“New Jersey is launching a statewide effort to strengthen its school funding system and ensure every student has access to the opportunities, resources, and support they need to succeed. Through a collaborative, stakeholder-driven process, NJDOE will work with families, educators, school leaders, legislators, advocates, and community partners to identify opportunities for improvement.” – NJ Department...Continue reading
Going Public — This Week's Insights “We still haven't worked out the best mix of each culture in our own institutions and in society as a whole. How should it look?” - Mike Gecan, Going Public: An Organizer's Guide to to Citizen Action, page 174
Going Public — This Week's Insights “Pick your interest or public passion. Evaluate the ways the market culture and bureaucratic culture have performed. And then just try to convince me that there is not a role for crafty and capable leaders, well organized and comfortable with power, rooted in a third sector that is working...Continue reading
Going Public — This Week's Insights “At the core of the relational culture is a belief in the ability of most people to grow and develop, as well as a faith in the newly arrived or recently organized people or formerly excluded people to exert their new-found power in effective and responsible ways.” - Mike...Continue reading
Going Public — This Week's Insights “At the end of several months of training and strategy, the staff came to a critical decision: everything that they did…would be put to a simple test. Did the activity lead to the training and developing of leaders? Or not? If it did, they would invest their time and...Continue reading
Going Public — This Week's Insights “This trend will continue–and more Americans will choose either to bowl alone or not bowl at all–until the leaders and organizers of our voluntary associations confront a few major failings.” - Mike Gecan, Going Public: An Organizer's Guide to to Citizen Action, page 131 “Leaders can confront the critical...Continue reading
Going Public — This Week's Insight “On issue after issue, in agency after agency, affecting scores of communities, our organized teams of leaders learned what it was like when a focused government actually wanted to respond to focused citizens.” - Mike Gecan, Going Public: An Organizer's Guide to to Citizen Action
TL;DR Intuit's QuickBooks ("Intuit/QB") is the dominant bookkeeping software for small to medium-sized businesses. Aspiring CPAs have a real interest in learning it — with one exception: if you're Big 4 focused, this may not be a priority (more on that in a separate post). If you are an aspiring CPA and want to explore...Continue reading
Going Public — This Week's Insight “We don’t see the value in practicing politics deductively….we know that we need to work inductively, through the process of individual meetings and house meetings, through the acquired habits of action and evaluation, and through the testing and retesting of ideas and strategies in cities and states, before we...Continue reading
If you're a student leader reading this, I know how busy life can get. I'm a former college professor and CPA Advisor on campus and now have my own firm. But...as busy as life gets, it's important to carve out time to learn, develop, and connect with colleagues in your professional community. The accounting profession...Continue reading
Going Public — This Week's Insight “We were taught that merit mattered. If we just presented the facts in a full and fair manner, if we got the words right, the slogan right, the tone right, the photo-op right, then others would realize the errors of their ways and move in our direction. We learned...Continue reading
Going Public — This Week's Insight “Intelligent action, even public confrontation, is at bottom an attempt to engage and relate. Most activists fail to appreciate this. Bureaucrats seek to stifle it. Reenactors have lost sight of it. Celebrity self-promoters try to monopolize it. And terrorists long to destroy it. Our leaders study and practice it....Continue reading
Going Public — This Week's Insight “But constructive and creative action doesn't just happen. Rosa Parks didn't wake up one morning and spontaneously decide to sit on a seat near the front of the bus. She thought about her nonviolent but high-risk action and debated it with other leaders. She trained at the Highlander Folk...Continue reading
Going Public — This Week's Insight “How do you think new and better schools will be built? Because they are desperately needed? Because it’s a good idea? Because the honchos at the Board of Education wake up in the morning and decide to do the right thing? Because the city is appalled by the chronic...Continue reading
Going Public — This Week's Insight "We forget or deny that the appetite to relate is fundamental, and that the willingness to relate is nearly universal. People who have ideas and drive are on every street, in every project, every workplace and school, waiting in the wings, ready to be discovered. Someone has to reach...Continue reading
If you are not yet subscribed to the Jersey City Times, I encourage you to make the investment. Because, as I detail below, we need the press on a very basic level when it comes to civics. Action 1: Jersey City Together’s public action at Christ the King R.C. Church in Greenville On April 27th,...Continue reading
Going Public — This Week's Insight "I am an organizer. Not a consultant to so-called faith-based programs. Not a facilitator. Not an advisor. Not a service provider or do-gooder. Not an ideologue. Not a political operative. Not a pundit. Not a progressive. Not an activist...I won't begin to make sense unless I follow the advice...Continue reading
I'm trying something new on Civic Parent - video tutorials with accompanying interactive Tableau visualizations. I've been told my in-person and on-screen explanations are helpful - I do this with clients, in my volunteer work, and I've done it in public spaces with organizations like Jersey City Together. So what I'm trying to do here...Continue reading
Reminder: Civic Parent is for general teaching and educational purposes. Nothing on Civic Parent should be considered tax, accounting, or legal advice. Always consult a professional and come to agreed-upon terms if you need help with your specific facts and circumstances. With property tax appeals in particular, attorneys and real estate agents are licensed professionals...Continue reading
This post is part of a Civic Parent’s series, Take Your Seat at the Table: A Taxpayer’s Guide to Decoding Your City Budget. This series is a plain-language walk through New Jersey’s Municipal User Friendly Budget (UFB). In my previous post I looked at the idea of structural imbalance. In this post I want to dig...Continue reading
This post is part of a Civic Parent’s series, Take Your Seat at the Table: A Taxpayer’s Guide to Decoding Your City Budget. This series is a plain-language walk through New Jersey’s Municipal User Friendly Budget (UFB). In my last post, I wrote “Where the Money Goes: Local Government is Mostly People Cost” which pointed to structural...Continue reading
Last night reminded me that the best talks aren’t always the most polished — they’re the most personal. I had about ten minutes to prepare before stepping up to the microphone in Saint Peter’s University’s Sky Room, speaking to a room of two distinct audiences: CPAs and college students. It was an event I’d helped organize for months with Carl Specht, president...Continue reading
CTE stands for “Career and Technical Education” and it is a 100-year old workforce development paradigm that aims to connect high school students to industries that have demand for local, homegrown talent. In NJ, CTE programming is supported by multiple state agencies, including the NJ Department of Education and the NJ Department of Labor. A key...Continue reading
Employment demand for accountants is expected to increase by four percent between 2022 and 2032 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Yet current CPA firms currently face a dire talent shortage, resulting in firms turning down client work and/or relying on non-American labor forces for help completing audits and tax returns. The Wall Street Journal reported in January...Continue reading
Students who have been exposed to accounting before college have a clear advantage on Day 1. I experienced this while teaching accounting in the college classroom. Accounting is often called "the language of business" because it requires mastering new terms, new rules, and understanding how it all fits together. Students who obtain a head start...Continue reading