Special Report: Staffing Newark’s Quitman Street School to Succeed

Can handpicked teachers help turn around one of Newark’s underperforming elementary schools?

By Sara Neufeld,

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“I’ve stopped calling them renewal schools and started calling them dream schools,” said Joseph Del Grosso, the Newark Teachers Union president. “There hasn’t been a lot of planning; there haven’t been a lot of discussions about what constitutes a renewal school … I think it demonstrates one of Newark’s systemic failures that they continue to repeat over and over again, and that is rushing into things without planning them.”

Del Grosso said he couldn’t understand how the district could justify the spending on outside hires when hundreds of teachers with satisfactory ratings remained without placement. “What’s the logic?” he asked.

As of last week, the union reported that 490 of Newark’s 4,000 teachers were in the unassigned pool, a figure Anderson said was inflated. This week, the district said the number was down to about 200; union officials concurred that there had been a flurry of placements over Labor Day weekend.

While teachers in the pool were reluctant to speak on the record, Del Grosso said they were facing enormous stress and frustration. “I felt very degraded and very underrated,” said Cynthia Wade, a music teacher and union vice president who finally was assigned to a school a few days ago. She said many principals favored young recruits, and “experienced teachers were left until the end for placement.”

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