>The Cartel, a new feature-length documentary about the waste, fraud and mismanagement within New Jersey public schools, will premiere in Teaneck, NJ, on Saturday, May 30th. The screening is part of the Hoboken International Film Festival, New Jersey’s most prestigious platform for original, new cinema.
In The Cartel, first-time filmmaker and New Jersey resident Bob Bowdon begins with the financial side of the education issue — showing how the belief that teachers are underpaid has produced an endless march toward higher education budgets — while billions of dollars quietly disappear, whistle-blowers are threatened or demoted, and over 80% of the money often never reaches the classroom.
Loaded with specific examples, the film shows:
Cases of NJ public school janitors receiving six figure salaries
A NJ public school district that pays six-figure salaries to over 400 administrators
NJ public school board members indicted for taking bribes from contractors
NJ public school superintendents getting over $400,000 dollars in compensation
A NJ public high school spending $30 million on a football field despite the fact that 85% of its students are failing state proficiency tests
A State Senator confirming that one billion dollars disappeared in NJ school construction funding without a single conviction, indictment or even arrest
A former NJ teacher of the year who examined her school’s budget and uncovered phony salaries for people who did not exist. When she reported the fraudulent accounting, she was brought up on formal charges of insubordination.
The Cartel reveals how teachers’ unions make it virtually impossible to get rid of a bad teacher. The point is hard to dispute when entire counties, like Bergen County, can go ten years without firing a single tenured teacher, and some urban districts, like Newark, let go tenured teachers at a rate of less than one in 3,000. The film also shows how even those very few “worst of the worst” teachers who finally do get fired can often just move over to a neighboring town and start teaching again. That’s because the dismissal records are typically sealed as part of the union-negotiated termination settlements.
The Hoboken International Film Festival’s world premiere of The Cartel will be at the Cedar Lane Cinemas in Teaneck, NJ, Saturday, May 30th, at 2pm. Tickets can be obtained online via the film’s website:www.thecartelmovie.com