By Ben Velderman
EAGnews.org

TRENTON, N.J. – New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on Thursday vetoed legislation that would have given tenure-like job protections to nonteaching school employees.

NJSpotlight.com reports the proposed law – Senate Bill 2163 – would have given “teacher aides, custodians and bus drivers the right to arbitration in all disciplinary matters, ranging from reprimands to terminations.”

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SB 2163 would have also applied to noncertified staff at the state and county level.  There are about 50,000 such public employees throughout New Jersey. More than 40,000 of them are represented by the New Jersey Education Association – the state’s largest teachers union, reports Philly.com.

State Sen. Raymond Lesniak, sponsor of SB 2163, said the intention was to protect school employees from “overtly political” school boards.

“We just want to give these professional workers … the same rights in these cases as have teachers,” Lesniak told NJSpotlight.com.

Christie, who made teacher tenure reform a priority of his first term as governor, wasn’t interested in making it more difficult and expensive for schools to get rid of inefficient and incompetent employees.

“This bill has the potential to impose burdensome and expensive administrative procedures on every school district, diverting resources from our students, teachers and classrooms,” Christie said in his veto message.

Bringing all labor disputes before a third-party arbitrator is a favorite tactic of the nation’s teacher unions, who have been under significant public pressure to reform the tenure process.

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Labor leaders understand that any arbitrator who wants to stay employed will side with the unions about 50 percent of the time. That’s a pretty good batting average, given the anti-teacher union sentiment that’s simmering throughout the nation.

“The New Jersey School Boards Association applauded (Christie’s) veto,” reports Philly.com.