Are stay at home parents sacrificing?

By Becky Parr

I am the stay at home mother of five children, four of whom are biologically mine. I’m asked quite often how the heck we get by. I almost never give an honest answer. To do so would only make the person asking the question feel belittled and make me sound superior and that’s not what I would ever want.

When I look at the world around me today I see so many lost little faces. Little people feeling disconnected and big people feeling like they missed out on something but knowing not quite what. I have friends who work fifty to sixty hours a week. They take two vacations a year and have two new cars. Their children all have the best video games and computers. They are very stressed people. I know parents that only work forty hours a week. Both parents mind you. They also have at least one new car and massive credit card debt to get their kids the latest games and phones and computers. They are very stressed people. The thing I find amusing is where these children can be found. Not where the brand new computers are, ours is many years and many repairs old. Not where the latest video game equipment is, we don’t own even one, wait I might still have an Atari. Yep, you guessed it, they’re all at my house, lamenting about their horrid math teacher or gushing about the hot guy in 3rd period while I’m stepping over a toddler and a husky (my pound rescue and my comic relief)trying to fit 2lbs of pasta into a pot designed for much less because my 5 year old is using the big pot for a homemade “science experiment.”. The children wandering in and out of our home range from 18 months to 20 years. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

We live comfortably, no new cars, no state of the art electronics but we’re not walking or taking the bus and we have cable. How we manage to get by is very simple, we prioritized. I’m not sacrificing anything by staying home to raise my children. Even if I did have to take the bus, have no TV and do without meat in my meal plans 6 of the 7 days a week it still wouldn’t be a sacrifice. (If that sounded a little specific, it was, we have had to do those things and I’d do them again, happily. Ooooh, there’s a word not used very often in conjunction with doing without.)

One of the little ones spent the night a while back. She was about 4 at the time. We got up on Saturday morning and took inventory. The only thing in the house we had enough of to feed us all was the makings for French Toast. She asked to call her mother about half way thru, I said sure and overheard her call. She had called home absolutely amazed that there was another way to make French Toast. Mom. she said, did you know that some French Toast is made with bread and eggs? Aunt Becky didn’t even put it in the toaster! Sacrifice? Please. My children will be raised with my beliefs and morals, not whoever the daycare center has making minimum wage pretending to give a rats ass about my children. I’ll know them well enough to see warning signs of future trouble and they’ll know me and my expectations. It occurs to me that instead of asking how much a person would sacrifice to be a stay at home Mother/Father, the question should be do you know what you’re sacrificing by not being a stay at home Mother/Father.

As I sit here writing these things I know that I’m sounding a wee bit defensive. Yeah, I said wee bit, problem? Huh, well, Huh? OK I keeed, I keeed! This comes from a part of me that has listened to women in our government as well as media and business people that make raising ones own children sound like a job that’s not worth the time of a well educated, motivated individual. Like by choosing to take complete responsibility for what I have brought into this world is somehow hurting the the cause known as Womens Rights. I for one don’t think getting out from under a big hairy knuckled thumb to replace it with a dainty well manicured one is what the original bra burners had in mind.

Becky Parr has started The Ordinary Woman at rltopreviews.com . If you like what you have read here please take the time to browse through the web site. It is a place to submit any DIY tips or stories, be they funny or disastrous. Currently there are several pages dedicated to small repairs that are traditionally way over charged for that can be done with minimal tools and no special skill. Thanks for your support, Becky.

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Jackson BOE may reconsider senior parking fees

This is the  first Jackson NJ Online BOE meeting recap, a service that will be provided for  parents who cannot attend the monthly meetings whenever I can attend myself.    I’ll try my best to give a fair and honest representation and hope you enjoy.   You would better serve yourself and your child to attend these meetings which are one night per month and just a couple of hours.  Tonight’s Jackson Township Board of Education meeting started out with an awards presentation for district students.  Unless something seems outlandish or extraordinary, I will not comment on it.  I will try to get my hands on the most recent BOE meeting minutes as they become available, but was one of the topics discussed tonight and we’ll talk about that shortly.

A handful of parents stood up to protest the parking fees approved two months ago in which high school seniors would be charged a $25 parking fee to park their vehicles on school property.    The school board initially agreed to investigate reopening the matter based on community feedback, but things got pretty heated as parents stood and asked why students are paying but out of town employees who do not pay taxes may park for free.

Marvin Krakower had to deflect initial criticism of Superintendent Thomas Gialanella and ask parents to address board members and not the Superintendent which is considered proper protocol and initial complaints seemed to be directed harshly at Mr. Gialanella.    Most of the board members remained silent on the issue, but BOE president Barabara Fiero struck back at criticism of the plan by stating parents had the change to voice their opinions when the matter was being discussed at the March 31st meeting, however parents claimed they did not know of the plan until their children came home with the notice about parking fees.

In response to parents requesting and everyone or no one system where students, teachers, administrators, guests and BOE members should also pay, Ms. Fiero lashed out in a near tirade in support of the program.     One board position was that students are offered bus service and teachers and staff are not.  The Board of Education also claimed that the funds raised will not be used for maintenance of the parking, but instead will be deposited into the general fund, denying that such statements were ever made.  This claim cannot be verified because the meeting minutes from the March 31st meeting have not yet been compiled, raising yet another request for timely dissemination from the audience.

The board claims that the only guidelines regulating the time to publish BOE meeting minutes stated only that they should be done in a reasonable amount of time.    Other requests were made to have meeting minutes published on the website for which the board agreed is a good idea.

Paul Mayerowitz addressed the board regarding several financial issues including expanding the budget advisory board into the finance board for the district in which he was told that sensitive or confidential financial information cannot legally be shared with the public and Sharon Dey thanked the advisory committee and left the door open for future input from the general public regarding non-confidential financial assistance, but the board made no formal decision on Mr. Mayerowitz’s request.

It seems that the board is currently leaning towards making parents pay for not attending BOE meetings and not get involved, but this was purely from Fiero’s, Dey’s and Marvin Krakower’s comments of non participation.    Most other board members remained silent on the topic, so we will have to wait until the next BOE meeting to see if this topic is discussed in the interim by the board and what the decision will be.   For now it is still in the air, but effectively, students will still have to pay $25 per semester pending a reevaluation by the board.    Paul Mayerowitz also went on record to state that while on the advisory committee, he was not aware of this charge but was countered by a fellow advisory committee member who claimed it was all clearly presented by the BOE.   I was at that meeting and only remember a brief minute or so conversation before the vote occured and saw no mention of this line item in the school budget for which I spent countless hours combing through and matching up with the presentations given.

So as usual, it is time for personal commentary on tonight’s meeting.  If there was ever a case study as to why parents should attend these meetings, tonight’s lashing by certain BOE members against lack of parental involvement as the sole excuse to justify not repealing the parking fee or modifying the program for the sake of being a done deal, tonight’s snooze you lose rebuttal  was testament to parental participation.    I was actually shocked that at this point the new BOE president became aggressive with the harsh questioning and completely lost her professional composure while other board members effectively maintained a professional demeanor.     I am however split on the effectiveness of tonight’s protest because it turned into a heated argument in which Fiero clamored and one parent walked off in disgust.   I would have liked to have seen both sides maintain composure, but it wasn’t in the cards tonight.

I applaud Paul Mayerowitz for addressing the board regarding bus safety for which Tom Gialanella confirmed that a meeting is in the works on the topic and thank Mr. Gialanella for being on board with the safety of our children in light of recent tragedies on the very roads where the concerns have been raised.    I have no doubts at this time that after recent conversations with Mr. Gialanella and Mr. Olkowitz regarding bus safety that the wheels are in motion to do what’s right for the children which is why I did not speak at the meeting and was satisfied with the subject being addressed without my having to be the one to bring it up.

Stop arm violation programs save children across America, but not in Jackson

Several years ago, Jackson Township School assistant transportation supervisor Ed Treadaway got our school district involved in a program called Operation SafeStop, sponsored by the New Jersey School Transportation Supervisors.   The end result of the project was a set of safety guidelines for school bus transportation administrators that outlined recommended policies set forth by the team of industry professionals from school districts and businesses around New Jersey.    Ed Treadaway was the force behind purchasing external video cameras on our school buses to record video images of drivers passing school buses while children are getting on and off and the red lights are flashing.   Ed Treadaway left our district shortly afterwards, but he left us with a fleet of school buses capable of identifying and providing evidence to report drivers who put our children at risk.

When Mr. Treadaway left our district, it seems the the only proactive voice willing to go the extra mile to protect the children from stop arm violations also left our district.     In the past few months, I have tried to bring awareness to Mr. Treadaway’s project and to try to convince the school district that it is a project worth investigating as our roads become more congested than ever before and after witnessing first hand the dangers f vehicles passing schools buses in our town.

This issue has been in the hands of our school district since June of 2008 nearly one year and the notion of looking into a small bit of added protection for Jackson children has fallen upon deaf ears.   In one year, my pleas to give this matter more attention has done very little to convince the school board or administrators to act.

Here’s  a document I found on the School Transportation News website that demonstrates the importance and success of such programs and why it is a disservice to our community that our own district has balked at the idea.

Please contact your Jackson Township School Board members to tell them that you child’s safety is important and adopting a district wide policy to eliminate stop-arm violations (vehicles passing a school bus when children are getting on and off) or at least examine the issue.  You can get a contact list here: http://www.jacksonsd.org/www/jacksonsd/site/hosting/BOARD/members.htm

 

Motorists who speed past school buses with stop arms extended are breaking the law, and several local Departments of Motor Vehicles are taking steps to educate the general public with after-the-fact tickets.

All 50 states have laws making it illegal for motorists to ignore school bus stop arms and red flashing lights on both sides of the undivided highways. However, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration concluded that motorists are ignorant of the law, or are just too busy to heed it.

School buses are widely considered the safest mode of transportation in the nation. That is until students disembark. In 2002, the Kansas State Department of Education released a 32-year national study on school bus loading and unloading zones and found that 1,102 students were killed by another vehicle while boarding or during egression.

To help curb these fatalities, several states are targeting motorists who ignore the flashing red lights at school bus stops by utilizing a network of drivers, the Department of Motor Vehicles and law enforcement.

Connecticut Operation Safe Stop began in 1998 as a once-a-year program designed to heighten the awareness of school bus stop arms. Each April, law police and motor vehicle inspectors increased patrols at school bus stops and along routes. However, the program eventually lost steam after only three years of existence, due to a lack of public support, said Robin Leeds of the Connecticut School Transportation Association (COSTA).

“There was so little participation,” Leeds said. “The news media got bored with it, the police departments. Many said we’ve just got better things to do.”

In the long run, however, the program has been anything but a failure.

“We don’t need that push once a year,” Leeds explained. “While the blitz became unsustainable, there was a net gain in terms of awareness and ability to work with local agencies. It fostered a cooperation and relationship between transportation departments and police year round.”

Because law enforcement can only be in so many places at once, the program became an out growth of the different ways for school transportation officials to report drive bys. The Connecticut Department of Motor Vehicles now handles the day-to-day ticketing of stop arm violators by working closely with transportation departments, bus drivers and local law enforcement authorities.

School bus drivers are trained to document instances of illegal vehicular passings and to forward the reports to the DMV, which in turn enters the license plate number, style of vehicle, color, time and location of the incident into a statewide database. The DMV then matches the data against registration information. For first offenses, a warning letter is sent to the vehicle owner as a notification of the law. If the same vehicle is reported again, a $450 ticket is issued. The next offense is worth $1000, and so on.

Similar programs are in place nationwide, most notably in Arizona , New York and Pennsylvania . In Tennessee , school bus drivers even have the ability to file an arrest warrant for a driver they have identified as violating the stop arm law. Last month, Olympia , Wash. , began a pilot program that warns motorists of the illegal passing law. A posted sign with explicit instructions lights up on the back of a school bus when it prepares to come to a stop. The sign works in conjunction with the extended stop arm. In Toronto , the Ontario government is introducing new legislation that would allow police to charge motorists who ignore stopped school buses in loading zones.

And then there is always the possibility that a police officer catches a motorist in the act.

Studies Support Need for New Technology

One child death is always one too many, yet advocates of the illegal passing laws point to staggering numbers that demonstrate how many close calls occur each day.

A one-day Virginia study conducted in 1996 of 119 school districts found that 3,394 motorists illegally passed a stopped school bus. For a 180-day school year, that would equate to over 600,000 violations. Even more alarming was that 187 of these violations were on the right-side of the bus where students egress.

The same year, the Illinois Department of Transportation’s Division of Traffic Safety surveyed 250 school bus drivers over a 41-day period. 135 drivers responded with 3,450 violations. This is estimated to be over 1.9 million violations in one year.

A 1997 survey conducted by the National Survey of Speeding and Other Unsafe Driving Actions, commissioned by NHTSA, actually found that 99 percent of drivers interviewed said the most dangerous unsafe driving behavior was passing a school bus with its lights flashing and stop arm extended, more so than speeding, racing, ignoring stop signs/red lights, crossing railroad tracks with red lights blinking, or passing in a no-passing zone.

A one-day study conducted in 119 of 131 school districts in Virginia (September 1996) found 3,394 motorists illegally passed a stopped school bus. For a 180-day school year, that would be over 600,000 violations. 187 of these violations were on the right-side of the bus where students egress.

In response, the NTHSA published a best practices guide in 2002 to help reduce illegal passings. The main purpose was to motivate and assist transportation departments and local law enforcement agencies in developing programs to reduce stop-arm violations. The guidelines also provide assistance to transportation officials in developing programs to increase public awareness and generate increased cooperation with law enforcement agencies. Additionally, NHTSA is promoting the use of new technology such as bus cameras to aid in curtailing violators.

“We’re actually right now in the process of looking into small business grants for implementing automated technology to record illegal passing of school buses,” said Susan Kirinich, a NHTSA safety specialist. “It’s still to be determined exactly what type of technology is available, and how effective is it? What we don’t know is if it is already being used.”

There are many products already available to assist law enforcement in prosecuting bus stop violators, such as Bus Vision’s video solutions. An external camera pod is discreetly mounted on the side of the bus, just below the lowest rub rail, and is painted yellow for camouflage. Rear- and forward-facing cameras can capture vehicles traveling at relatively high rates of speed, usually around 40 to 50 mph.

“We think this is important because when you’re in a vehicle recording, you don’t know where the light source is going to be,” explained Rob Scott, Bus Vision executive vice president. “On a sunny day, the image could be washed out. We get them coming and going. We have two chances to catch them.”

source: http://www.stnonline.com/stn/stnarticles/illegal_passing_0604.htm

Campaign Issue: School Bus Safety

Throughout the 2008 and 2009 school year, the issue of vehicles passing school buses while stopped with red flashers on,  on 50mph highway has been brought to the attention of the school board.   The school board and the district have spent over $30,000 on external video camera equipment on school buses, but they do not have any policy in which to report drivers to the police department in order to issue summons to those who endanger our children.

Do you agree with the school board’s decision to not enact a policy of  zero tolerance against vehicles who pass our buses while children are embarking and disembarking and risking their safety?

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Jackson NJ School Bus Stop Placement

I was told back in September by Tom Gialanella that each new school year brings a flurry of school bus stop complaints to the district.  I’m assuming most parents get the initial brush off from the district as I have, but what was concerning to me was that both Tom Gialanella and Al Olkewicz referred to “Not wanting to open the flood gates” for any individual parent.  The consensus in the school district’s management seems to be one that if you make a concession for one parent, you have to make one for every parent who raises an issue, so the default answer for all requests will be a denial based on the principle of keeping the floodgates closed.   This is an irresponsible form of management by all parties involved in the decision making process.

The problem with this logic is that all issues are treated as a nuisance by an angry parent who just wants things their way and unless you push the issue, very little, if anything will be done by default.   I wanted to put this page out here because I was told this year, over 20 other parents had concerns about school bus stop placement and I want to hear your story and see what happened.   

Please add your school  bus stop concerns and your experience dealing with the district on this page.

Which candidates will make a stand for School Bus Safety?

The above image never happened in Jackson yet, but if the school board continues to ignore issues of school bus safety in our town, it is only a matter of time before this scene plays out in our town.

It has now been 8 months since I began preaching school bus safety on our town’s busy and dangerous 50mph highways to the current administration.     In the begining of my campaign to improve standards within the Jackson Township school district, I was met with resistance. 

My initial concern was an individual bus stop, my own child’s bus stop.   It was placed on a very busy and dangerous stretch of route 527 where the speed limit is 50mph, visibility is poor and it was devoid of any signage warning drivers of a pending school bus stop.   My first letters were sent to Al Olkewicz and Tom Gialanella back in September after my phone calls in June of ‘08 proved useless and it was demanded that I put my concerns in writing before they will be addressed.

I had notified Tom and Al about the dangers associated with this bus stop.  I had requested a study be done to evaluate the bus stop.  I had requested signage.  I had request that the school district speak with the police department concerning enforcement of speed limits and other laws such as passing school buses while they are stopped.    The initial reply I got from Gialanella and Olkewicz was “The stop is safe as it is and we will make no changes”.

It was disheartening to have the two gentlemen who are ultimately responsible for my child’s safety while on the school bus tell me they will do nothing to remedy my problem.   Nothing.   No signs.  No study.  No investigation with the police department.   I was told it is what it is.

I had escalated the matter to the school board and Marvin Krakower, president of the Board delgated this issue to John Morvay after months of getting nowhere with Gialanella and Olkewicz.    John recommended that I bring the matter to a public board meeting if I was serious about this matter getting any attention beyond him.     In the meantime, John recommended that “School Bus Stop Ahead” signs be placed, overturning Olkewicz and Gialanella’s decision to make no changes.   

In December, I brought the issue to the School Board meeting and Marvin Krakower allowed it to be heard by the Transportation Subcomittee.    In the meeting with the subcomittee, John Morvay promised a further evaluation into the situation.   In early January, John rode the bus and examined the area around the stop.   He found an inconsistency in the posted speed limit, he made recommendations which were to be sent to the county and provided his findings to Assistant Superintendent Meinders who assured me I would get all the results in writing.   Needless to say, two months later and many times asking, I have not recieved those results.

At several board meetings I brought the issue of vehicles passing stopped school buses not being enforced district wide.   At the first board meeting of 2009, Krakower said he would look into, but he was sure my claim was not true.     After speaking with bus drivers, Al Olkewicz and members of the Police Department, it was confirmed that NO, the school district does not report such incidents to the Police Department.   Upon further investigation, I learned that this policy was strictly enforced by former Assistant Transportation Supervisor Ed Treadaway, but when he left the district, proactive enforcement left with him.

It has now been two months and the board has not made any actions into correcting this grave oversight on our childrens’ safety.  Finally, last week, I took matters into my own hand and notified Mayor Mike Reina of the situation.  Within 24 hours, Chief Kunz went into action to investigate this issue which resulted in unmarked police cruisers tailing the school bus.   In the first week alone, two vehicles were issued summons for passing the school bus at this stop, that Gialanella and Olkewicz had issued their safety stamp of approval on.   It is obviously not as safe as they thought.   In fact, the two of them were completely off base and negligent in their initial decision to leave matters as is back in September, a decision not even challenged by the board aside from John Morvay, who once again appeared to be the lone dissenter against Gialanella’s decision.

At a recent school board meeting, I was blasted by the board for bringing the issue to their attention.   I was told by Barbara Fiero that perhaps I should go out there with a pen and paper and write license plate numbers down myself.   Other board members balked “We’re not the police department” and Tom Gialanella defended his initial position to do nothing, claiming the situation is safe as it stands.   Marvin Krakower doubted my claims that there is no enforcement.  

So, you can see why I feel that outside of John Morvay the current sitting school board is completely ineffective and change needs to be made.  When raising concerns about this issue on the APP.Com forums, the husband of one of the board members had the audacity to blame John Morvay for my troubles, when John was the only one who would listen to begin with.

The school board needs to address the issue of why they are allowing a practice that endangers each and every child in the district.  Why did they spend $30,000 of taxpayer money on external school bus video equipment if they do not intend to use it for the reason it was purchased, to protect our children.   

In some ways I’m glad Tom Gialanella chose not to act on this matter because it exposed a huge safety flaw in the system.  A problem which puts the wellbeing of Jackson children at risk each and every day.    Each day this matter is ignored by the board, Gialanella and the district is another day that our children are not safe.    This administration needs to act a zero-tolerance policy towards vehicles passing school buses while children are embarking and disembarking and they need to do it now.

John Morvay has assured me that with his team of Matt Genovese and Tracey Murnane, he will be in a better position to put this matter to rest, but at this time, he is the lone ranger when it comes to proactively trying to protect our children.    If the current board cares about our children and cares about child safety, they will work hard between now and the election to put in place a solid district wide policy that provides for the safety of our children on the bus.   If they do not, then they need to be replaced with individuals who care.