Building One America

Join us at Cedar Creek High School in Egg Harbor City in our fight for Freedom, Justice, and Opportunity

Monday, April 11, 6:30 PM, Cedar Creek High School in Egg Harbor City - 1701 New York Ave, Egg Harbor City, NJ 08215

We are meeting at the Greater Egg Harbor Regional High School District Board of Education Meeting at Cedar Creek High School in Egg Harbor City, 1701 New York Ave, Egg Harbor City, NJ 08215.

We will gather outside at the North wing parking area (If you are coming from the New York Avenue entrance go left around the building to the covered parking area) and from there we will go together to the meeting.

In 2019 The Greater Egg Harbor Regional High School District Board of Education voted to accept Absecon’s students who are now assigned to Pleasantville, making them a party to Absecon's illegal and immoral effort to secede and further segregate our region.

Absecon’s separation petition is a part of a campaign of illegal secessions taking place across the state where majority white school districts are trying to secede from majority black and brown districts.

The members of the Greater Egg Harbor Regional High School Board of Education may not be aware that they agreed to participate in an illegal and unconstitutional scheme. It will be our job to let them know and to urge them to reverse their unlawful decision.

Sign up here to register for this action.

You may have heard that a despicable racial expletive was used during a recent city council meeting in Absecon, NJ. The statement has since been denounced by city leaders and is being investigated by law enforcement. Still, incidents like this cause fear, mistrust and can only serve to reinforce a belief that racism is behind Absecon’s drive to segregate itself from the Pleasantville School district.

Sign up to March for Freedom Justice and Opportunity, Sunday, March 20, 1:30 PM at Mt. Zion Baptist Church, Pleasantville, NJ.

In a recent New York Public Radio report about New Jersey’s segregated schools, “it’s just the element” is how one Absecon resident described the "problem" with Pleasantville and its students. In that same broadcast, Absecon School Superintendent, Dan Dooley denied his push to leave Pleasantville was racially motivated yet stunningly called it “an equity issue” for his students “because”, he said, “those with means go other places”. Mr. Dooley is correct that it is an “equity issue” but he failed to acknowledge how his plan would create the means for Absecon kids to “go other places" while leaving Pleasantville students more isolated and more segregated than ever before.  

March for Freedom, Justice and Opportunity

Sunday, March 20, 1:30 PM, Starting at Mount Zion Baptist Church, Pleasantville, NJ.

Join us as we march for justice, freedom and opportunity for all our children, Sunday,March 20 at 1:30 pm beginning at Mount Zion Baptist Church, 353 S New Rd, Pleasantville, NJ 08232.

 “Racial segregation must be seen for what it is, and that is an evil system, a new form of slavery covered up with certain niceties of complexity.” — Martin Luther King, Jr.

Principles:

• A school integration plan must involve everyone. All districts bear some responsibility. All have a role to play.
• It must be implemented statewide and must engage entire regions if it is to shut off all doors to “flight”. Small scale pilot projects will not work.
• It must set meaningful, achievable, and fair goals for inclusion and integration. The state’s aim should be to support, incentivize and push all districts, schools, faculty, and classrooms to better reflect the diversity of their regions and the state.
• Goals must be based on “Opportunity” as well as race.[1]

9 Point Legislative Plan for Eradicating School Segregation in New Jersey

1.      We must conduct an Opportunity Analysis. A desegregation plan and its goals must be based on a thorough analysis of racial as well as economic and social factors that define “opportunity”.

2.      We must reform and strengthen the Department of Education’s civil rights capacity and enforcement so it can develop a desegregation plan and has the power needed to advance and enforce it.

3.      We must expand and strengthen the state school funding formula to advantage and incentivize diverse and integrated schools.

4.      We must direct and increase state school funding to suppprt and incentivize local integration and desegregation best practices where diversity already exists.

5.      We must reform the Interdistrict Public School Choice program to become a mandatory tool to advance integration within regions based on an opportunity analysis.

6.      We must require charter schools to advance integration and meet regional inclusion goals.

7.      We must create and support pro-integration magnet schools in urban areas and require county schools to meet regional integration goals

8.      We must end secessions; ban the termination of regional send-receive arrangements and the dissolution of unified districts. We must amend the school consolidation bill to prohibit secessions while requiring an affirmative obligation to create integrated districts.

9.  We must strengthen the Fair Housing Act to Increase Mount Laurel obligations on “far flung” wealthy communities with exclusionary schools.

 

Caveats: 

a)  Avoid Short-Term Quick-Fixes, especially ones that trade costly expenditures in place of true inclusion; because “sperate is never equal”     

b)     Don't Blame the Victim. NJ’s high poverty, racially isolated districts did not create segregation. Their students did not choose it. They should not bear the burden of fixing it or paying for it.

c)      Not all suburban and urban districts are the same; consider the relative diversity and fiscal capacity of all districts.

d)     Do No Harm - The best intentions often bring unintended harmful consequences, including some well-meaning proposals: 

County consolidation in most counties in NJ will not capture a diverse enough area to stop white flight. 

Simply removing district boundaries would only accelerate flight and deepen segregation.

e)     Magnet and vocational schools should not be allowed to create new layers of exclusivity and exclusion. They must all meet meaningful goals for reflecting the economic and racial mix of their region.

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[1] Opportunity is defined by social and economic factors such as income, wealth, quality schools, jobs and tax base.