Hopatcong Teacher Meets Gov., Talks Tenure, Teacher Evaluations

Hopatcong teacher Danielle Kovach sat down with Gov. Chris Christie for the first time recently. And though it wasn't exactly what she had in mind, Kovach made her voice heard.

The discussed tenure and teacher evaluation systems with Christie and six other county teachers of the year on April 21. During Christie's in Hopatcong in March, and the rest of the county teachers of the year to discuss their platform.

Kovach said she didn't see eye-to-eye with the governor, but felt like he gave the impression that he "genuinely cared."

"Some of the feedback we gave him, hopefully he'll take into consideration some of the things we're concerned about," Kovach said.

The Tulsa Trail third-grade special education teacher said she didn't agree with Christie's views on teacher evaluations or tenure, for the most part. She said she didn't believe all teachers could be evaluated on student achievement.

"They really didn't have a concrete way of measuring studying achievement, either," she said. "And these proposals are tied to our pay and they really had no concrete way to say, 'OK, this is how we are going to get these scores.'"

Kovach said Christie stayed for more than an hour and was accompanied by Acting Education Commissioner Chris Cerf.

Though the meeting was a mostly mild affair, Kovach said Christie got "a little hot under the collar" when she confronted him on calling teachers "bad."

"I expressed to him how when he personally calls teachers bad, it's like nails on a chalkboard for me," she said. "They might be ineffective, but they're not bad people."

She said Christie said he would consider using a different word.