NJEA blasts Newark’s Anderson, vows fight to save tenure
The president of the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA), the state’s largest teachers’ union, last night blasted state-appointed Newark school superintendent Cami Anderson for creating a “climate of hostility and opposition” in the city, deliberately attempting to break the law protecting tenure, using Newark children to experiment with unproven ideas, and presiding over the “disgrace” of letting crumbling buildings go unrepaired. Wendell Steinhauer voted to fight Anderson’s attempt to break teachers’ seniority rights to keep and hire new teachers.
“NJEA will oppose your “equivalency request” at every turn,” Steinhauer wrote. “It is illegal, and it will destroy the careers and futures of hundreds of teachers who are caught up in a struggle that they did not create, and by which they certainly should not be victimized.”
The letter, delivered to Anderson last night, uses extraordinarily harsh language to depict the state regime in Newark—and represents an unusual decision by the statewide union to come to the support of the Newark Teachers Union, an affiliate of the rival American Federation of Teachers (AFT), AFL-CIO. The NJEA represents