the other day reagrding the fact that many school districts do not report the value of sick & vacation time despite being required by law to do so?
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2012/05/despite_law_many_nj_school_dis.html

I checked the Dept of Ed website and it seems that Montclair did not report this? Am I looking at the correct data?
http://www.state.nj.us/cgi-bin/education/finance/budgets.pl

Laura, I'm not quite sure how asking families who've opted out of the public school system to pay for their own transportation is "penalizing" them. Seems to me it's a great perk that they (you?) just don't want to lose. But you've touched on a great idea! Let's take the money we are currently spending to bus private school kids and put it toward the early education and parent support programs you mention. Seems like a much better use of the funds.

That website is not coming up Kevin.. and I did ask the school district about this.. am writing something up now.

Thamks Shelley, sorry about the link but you can find the info at the Dept of education website.

Try this link. http://www.nj.gov/education/finance/fp/ufb/reports/13-3310.html

Thanks Stu's wife! Not sure why it wouldn't link for me but that is the information.

Yes, thanks Stu's wife. The school district says it has complied with this.. noting that the "information is in our user friendly budget which is posted We have complied with including this information in our user friendly budget which is posted on our website."

Isn't it supposed to be filed with the NJ dept of ed? Are we looking in the correct place? Did they provide a link to the info?

This seems a bit misleading. Are these "other private schools" for special needs children?