Isabel’s children–abandoned by Newark’s schools, betrayed by its politicians | Bob Braun's Ledger

Isabel’s children–abandoned by Newark’s schools, betrayed by its politicians | Bob Braun's Ledger:

Isabel’s children–abandoned by Newark’s schools, betrayed by its politicians

There is a lot of cruelty in the way Newark schools treat parents and their children. Especially the way the state-run school administration treats the neediest, the most powerless.  Just ask Isabel Troche and her four children.

Here it is in mid-October and Isabel’s children are  not in school yet.  They only live a few hundred feet from what should be their neighborhood public school–but they can’t go there. In fact, all four of the children have been assigned–for now–to four different schools.

If it were not so cruel, it might almost be funny. A joke about the pratfalls of bureaucracy. But what is happening to Isabel’s children is no joke. It is the deliberate and foreseeable consequence of a state policy called “One Newark” designed to close neighborhood public schools, expand privately-run charter schools and strip the school district of resources and hope.

It also is the result of the collapse of the effort by a broad cross-section of Newark’s residents to fight back against the state–a fight that collapsed in an alleged deal to bring back local control after 20 years of inept state administration.

The members of Isabel Troche’s family are, simply, victims of the state’s indifference to Newark’s residents and of the fecklessness of a local response. No one is fighting back for Isabel’s children.

Isabel’s son, Jose.

“I keep going to places–the schools, the enrollment center, downtown–and they tell me they’ll get back to me but they never do,” says Isabel. “I’ve been  trying for weeks and I still can’t get the kids into school.”

If Isabel’s children are placed in the four Isabel’s children–abandoned by Newark’s schools, betrayed by its politicians | Bob Braun's Ledger: