Student activists crash Newark Board of Ed meeting. Watch.
Last night a group of students crashed a Board of Education candidate forum to demand a halt to charter expansion in Newark. The forum was hosted by the Newark Trust for Education, which gets funding from the Mark Zuckerberg Foundation for Newark’s Future and has a board member who is Director of the Newark Charter School Fund. The students – allied with NJ Communities United – disrupted the event with a mic check demanding the candidates running for Newark Public Schools Board of Education support two student demands: (1) Enact a moratorium on charter school expansion in the city (2) End the controversial One Newark Universal Enrollment program which prioritizes charter school assignments over public school assignment. Seven school board candidates immediately signed: Patricia Bradford, Denise Cole, Josephine Garcia, Jameel Ibrahim, Sheila Montegue, Philip Seelinger, and Charles Love. Good on them.
These kids give are giving me LIFE tonight. Incomprehensible that Newarkers still have to make the case against the destructive influence of privatized education, given how publicly both the influx of well-meaning philanthropy money from people like Facebook’s Zuckerberg and the people Christie sent to run Newark’s schools have failed students. But the student activists keep coming, as seniors graduate and go on to start their lives and more gutsy, informed and articulate students rise to take their place. A beautiful crop of young leaders is emerging in New Jersey’s largest city. Watch this; the kids backing each other up, community members whipping out their phones to catch it, people rising out of their seats in solidarity. BOOM.
city. Watch this; the kids backing each other up, community members whipping out their phones to catch it, people rising out of their seats in solidarity. BOOM.
