Julian can’t go to the school next to his house–”One Newark” and Chris Cerf won’t allow it
Sara Da Silva-Ferreira stands at the fence at the back of the property members of her family have owned for years in Newark’s Ironbound. She looks past the rough chain-links right into a school playground she knows well because she played there as a student and now her daughter Gabrielle attends school there, too. Her cousins attended the large elementary school as well. The familiar sight of the playground and the tall school walls looming behind it makes Sara sad and angry now because she has been told for two years that her son Julian cannot attend the same school. The Oliver Street School.
“I’ve never had any problems,” says Ferreira who works as a private bank security guard. “But now my son cannot go to the same school her sister attends. I don’t understand.”
This is called “school choice” in the Newark public schools, part of the “One Newark Enrolls” plan that disperses children throughout the city instead of allowing them to attend their neighborhood school.
This is called “school choice”–and those words have become a political sloganfor Chris Christie, the governor who proclaimed himself the “decider” over the Newark schools and is running for president.
But there’s a catch. The choice of where Julian Ferriera can attend is not the parent’s choice. It is a choice made by some bureaucrat, probably imported from New York City, in an administration headed by Montclair entrepreneur Christopher Cerf who became Newark school superintendent as part of a deal that, its Julian can’t go to the school next to his house–”One Newark” and Chris Cerf won’t allow it | Bob Braun's Ledger: