Cerf slimes the Newark Teachers Union
Newark’s state-appointed school superintendent Christopher Cerf set out last night to smear–and maybe destroy–the Newark Teachers Union (NTU), contending its leaders had “taken the fifth” to keep information away from a judge. The lawyer representing the union immediately denounced what Cerf said, contending his statement was “absolutely, utterly and, probably, knowingly, false.”
Cerf’s comments came after a long and raucous meeting during which the school board ended years of resistance to state control and–under apparent pressure from Newark Mayor Ras Baraka– supported the superintendent’s controversial plan to transfer 12 properties to the Newark Housing Authority.
The political victory may have gone to Cerf’s head because he ended the meeting with his attack on the union and an entity–the Supplemental Fringe Benefit Fund (SFBF), a joint union/management operation–that has been dispensing health benefits to NTU members for 45 years.
Cerf, clearly out to destroy the fund and the union’s influence on benefits, unilaterally announced last month that he would end the contract between the fund and a service provider, GPP, it chose and give it to Benecard, a politically-connected firm founded by Doug Forrester, a Republican candidate for governor and US senator. The firm was recommended by another politically-connected Cerf slimes the Newark Teachers Union |: