My kids had elementary school Spanish and learned nada, maybe how to count to 10. The teachers were poor and often had to consult a dictionary to answer a question. So don't think the current elementary students are missing much. They learned enough in middle/high school to take AP Spanish successfully

The classroom teachers, as adults, should be able to quickly take the DVD course themselves and learn enough to help their students.

True! It's an increase over last year but still way down from previous years. Good point!

KLF - sorry to hear there are issues with Deerfield's musical. I am not familiar with the details... just believe the idea of bringing this back into our school curriculum would be great for our kids. Some kids will always disappointed, not everyone gets to be the star, but it can be a great learning experience. Especially if they are engaged in the lighting, sets, costumes, etc. Lots of roles and responsibilities for everyone based on skills, interests, etc. Just one suggestion to enhance education in the district. I ended up pulling the curtain and being a narrator and remember it fondly!

No, it doesn't.

Your whining is tiresome. As indicated by your knowledge of the musical, you really don't know what you are talking about.

PTOs support different activities as appropriate for their school. Plays, talent shows, gardens, etc. The fact that there is a play at one school does not suggest that having 5 plays would be better

That is incorrect on three counts.

First, there was no donation. State education funding was augmented via the federal stimulus, which was designed to get the economy going after the economic crash. Second, it was 2009, so not an election year. Third, the money helped the State meet its obligations under the school funding formula but if we had not received it would not have required a billion dollar tax increase. Instead, the State could have used some of the more than $1.2 billion that has been given away by the Christie administration to corporations to convince them not to move across town and spent on unproductive and wasteful projects like new casinos and mega-malls in swamp lands. Plus, there was a more than $300 million surplus after last year's budget. So the resources clearly were there to meet the obligations to fund our public schools.

Finally, our schools were funded prior to 2008 and the Federal Stimulus. The Christie administration took hundreds of millions in reserves from districts and also slashed school funding to a total of $1.2 billion. It is simply inaccurate for them to claim they are proposing an increase now since they have yet to bring us back to where we were before they came into office.

You are trying to change the topic to partisan politics to cover up the fact that what you wrote is wrong. It's ridiculous to argue that the stimulus funding NJ got was political. It was a national program and the amount NJ received was based on a formula that was used for every state and was based on things like number of students. And, the money had to be spent in the first year or it would be lost. That's the point of a stimulus.

Furthermore, none of what you wrote deals with the fact that NJ schools are being funded at levels that are hundreds of millions of dollars lower than they were in 2008 or than they are supposed to be right now under the law.

Gov. Christie CUT school funding and has NEVER made up those cuts, and to claim anything else is just wrong.

And, if there is no money for our schools, how is it that we can afford an income tax cut of more than $1.2 billion that will go overwhelmingly to millionaires?

Thanks, but I'd rather my child's school got my proposed $80 income tax cut and my property taxes didn't have to go up to make up the difference.

It's a bad idea, whichever party suggested it, so let's not forget that Gov. Christie put another $200 million into Xanadu:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/04/nyregion/christie-and-developers-detail-plan-for-xanadu-complex.html

And how about those Atlantic City casinos that got more of our tax dollars to fail?

And don't forget the billion in our taxes that were gifted to other corporate welfare schemes. Here's just a few examples:

"Goya is getting $82 million to relocate its factory to Jersey City. Campbell’s Soup is getting $34 million to renovate its Camden headquarters. Panasonic will receive $102 million to move — from Secaucus — into new offices in Newark."

http://www.njpp.org/blog/op-ed-new-jerseys-corporate-tax-subsidies-dont-pay-off

The State had more than a billion dollars for this kind of corporate welfare but not to fund our schools?

You are obsessed with partisan politics rather than dealing with the issues at hand. I never defended democrats on any of this. My point is that NJ has wasted more than a billion dollars that could have been used to fully fund our school funding formula and that claiming, as the Christie administration is doing, that they are increasing school funding is a blatant lie.

They have yet to fund our schools to the levels of 2008, let alone increase it.

Millburn Schools are underfunded by more than $1.2 million. There has been no increase!