Newark residents sue to stop “One Newark,” create integrated school district within Essex County
The five children of George Tillman stood with him in front of what had once been known—and, to some in Newark’s South Ward, will always be known—as the Bragaw Avenue School. Above their heads, newly installed air conditioners hummed quietly and, from a discreet distance, armed private security guards warily kept watch on a hundred or so city residents. The scene is from the new Newark, the strange new world where faraway strangers with private money determine the future of public education. Tillman’s five children are being dispersed to five different schools. The state-operated school district waited until Bragaw was awarded to a privately-operated charter school before it installed air-conditioning. And the armed security guards illustrate just how far from the people neighborhood schools have become.
It might have been a thoroughly sad and depressing scene—except that it was here on noon Monday that Newark’s residents, parents, and employees began to fight back against the racist regime imposed on the city’s public schools by Gov. Chris Christie, his education commissioner David Hespe, and Cami Anderson, the soulless, tone-deaf woman who would destroy a city for her private ambitions.
“We are going to go where others have not wanted to go,” said Robert Pickett, a lawyer with years of experience in the city. “We are going to talk about what Newark residents sue to stop “One Newark,” create integrated school district within Essex County | Bob Braun's Ledger: