Cami’s Newark enrollment plan collapses in the heat
The implementation of the deeply flawed “One Newark” student-dispersal program all but collapsed yesterday as the state administration’s highly paid bureaucrats kept hundreds of angry and frustrated parents and children waiting in un-airconditioned school rooms or outside in 90+ heat to register their children for the few remaining public school seats. Just hours into the chaos, Newark school officials locked the doors to Newark Vocational and told the men, women, and children waiting outside to come back at 5 a.m. the next morning.
The people in line outside shouted angrily at the bureaucrats and demanded a “number”–as shoppers do at meat markets–and the chance to get inside so they could plan for their children. Many said they could not return the next day because they had taken the day off from working and couldn’t take another day.
“The people downtown have no idea how the people of Newark work,” says Frankie Adao, the head of the Newark Parents Union, who witnessed the chaos. “They don’t understand they have to work, they have to be places and arrange for child care. I hope this wakes up many of the parents who didn’t think ‘One Newark’ had anything to do with them. Now they know.”
The “One Newark” plan was devised by Cami Anderson, the $300,000-a-year state-imposed superintendent who is consistently praised, despite her incompetence, by the man who appointed (and just reappointed) her, Gov. Chris Christie. It was developed in secret with the help of charter school operators and former Mayor Cory Booker using consltants who were paid millions in fees to devise the scheme. It empties and closes public schools and enhances the fortunes of private, charter school operators.
All the parents had stories to tell about the cruelty inflicted by the Anderson/Christie regime on the often poor and predominantly black and Hispanic residents of Cami’s Newark enrollment plan collapses in the heat | Bob Braun's Ledger: