Christie and Cami have stolen more than money from Newark
The reappointment of a failing Cami Anderson to a fifth year as Gov. Chris Christie’s superintendent of Newark’s public schools caused anger, of course. Sadness and disappointment, too. But these are not new. What is now taking over the emotions of the city’s residents and leaders is a pervasive and disorienting sense of bafflement. What Christie and his subordinates and allies have imposed on Newark seems like a logical impossibility, a contradiction: A numbing sense of surprise. It’s as if the city’s residents were forced non-stop to watch an absurd play where impossible nonsense regularly happens but is treated as normal. In the rabbit-hole that is Cami Anderson’s and Chris Christie’s Newark, failure is success, illegal is legal, wrong is right. And the more failure and illegality and wrongheadedness the city’s people witness, the less they can do about it–and the more Anderson is praised and rewarded. It is madness as public policy.
Imagine, if you will, any other community in the state–or in the nation–where a public school superintendent can boycott her elected school board’s meetings for more than a year and yet suffer no professional consequences. And is praised and rewarded.
Imagine, too, a superintendent who, after four years of controversial stewardship aimed at improving measurable performance among students, must admit scores are lower—and yet she suffers no embarrassment. And is praised and rewarded.
Imagine a public school superintendent who, no fewer than three times over the course of a year, defies the demand of the state legislature’s committee that, by law, is charged with monitoring her performance. And, again, no consequences. Except, she is praised and rewarded.
Imagine a public official who secretly sells public property to a profit-making Christie and Cami have stolen more than money from Newark | Bob Braun's Ledger:
