Who are we?
Statewide Education Organizing Committee (SEOC) is made up of public school parents and community leaders from urban and low-income school districts who have come together to work and fight for improvements in the education system.
What's New?
Paterson Chapter Wins Back School Music and Arts Programs
Paterson chapter leaders win award from the NJ ArtPride Foundation for their work to bring music and arts back to the schools; pictured from left, organizer Fernando Martinez and leaders Lillian Branch and Mohammed Akhtaruzzaman
When her daughter's school laid off their music and art teachers, Lucy Roche, PEOC member, was concerned. Her daughter is an accomplished musician, and Ms. Roche worried about the cost of paying for private lessons. She brought the issue to PEOC, and as PEOC members learned that many schools in Paterson, particularly elementary schools, had cut their music and art programs, the group formed a campaign to reestablish these programs in the schools. “That's what really got the fire going under the campaign,” explains PEOC parent leader Linda Reid, discussing the group's reaction to Ms. Roche's story. Read More...
SEOC Welcomes New Executive Director, Elizabeth Smith
At the end of 2010, SEOC welcomed a new Executive Director, Elizabeth “Liz” Smith, after the retirement of founding director Dennis Brunn. Liz had been involved with SEOC for many years before applying for the new position; she served for several years as the Secretary and then the Treasurer of our Board of Directors. But working with SEOC was not exactly her introduction to community organizing. She first became involved in organizing around community and education issues in her town of Plainfield, and it was this work that brought her in contact with SEOC.
When her daughter was just in pre-school, about 10 years ago, Liz started looking for ways to get involved in her community, and she was interested in pursuing a career in teaching. A neighbor told her about an exciting communit yengagement project in Plainfield revolving around citing a new middle school, and Liz volunteered for the committee of community members.
Ms. LueElla McFadden, a tremendous leader of SEOC and her local chapter, PCUE, passed away on May 28, 2011. We will miss her greatly and will always remember her contributions. The following bio was written in the winter of 2009.
Meet LueElla McFadden
President of SEOC's Jersey City Chapter
Parents and Communities United for Education (PCUE)
LueElla McFadden, the president of Parents and Communities United for Education (PCUE), our Jersey City chapter, has been involved in the schools as an advocate for children for almost forty years. Over those years, she has been a parent to twelve children, including her own, her sister's children after her sister passed away, and other children she has taken in who needed a parent.
One of LueElla's earliest challenges came when her daughter was in elementary school, PS 22, in Jersey City and was having difficulty learning. Instead of addressing the problem, the teacher placed LueElla’s daughter at the back of the class and ignored her, despite LueElla’s many complaints and visits to the school.
LueElla finally got the district to pay for bus transport for her daughter to attend school in the Heights neighborhood, which at the time was all white. When her children started attending school there, they were the only students who weren’t white.
Many years and experiences with school involvement later, she became involved again in PS 22 when her granddaughter attended school there. At that time and again when she became active at Lincoln HS, parents met outside the school, often at LueElla’s workplace at the medical center after hours, to talk about issues. The Lincoln parents discussed concerns about what happened to students after they were labeled as “special ed.” The students who were labeled attended school not just in separate classrooms but in a whole separate wing of the school; they were treated differently, and it was affecting them negatively. One of the children LueElla was taking care of stopped showing up to school, and she only found out because the VP of the PTA told her; the school never contacted her.
LueElla and other parents became involved in the campaign for “inclusion” of special education children, talking to the principal and Board of Education and even writing letters to the legislature. About ten years ago, she started to notice the spread of “inclusion” classrooms, and she considers it one of the biggest victories in school reform that she's been a part of, though she thinks the underlying problem of negative labeling hurting special education children is still with us.
The history of LueElla’s involvement in the schools is far too long to include in detail here, but when PCUE was founded, many of the people she had worked with over the years remembered her commitment and work ethic, and all SEOC members and staff consider ourselves lucky to have her as our Jersey City chapter president.
Asked what she’s the most proud of about PCUE, LueElla said, “It’s like watching a child grow and change. I see how we have grown and what we have accomplished. I love coming here.”
