The Queen of Tenure Speaks
I've been following the saga of the war between Dr. Janine Caffrey and the Perth Amboy Board of Education closely for several reasons:
- Caffrey was given a platform multiple times in the Star-Ledger to opine that tenure is "...the single greatest impediment to education improvement in New Jersey, without a doubt," even though she hadn't even served one year as a superintendent in New Jersey.
- When Caffrey was accused of malpractice by her board, B4K - the New Jersey reformy lobbying group with deep-pockets and ties to Michelle Rhee's Students First - rushed to put out an ad campaign in her defense. It remains unclear whether the Perth Amboy schools have financial ties to B4K's or SF's backers, although there is substantial circumstantial evidence.
- Despite her previous calls to, as Tom Moran put it, "...end tenure, to pull it out by the roots and to spread salt over the patch of earth where this weed once grew so that nothing like it can rise in its place, ever," Caffrey has been happy to appeal her firing by the PABOE to ACTING Commissioner Chris Cerf, an act I find massively hypocritical. His latest response to her case mirrors the current tenure law so closely