Not content with prayers for the death of the governor, the New Jersey Education Association has also opposed sacrifices on the part of teachers to help balance the budgets of their respective school districts. So New Jersey’s governor and his surrogates now have made two very important points, one of which I agree with whole-heartedly and one of which I am a bit less sanguine about.

"I just don’t see how citizens should want to support a budget where their teachers have not wanted to be part of the shared sacrifice," said Christie, whose proposed $820 million cut in school aid has districts planning layoffs and program cuts.

Local school budgets are up for a vote a week from Tuesday. Of the state’s almost 600 districts, 141 have implemented a wage freeze or pay cut of some sort — but only 20 of those involve teachers, according to the governor’s office.

If spending is being cut or frozen in the districts, I fail to see how teacher salaries cannot be a part of that. After all, those salaries are often the biggest line-item in a district’s budget, or close to it. And if the non-teaching employees of the district – the secretaries, cafeteria workers, and bus drivers who make significantly less than teachers – are seeing their pay frozen or cut, then it strikes me as only proper that the teachers bite the bullet as well. And I say that as a teacher.

But the second point is one that I’m more ambiguous about, for a couple of reasons – the call for the firing of those responsible for the “death prayer” directed against Chris Christie by officials of one union local.

The Republican governor accepted her apology for the memo sent by union officials in Bergen County last week, Christie spokesman Michael Drewniak said. But Keshishian would not agree to force out Joe Coppola, president of the Bergen County Education Association who signed the memo, which effectively ended the meeting, Drewniak said.

"What would happen to a student in any of these schools ... if they had sent out an e-mail like that? In all likelihood, that student would be suspended, maybe expelled, subject to court action," Drewniak said. "If the NJEA can’t as an organization accept that this was egregious conduct and take disciplinary action, I don’t know how we could move forward without that happening."

Now I agree with Christie that Joe Coppola – at a minimum – should be fired for that memo. Indeed, I question whether NJEA head Barbara Keshishian is fit to remain in a position of leadership in the organization given her weak response to the controversy. Indeed, the only thing that I find objectionable is that the justification for the getting rid of Coppola is what would happen to a student who wrote such a thing about a teacher. Such a punishment for a kid would be an overreaction – but Coppola is not a kid, and he ought to be held to a higher standard of conduct than any student is, not the lower one imposed by the NJEA.