TEACHERS UNION HEADS GET FIRST-HAND LOOK AT NJ SCHOOL-REFORM HOT SPOTS
Two national leaders visits Camden and Newark districts, tout organized labor’s relevance in local debates over state initiatives
- Lily Eskelsen Garcia, president of the National Education Association, visiting Pyne Poynt Middle School in Camden.
One was the visit to Camden by the president of the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers union. The other was a stop in Newark by the head of the Chicago Teachers Union, the woman who led the nation’s largest teachers strike in decades.
While the visits were not coordinated -- the two unions are not affiliated -- but the timing of the two events on Friday and over the weekend was nonetheless notable for what are inarguably the two hot spots for school reform in New Jersey.
Teachers unions in both state-run districts have been right in the middle of intense debate over reforms being pursued by Gov. Chris Christie. In Camden, the union tried to fight off layoffs last spring. In Newark, the union has fought school closures and consolidations.
But with the influence – or at least strategies -- of those unions sometimes questioned even within their own ranks, the two national union leaders tried to change that conversation this weekend and made a pitch for organized labor’s continued relevance.
“The bottom line is we are at a turning point in this country, and (teachers) are saying they are no longer a respected voice, they are becoming punching bags for governors,” Lily Eskelsen Garcia, president of the NEA, said in an interview this weekend. “We’re saying enough is enough.”
- Karen Lewis, president of Chicago Teachers Union, speaks in Newark with Mayor Ras Baraka.
“We’ve been following Newark for some time, and nothing has changed,” Lewis said after the forum. “We are seeing the same attacks on publicly-funded public education … and the same top-down mandates that don’t work.
“It’s command and control, something they are not even teaching in business school anymore.”
‘An incredible tale of two schools’
On a cross-country tour of schools that started in Fairbanks, Alaska, Eskelsen Garcia had asked to visit a school in New Jersey that faced the challenges of poverty and also was at the center of the storm over school-reform efforts. She was pointed to Pyne Poynt Middle School in Camden.
That same day, Eskelsen Garcia also had a chance to visit a school that was neither of those things: West Windsor-Plainsboro High School North, an hour’s drive away.
It was a notable contrast, apparent not just in the streets she traveled to and from the schools. At the high school, she reported, she toured orchestra rooms, science labs, art rooms, and “state of the art” track facilities.
“At Pyne Poynt, the principal and faculty followed me around, and they were just so proud that their school had just been painted,” Eskelsen Garcia said. “They had nothing new they could show off.”
She was pleased about one thing the two schools had in common: “After looking at Teachers Union Heads Get First-Hand Look at NJ School-Reform Hot Spots - NJ Spotlight: