Teaneck, NJ -- The Cartel, a new feature-length documentary about the waste, fraud and mismanagement within New Jersey public schools, will premiere at the Philadelphia Independent Film Festival, Pennsylvania’s most prestigious platform for original, new cinema. The screening will be on Saturday, June 27th, at 10pm at the Philadelphia Soundstages on 1600 North 5th Street in Philadelphia.
In The Cartel, first-time filmmaker and New Jersey resident Bob Bowdon begins with the financial side of the education issue -- showing how the belief that teachers are underpaid has produced an endless march toward higher education budgets -- while billions of dollars quietly disappear, whistle-blowers are threatened or demoted, and over 80% of the money often never reaches the classroom. Loaded with specific examples, the film shows:
• Cases of NJ public school janitors receiving six-figure salaries;
• A single NJ public school district paying six-figure salaries to over 400 administrators;
• NJ public school board members indicted for taking bribes from contractors;
• NJ public school superintendents receiving over $400,000 dollars in compensation;
• A NJ public high school spending $30 million on a football field despite 85% of its students fail state academic proficiency tests;
• A State Senator confirming that one billion dollars disappeared in NJ school construction funding, and still not a single conviction, indictment or even arrest; and
• A former NJ teacher of the year examined her school’s budget and uncovered phony salaries for people who did not exist. When she reported the fraudulent accounting, she was treated to formal charges of insubordination.
The Cartel reveals how teacher’s unions make it virtually impossible to get rid of a bad teacher, unless the conduct has literally become criminal. In Newark, for example, less than one in 3,000 tenured teachers are let go. The film also shows how even those very few “worst of the worst” teachers who finally do get fired can often just move over to a neighboring town and begin teaching again. That’s because the dismissal records are typically sealed as part of the union-negotiated termination settlements.
Amid all this, The Cartel puts a human face on a much higher price -- the high school students who can’t read, the whole towns where dropouts outnumber graduates, and the real children’s futures being systematically undermined -- all to protect the adults’ jobs in a dysfunctional education bureaucracy. The film also shows success stories -- how school choice in its various forms creates a long-overdue performance accountability, and how schools who have to compete for students in order to exist, even in the worst urban areas, produce miracles every day.
Bob Bowdon is a veteran television journalist including six years, from 2001-2006, as an anchor/reporter with Bloomberg Television. He also appears regularly on videos for Onion.com. More information and tickets can be obtained online via the film’s website: www.thecartelmovie.com
The Cartel is a Production of Bowdon Media in association with the Moving Picture Institute,www.thempi.org.
To schedule a director interview, or for more information, contact Audrey Mullen at 703-548-1160.