Decision says schools Superintendent Cami Anderson was premature in citing dismissal guidelines in state’s new tenure law
By John Mooney
Amid all the debate surrounding her tenure as state-appointed leader of New Jersey’s largest school district, Newark schools Superintendent Cami Anderson has taken special pride in being able to retain and reward exemplary teachers while removing the poor ones.
But Anderson was dealt a setback last week when a state-appointed arbitrator rejected the first of dozens of tenure charges filed by Anderson, saying she had jumped the gun when she tried to use the state’s new tenure law to remove a teacher.
Anderson and the Newark Public Schools had maintained in the tenure charges filed against teacher Sandra Cheatham that she had received two consecutive years of “ineffective” or “partially effective” ratings, apparent grounds for losing her tenure protections under the new law, known as TEACHNJ.
But arbitrator Stephen Bluth found that the law itself had only been in effect since 2013, adding that while the district had run its evaluation system the year before on a pilot basis, it did not count toward the state’s law applicability.
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