Baraka and Rice to meet with feds, demand action on schools
The most prominent critics of the state administration of the Newark public schools are traveling to Washington, DC, to make their case to U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan. They will include Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, state Sen. Ronald Rice (D-Essex) and other legislators, union leaders, community activists, and advocates and experts associated with the Education Law Center (ELC) and the Alliance for Newark Public Schools.
The meeting, scheduled for March 4, will come too late to have any impact on the expected one-year extension of the contract of Cami Anderson, the state-appointed schools superintendent. Indeed, Baraka, in a press conference Thursday, said he had been informed Anderson already had been offered the extension. In any event, her tenure in Newark is a state matter and she still apparently pleases Gov. Chris Christie, if few others.
“We have made our case to the Christie administration and clearly they are not going to do anything,” said Rice who, with U.S. Rep.Donald Payne, Jr (D-10th) set up the meeting with Duncan, the former Chicago schools superintendent who has been President Barack Obama’s education chief since the beginning of his administration.
Rice also said he has not had the full support of fellow Democratic legislators who have resisted his efforts to grant subpoena and other investigative powers to the committee he co-chairs, the Joint Committee on Public Schools.
Anderson repeatedly refused to show up before Rice’s committee until he introduced legislation granting the panel investigatory powers. In early January, at a four-hour hearing, the Newark schools chief avoided answering some of the most pointed questions aimed at her, especially about a land deal in which she sold public school property to charter school interests headed by former associates of both herself and of former state Education Commissioner Christopher Cerf.
In response to her evasiveness, Rice accused Anderson of “taking the Fifth,” a reference to claims of the right against self-incrimination often invoked by those suspected of criminal activity.
A second day of hearings before Rice’s committee has been scheduled for March 10.
Rice, Baraka, and many other civic, political, and union leaders have been critical of Anderson’s hallmark reorganization, the so-called “One Newark” plan that has Baraka and Rice to meet with feds, demand action on schools | Bob Braun's Ledger: