Newark superintendent storms out of tumultuous school board meeting after parent refers to Anderson’s “brown baby”
The state-appointed Newark school superintendent stormed out of an angry, tumultuous School Advisory Board (SAB) meeting a few hours ago after a parent, infuriated by Cami Anderson’s treatment of the city’s children, asked “Why don’t you want for all brown babies what you want for your own brown baby?”
Anderson, who had sat passively without reacting to repeated and often angry demands for her resignation and charges of bullying and indifference toward the city’s children, reacted instantly when someone referred to her own child. She is the mother of an interracial child.
“Not my family,” she said repeatedly, shaking her head and staring at the woman who had made the remark, Natasha Allen, the mother of a Newark Vocational High School student. “Not my family.”
Allen said Anderson “attacked” her child and all Newark children by requiring them to attend school in the midst of a snow emergency last week when all other schools in the county–including Newark’s charters–were closed. Allen also said Anderson’s school closing plan “will hurt children throughout the city–my child–because she is bulldozing their schools and their neighborhoods.” Allen said she was upset by Anderson’s actons, as if the state official were “personally attacking my child.”
As Allen spoke, Anderson gathered up papers in front of her and gestured toward her staff members sitting with her at a table on the stage and in the front row of the audience. She led the parade of central office staff from the stage to a rear