By Andrew Elrod, Truthout
Ever since Newark Public Schools (NPS) Superintendent Cami Anderson’s December announcement of her district’s turnaround program, “One Newark,” parents and teachers have faced growing uncertainty about the future of their district. The program proposes to turn Newark Public School buildings over to charter management organizations, combine several high school campuses and implement an open enrollment program to allow for district-wide “choice.”
As NPS prepares to shed a third of its 38,000 students over the next three years, the causes of its decline have been called into question. Unlike many centers of post-industrial depression, the population in Newark actually grew during the last census. The district claims that parents are the force behind its declining enrollment numbers, citing the all-powerful explanation of “choice,” but the Newark Teachers Union (NTU), together with a New Jersey state senator, has offered an alternative interpretation. Rather than market imperatives necessitating layoffs and downsizing, they allege that district policy is shifting larger numbers of students into charter schools, penalizing public schools teachers for the demographics of their students, and, according to a congressional investigation, preparing public assets for sale to for-profit companies.
“We got two different things going on in Newark,” said Bruce Baker, a professor at Rutgers’ Graduate School of Education, in reference to the expansion of charter seats under Superintendent Anderson and the projected enrollment decline in the district. “They are coupled, but its a little unclear how they’re coupled.”
Beginning this year with an attempt to disregard seniority rights in district staffing decisions and a plan to replace 700 existing teachers, a total number reported by NTU president Joseph Del Grosso, the projected enrollment decline has put the district on a three-year downsizing program.
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