City to be first test of Urban Hope Act, as district grapples with its own low performance
By John Mooney
What with its size and Facebook fortune, Newark gets all the press. But Camden is quickly becoming ground zero south for the Christie administration’s push for education reform.
This week, the district will be the first to seek proposals from nonprofit organizations — with potential for-profit partners — to build and run new schools in the city under the recently enacted Urban Hope Act.
Meanwhile, the state continues to prepare for some sweeping changes in the district itself, with 23 of the 28 schools so low performing as to be deemed Priority Schools, and subject to overhauls of their staff, leadership and even curriculum.
All this comes as the local Board of Education on Tuesday completed the buyout of superintendent Bessie Lefra Young after five years on the job, and announced it would launch a search for a new leader.
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