Part 7: Schooled By Substitutes at Quitman Street

Perseverance at a Newark ‘renew school’ following midyear teacher turnover

By Sara Neufeld

This is the seventh in an extended series of articles about Newark’s Quitman Street Renew School.

The first teacher to go was grieving over the death of a loved one. Those who followed gave reasons more directly tied to frustrations at the school: long hours taking a toll on family life, the minimal pay increase when the academic day was extended in January, feeling discounted in curricular decisions.

One after another, they kept leaving. Between December and February, five teachers at Quitman Street Renew School quit, including the entire staff for middle school science and math, subjects now staffed by long-term substitutes.

Two of those who resigned had disciplinary charges pending against them, and Principal Erskine Glover had to rehire them in September to give them a legally required opportunity to improve. No one was shocked that they didn’t last the year. But the other three teachers were among those Glover carefully handpicked after an entire summer conducting interviews. More than half the instructional staff of 66 was new in the fall at Quitman, a long-struggling school in Newark’s impoverished Central Ward. Administrators and families alike were counting on the overhaul to finally turn things around.

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