"This magistrate is not the king. The people are the king."
The Long Hill Observer
"Sunshine is the best disinfectant" Justice Louis D. Brandeis
William Alexander
"Lord Stirling"
1726 - 1783
|
Married Sarah Livingston (Livingston, NJ) March 1, 1748. Colonel of the Battalion of East New Jersey in October, 1775. He distinguished himself by the capture of a British armed transport, for which Congress, in March 1776, appointed him Brigadier General. At the Battle of Long Island in August 1776 his Brigade attacked a greatly superior force, and was cut to pieces, and he himself was taken prisoner. He was soon exchanged and then promoted to a Major General. When Lee marched to Philadelphia, Lord Stirling was left in command of New York. At Trenton he received the surrender of a Hessian regiment. In June 1777, at Matouchin, now called Metuchin, he awaited an attack, contrary to Washington's orders; his position was turned and his division defeated, losing two guns and 150 men. At the Battle of Brandywine and Germantown he acted with bravery and discretion. Then at the Battle of Monmouth he displayed tactical judgment in posting his batteries and repelled with heavy loss an attempt to turn his flank. In 1779, when in command in New Jersey, he surprised a British force at Paulus' Hook. In 1781, he commanded at Albany. He died of gout, five days after the preliminaries of peace were agreed upon. Lord Stirling was one of the founders of Columbia College, called King's College before the revolution and became its first governor. He is buried at Trinity Church in New York City in the family vault with his father. |
Agenda For April 14 School Board Meeting
Public Meeting Minutes from the last board meeting, March 24, 2008
Good Reflection, Good Word, Good Deed
Long Hill Observer Endorses Murry Sabrin for Senate
Here is an interview of Dr. Murray Sabrin done by PolitickerNJ. He goes over the issues that are important for him as well as his opinion on the race and his competitors.
School Auditor Tells a "Fib"!
Click Here to watch him talk about how "empty nesters" are moving out and people in their child bearing age are moving in. Personally, I find this incredibly irresponsible with what we now know about the conclusions made by Whitehall Associates and how those are twisted by the administration and our school board.
LHT School Children Rely on Charity for Books
A fundraiser is to be held by the Long Hill Township PTO in order to purchase school books. The voters approved a budget last year that reduced the amount for books by 10%, and they voted to reduce that amount by 10% again this year. This is the same PTO that recommended that voters pass these budgets. What is wrong with this picture?
This is worse than the blind leading the blind. This is like ants supporting an organization for anteaters. Long Hill Township is rapidly becoming the poster child for absurdity!
Some parents will argue that if we didn’t pass the budget, the Township Committee might have cut even more out of the budget. However, this rationale can be used each and every year from now until the apocalypse. The logic behind such an argument dictates that we pass every budget presented to us no matter how bad it might be; otherwise the Township Committee might make it worse. Therefore, no one should ever vote against any budget. We might as well skip that item on election day.
Whoever is running the PTO should begin to think about who they represent. Their recommendations aren’t doing the children any good. They continue to recommend that voters do what is right for the children, yet they hold fundraisers for such essentials as books. I’m not against fundraisers for things like extra-curricular activities or class trips, but books? What’s next; teachers’ salaries? They support budgets that gut our school system, yet have no idea how our school system stacks up against other similar socio-economic districts in Morris County or any of the feeder schools into WHRHS. If they have any idea, they choose to ignore it. This is just one of the problems facing our children.
What is worse, the parents just don’t want to face the facts. It isn’t that the parents don’t care; they just can’t believe that this could happen so they dismiss the possibility.
So when we go to the PTO “books” fundraiser, help raise as much as possible. However, confront those PTO officials who supported this budget and forced us into this situation.
School Board Secretary Releases "Draft" Minutes
April 11, 2008 – Long Hill Township – School Board Secretary and Business Administrator John Esposito and the Long Hill Township School Board have reversed their decision and released a draft copy of the March 24 minutes to the public meeting prior to the next board meeting. There was no private session.
On March 26, 2008, Howard A. Kupferman of Gillette requested that Esposito scan and email to him the public and private meeting minutes of the March 24, 2008 school board meeting. Kupferman sent Esposito the citation of a recent Morris County Judge’s ruling requiring that Mountain Lakes provide meeting minutes 48 hours prior to the next meeting. In his email, Kupferman stated “According to Morris County's Judge Bozonelis, in Kanter v Mountain Lakes (Kanter), a municipal agency must make public its meeting minutes 48 hours in advance of the next meeting of that municipal agency.
Kupferman received an email from Esposito on April 2, 2008 denying him those minutes. In his email, Esposito stated “The minutes of the March 24th meeting have not been created yet, nor have they been approved by the Board of Education. This material is considered advisory, consultative and deliberative in that the minutes are draft documents that contain my opinion and viewpoint until the Board has reviewed, revised and approved them. I anticipate this occurring at the meeting of April 14, 2008.”
School Board Insists Enrollment Will Rise
March 25, 2008 – Long Hill Township, NJ – Even though their credibility is stretched as thin as thread, the Long Hill Township school board insisted that enrollment will rise.
In a document distributed yesterday, the school board claims that enrollment will rise from the October 2007’s 1032 students to a projected 1048 students in October 2008. When presented with the facts at last night’s budget hearing, the school board insisted that this projection was realistic.
Howard A. Kupferman, resident of Gillette, questioned the reasoning behind this projection. In that there will be approximately 115 students graduating from 8th grade this June, and only 79 students who are pre-registered for Kindergarten in September, Kupferman stated that it would require the registration of approximately 50 new students between now and October 2008 in order to reach the projected enrollment figure of 1048 as noted in the documents. Board President Suzanne Becker Karen Wetherell, soon to be principal of the Gillette School, insisted that this was achievable. They reasoned that there would be a rush of parents between now and September who would register their children in kindergarten and that enough couples with children within the K – 8 age range will move into Long Hill Township to cover the gap. (The number of students enrolled between October 2007 and October 2008 declined by approximately 25 students.) This is highly unlikely given the housing market and sales of homes in this region.
Documents requested show that the data was derived from the eight years beginning in 1998 and ending in 2006. This data does not include the 2007 decline of approximately 25 students.
Kindergarten Pre-Registration Numbers Demonstrate Huge Decline in Projected Enrollment in September
Long Hill Township, NJ – February 1, 2008 - According to the numbers provided by the school district administration, voters can once again expect a huge decline in student enrollment in the Long Hill Township school district. It is anticipated that total enrollment will fall below the 2001 - 2002 levels.
The chart below shows the projected enrollment versus the actual enrollment for the years 1999 to 2007. The number for student enrollment was taken in October of each year. Projects for 2004 through 2007 were calculated as a 25% increase over the prior year’s actual enrollment. Using this method, student enrollment would have been 1,342 in October 2007; actual for October 2007 was 1,068. The projected number of students enrolled would have been significantly higher if it did not use the actual enrollment numbers for 2004 through 2007.
Enrollment: Projected vs. Actual
Note that at no time was actual enrollment equal to the projected enrollment. It was apparent by 2003 that enrollment had leveled off and peaked in October 2004; after that it began to decline. It was 30 students short of projections when the presentations were made to the public in 2003, 50 students short of projections in October 2004, and 150 students short of projections in 2005.
The consultants made no assumption that all increases in enrollment were a result of the empty nester phenomenon because projected new residential construction would not result in enough new students to significantly contribute to the totals. That assumption, the "empty nester" phenomenon, was only made by our school board and the administration. All the consultants stated was that a 25% increase in enrollment with a corresponding 3% increase in general population meant that the average age of the population was decreasing. The consultants state "this is proof that the population is getting younger, that older people are moving out, and that people of child bearing age are moving in." They say nothing about housing.
Board Meeting Videos
March 24 Budget Hearing and Meeting
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10
March 17 Meeting
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7
March 10 Special Meeting
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12
February 11 Board Meeting
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10
January 14 Auditor's Report
Minutes
These are the school board meeting minutes from both public and closed session meetings
(Some dates have not been posted as yet.)
Note that the minutes of the April 23, 2007 private session meeting have been "minimally redacted" further by judge Bozonelis and now include a discussion of buying out experienced teachers.
Click here for minutes page
YouTube Videos
Interested in some of the issues we need to discuss before we vote for our next three school board members?
Click Here to watch me discuss the upcoming school board election.
Long Hill Township School District Student Enrollment Expected to Decline Again Next Year
Five-Year Average Growth Rate Hits Negative Numbers
Had the Public Known the Facts, the Budget Would Have Been Defeated!
Long Hill Township – November 28, 2007 – The average five-year growth rate in student enrollment for the Long Hill Township K – 8 school district has finally hit the negative numbers at -0.6%. (Not -0.6% for a year .. an average over the past five years.) Weren't we told that it would increase by 25%? There is no anticipated change in this declining trend in the foreseeable future.
The school board knew that they were giving us false information at the budget presentations. Click here for full story.
"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories."
Expert Piano Tuning
All repairs, regulating and restoration
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908-247-3246
NYU/Polytechnic Students
Executive MBA Program
55 Broad St, NYC
MG 7193 Ethical Dimensions of Modern Management
Professor H. Abraham Kupferman
All managers frequently face ethical challenges. Success often depends on how well managers handle decisions that challenge their own set of values. Ethical dimensions of modern management also increase as competition becomes increasingly global and technology-intensive. This course identifies major ethical issues facing managers today particularly with regard to technology, innovation and global decision making. The course also provides an opportunity for students to develop effective approaches for dealing with major ethical challenges. Finally, the course gives students a chance to reflect on the efficacy and strength of their own personal set of values.
Course packet of readings and cases:
Session 2 – The Stakes Part 2
Cases Assigned:
What Can A Mosquito Do To An Elephant? (A) : Darden School Case UVA-E 0290
What Can A Mosquito Do To An Elephant? (B) : Darden School Case UVA-E 0291 (to be distributed in class)
What Can A Mosquito Do To An Elephant? (C) : Darden School Case UVA-E 0292 (to be distributed in class)
You might also read
1. "Aristotle's Ethics"
2. "The Prince" by Nicolo Machiavelli
Governor of New Jersey 1776–1790
Buried at Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, NY
"The Enemy have lately tempted me to consider myself in a point of light in which I should never have had the vanity to consider myself but for their most gracious opinion of me, that is as a Man of Consequence. I hope they will never succeed in killing me, as I should by that means most certainly lose the honor of being hanged in Company with some of you more illustrious Rebels."
Reverend James Caldwell at the Battle of Springfield
"Give'em Watts Boys"
On June 23, 1780, the climactic battle of the final invasion of New Jersey was fought. Approximately 6,000 Crown forces under the command of General Knyphausen attacked from Staten Island, New York, via Elizabethtown, attempting to seize the Hobart Gap in the nearby Watchung Mountains. His goal was to get to Morristown, where General Washington had supplies and artillery.
Approximately 2,000 American Continental and local Militia forces defended the area in the Rahway River vicinity. For more than 40 minutes, Colonel Angell and his men fought the advancing British infantry, cavalry and several field pieces, which were five times their number, to a standstill. Slowly, the British pushed the Militia back.
During the heat of the battle, as the Colonial and Militia forces were nearly out of ammunition and outnumbered, Reverend James Caldwell of the First Presbyterian Church, passed out Watts Hymnals for use as artillery wadding. His cry, “Give ‘em Watts, Boys!” has lived on and became the famous motto of that battle.
As the British retreated, they resorted to burning and looting the town. Only four houses remained standing after the Battle of Springfield. The British goal of reaching Morristown was once again thwarted and the Battle of Springfield, also known as “The Forgotten Victory,” marked the last invasion of the British into New Jersey.
Walter M. Luers
Law Offices
of Walter M. Luers, LLC
165 First Avenue
Atlantic Highlands, NJ
07716
732-872-8088
732-872-8044 (facsimile)
201-892-4316 (cell)
wluers@hotmail.com
Click here for the actual numbers from the DOE website.
Click her for a "simplified" explanation of the funding formula.
Click here for the LHT Mayor's "State of the Township Address", January 2, 2008
Click Here for LHT Community Calendar
Want you child to develop some interest in music? What better way than to buy her that special birthday present.
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