Chalkbeat

Scarce oversight: State let Newark charter crisis flourish, staff say

2026-05-11T18:35:35+00:00

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This story was first published on NJ Spotlight News, a content partner of Chalkbeat Newark.

Charter schools in Newark educate about a third of the city’s students, have proved popular among parents, and overall deliver higher scores on math and reading tests.

What happens, though, when a charter school struggles?

In theory, the state is supposed to shut it down if it can’t improve. Even supporters of charters say that’s important for the overall success of the charter movement, like pruning dead branches from a healthy tree.

Yet is the state doing its job? That’s the question raised in the wake of reported troubles at New Horizons, an underenrolled, roughly 370-student school. It’s been put on probation by the state for three years due to poor test scores, ineffective instruction, and rising chronic absenteeism, according to a letter from the state Department of Education.

Staff members, most of whom spoke to NJ Spotlight News on condition that their names not be used, describe a dysfunctional environment rife with executive self-dealing, falsification of key metrics, a toxic work culture, and failures to handle violence or provide vital services for kids.

The charter school denied those allegations. Through a lawyer, school leaders called the claims “meritless” and made by “disgruntled former staff members.”

New Horizons “has undergone review, monitoring and improvement processes, as many schools do, and we have continued to make progress in strengthening systems, instruction, compliance, and student support,” the lawyer, Perry L. Lattiboudere, said in a statement. “We remain focused on teaching and learning, continuous improvement and serving our students well.”

The FBI recently requested financial records from a former New Horizons staffer, who told NJ Spotlight News about providing board minutes showing large compensation, including bonuses and stipends, paid to its top administrators.

That raises a question: Why didn’t this school get closer scrutiny from the state?

Critics say previous governors were lax on charter school oversight

“It is part of the responsibility of the charter school office in New Jersey to make sure that public dollars are being spent effectively,” said former New Jersey Education Commissioner Christopher Cerf. During his tenure under Gov. Chris Christie — a charter school supporter — Cerf shut down roughly 10% of such schools for low performance.

Of New Jersey’s 84 charter schools, four are on probation, including New Horizons. All the state’s charters are overseen by a state Department of Education office with a staff of about six people.

If a charter school’s remedial plan is insufficient or if it fails to meet its probation terms, the state can shut it down.

Christie’s successor, Gov. Phil Murphy, was lax on charter school oversight, critics say. High-performing charters were denied expansion while those with “operational concerns” faced no intervention, according to Harry Lee, head of the New Jersey Charter Schools Association.

The state Department of Education “has broad oversight authority and must hold schools accountable when they aren’t doing the right thing,” Lee said. He expressed hope that Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s administration more proactively will limit “unnecessary and unreasonable expenditures” for schools on probation.

Charter school teachers and leaders typically are paid less than those in traditional public school districts, he added. A new law aims to curb payroll abuses by requiring the Department of Education, both annually and during charter renewals, to review pay for the top three administrators, and to publish clearer budgets showing total executive compensation.

Former staffers allege problems at New Horizons

Founded in the late 1990s, New Horizons is a small school that’s consistently underperformed compared with major charter networks. It performs about level with the city’s public school district, with 27% of students reading and 13% doing math on grade level, and has been on probation for the past three years.

The floundering isn’t limited to academics, according to 10 current and former staffers interviewed by NJ Spotlight News. They allege that it’s being irresponsible with public funds, filing inaccurate reports and treating students and staff inappropriately.

The school denied any wrongdoing. It declined to comment on specific allegations, citing staff and student privacy laws.

The charter’s superintendent, Rhonda Wilson, had a publicly funded salary of almost $240,000, while the state average is less than $198,000. Many of those administrators oversee operations for multiple schools with thousands of students.

New Horizons’ enrollment is less than half the maximum 750, public records show. She also was paid nearly $60,000 in bonuses and $11,000 in stipends in 2024 -25, and $3,000 a week to substitute as principal in 2023, expense records show.

Staff members allege she used school employees for personal chores and showed favoritism in pay, awarding herself and her inner circle high overtime and other perks. The business administrator, Tom Omwega ,received $57,000 in bonuses and stipends in 2024-25, records show.

Wilson has “been operating like this for a long time,” a former staffer, who requested anonymity for fear of retribution, told NJ Spotlight News. “They keep their files a mess on purpose.”

The FBI’s Newark office, like the state comptroller’s office, would neither confirm nor deny any investigation. The charter says it is unaware of any inquiry and operates “with integrity and transparency.”

New Horizons staff ‘run that building very much like a penitentiary,’ parent claims

Strict state Department of Education oversight limits New Horizons, a charter school on probation, to “reasonable and necessary” spending. Asked if the state Department of Education approved all bonuses, a spokesman for the department said those decisions “are made solely by a charter school board of trustees.”

That board is closely allied with Wilson, former staffers say. Its president, Edgar Nemorin, did not respond to questions from NJ Spotlight News.

Relying solely on the judgment of the charter’s own board is “philosophically inconsistent with the duty of the state,” says Cerf, the former education commissioner.

Current and former staff at New Horizons say administrators pressured them to falsify data to the federal government and the state. The charter fabricated hours for employees who worked at an after-school program funded by federal Title I money, a former staffer alleged.

Staff say they were told to log inaccurate attendance and safety data: inflating attendance figures, labeling suspensions as “resets” in order to report zero such removals to the state, sending students home for a week without home instruction, and failing to report fights.

Adonijah Williams, the parent of a former student at New Horizons, confirmed that her son was suspended multiple times, including for a week.

Top administrators berated students harshly for small infractions, current and former staff said. “They run that building very much like a penitentiary,” said Wesley Collins, a former teacher.

One student, lacking a required aide, “terrorized” the school, current and former staff say. New Horizons, though, reported virtually no violence, they say, and her suspensions were deemed “resets.” One time, at least a dozen students waited in a staircase for the student so they could record one of her fights, current and former employees say.

The school also denied assistance to roughly 100 students with disabilities — waitlisting them for years to be evaluated, just to qualify for services, according to the current and former staffers. At least one student was sent elsewhere because a needed elevator was broken, they said.

An eighth grader was added to the evaluation waiting list two years ago, they said. About to leave for high school, the student had yet to be tested, they said.

Newark school board supported New Horizons’ renewal with one condition

The treatment extended to staff as well, the employees say, and New Horizons had a nearly 50% staff turnover rate during a recent 18-month period. The reason, they say, is a toxic work environment.

Principal Stephen Webb, also a pastor, is accused of making inappropriate sexual comments by three former employees, one of whom filed a formal complaint. He reportedly brushed off concerns about potential lawsuits, saying that’s “why I keep a good lawyer.”

Staff also allege selective accountability. A social worker was fired for sending a child in a medical crisis to a hospital while administrators were at a Disney resort in Orlando for a conference, current and former staffers said.

The dismissal came after a parent objected for reasons that were unclear, according to staff.

Former teacher Terrence Knox and others recalled one odd incident in particular. A teacher received a disciplinary letter for mocking a student with special needs in front of the class, allegedly saying, “At least I’m not special ed.” The letter was rescinded, they said.

Despite state findings that New Horizons failed to provide a high-quality education, the acting commissioner under Murphy, Angelica Allen-McMillan, renewed its charter with probation in 2023, citing confidence that its initiatives to improve culture and emotional support would reverse poor academic trends.

The Newark school board, including Superintendent Roger León – who has fought other charter schools – supported New Horizons’ renewal on the condition that it improve special services programs, which a former staffer described as resources for special education students.

While the charter isn’t at half capacity and lacks approval to expand, the principal tells students that New Horizons is opening a high school next year, current and former staff said. New Horizons’ leaders deny that.

Knox, the former teacher, called such claims “putting on a show for the public.” The goal: “to make it seem like everything is great and fine and dandy.”

Julie O’Connor has written about politics, legal issues and education in New Jersey for more than 15 years. She was a member of the Star-Ledger editorial board and previously reported on criminal trials in Superior Court in Elizabeth. Now she covers urban education, particularly in Newark, Trenton, Paterson, Camden, Plainfield and Jersey City. Email her at OConnorJ@njspotlightnews.org.

‘It’s enough already’: Newark lawmaker pushes back on GOP scrutiny

2026-04-16T13:25:57+00:00

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New Jersey’s fiercest budget debate this year is over education spending — and Newark is at the center of the conversation.

At a heated state Assembly budget hearing on Wednesday, Republican lawmakers’ questioning returned repeatedly to the state’s largest school district. Statewide, Republicans have taken issue with Newark’s spending on everything from an AI surveillance system to COVID relief funds for tutoring, and a controversial lease for a new elementary school.

GOP Assemblymember Gerry Scharfenberger, who represents Monmouth County, said at Wednesday’s hearing “we need way better accountability,” and audits that run through budgets with a “fine-toothed comb” for urban districts like Newark. Assemblymember Al Barlas, who represents parts of Bergen, Essex, and Passaic counties, said for the millions being spent in Newark, “we should all be offended by the fact that these kids are not graduating and are not reading” at grade level.

Republican lawmakers have targeted Newark and other urban school districts partially in response to state funding cuts that have hit suburban schools particularly hard.

But Assembly Budget Chair Eliana Pintor Marin, who represents Newark and served on the city’s Public Schools Advisory Board, said the focus on Newark is reductive and pits school districts against each other rather than aiming at the real issue — reforming a school funding formula that lawmakers agree isn’t working for everyone.

“I’m just tired of it,” Pintor Marin said Wednesday of the outsized attention paid to Newark schools by lawmakers who don’t represent the city. “It’s enough already.”

Pintor Marin said Newark is still recovering from the deep school funding cuts enacted under former Republican Gov. Chris Christie. The district has gone through state control, been federally audited for spending COVID relief funds, and has had a state monitor in place through the district’s transition back to local control.

In short, Pintor Marin said, Republicans’ calls for more state and federal oversight of Newark schools are “ridiculous.”

She noted the way the state funds education is tied directly to the number of students enrolled in each district and the cost to educate them. Newark’s enrollment is up, she said, and it educates a greater population of English learners and those with disabilities so state funding should increase accordingly.

Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s proposed budget includes two new state Department of Education positions specifically for oversight and accountability of school districts, state Education Commissioner Lily Laux said at the hearing.

Assemblymember Alexander “Avi” Schnall, who represents parts of Monmouth and Ocean counties, pointed to the Lakewood School District’s multiple state monitors as evidence that increased state oversight does not equate to improvement.

Over the last 12 years, Schnall said Lakewood has had 11 state-appointed monitors, with four currently stationed in the district.

Those monitors “have not made much of a difference,” he said. “If anything the fiscal deficit has grown by a lot.”

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Newark will elect a new school board in less than 2 weeks. Here’s what parents, students, and others want.

2026-04-13T18:00:00+00:00

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Newark voters head to the polls on April 21 to elect four members to the city’s Board of Education, which makes key decisions for New Jersey’s largest school district.

But what does the community want those new board members to prioritize once they take their seats?

At a debate last month, the nine candidates vying for four seats pledged to tackle several issues, including fixing aging school buildings; expanding student mental health resources; improving transparency; and including parents, teachers, and students in district decisions.

This year’s school board race is the second time the city’s 16- and 17-year-olds will cast their vote in the election. Last year, only 73 teens voted in the April election despite targeted efforts to get the city’s more than 7,000 eligible youth voters to the polls.

Chalkbeat asked parents, students, teachers, and advocates the same question: What should the new board focus on first?

Their answers touch on some of the most pressing challenges for the district, which serves more than 41,000 students across 65 schools and will run on a $1.6 billion budget next school year. Nearly six years after regaining local control of schools, community members say they still want more input in decisions that shape education in Newark.

Here’s what members of the city’s education community told Chalkbeat what they want to see from the incoming school board members. They have been edited for length and clarity.

Emmanuel Adeola is also a member of the Youth Power Action Coalition in Newark.

Emmanuel Adeola

Junior at Bard High School Early College

Get student feedback

“Students are the school district’s consumers. It makes sense to want to get student feedback because it’s just requiring that you listen to our concerns. And also, there has to be a better way to talk to students. I know sometimes students may not want to listen to adults, but a lot of us can vote now, so how can board members help us understand what’s happening and also listen to us?”

John Abeigon was first elected as president of the Newark Teachers Union in 2015.

John Abeigon

President of the Newark Teachers Union

Boost teacher collaboration with principals and district leaders

“What I would be hoping to get from whoever the new elected board members are, is that we continue to work towards strengthening the collaboration that we’re already creating between teachers and the public school district. We want teachers to be the ones creating the instruction happening in classrooms. Unified instruction, unified learning, unified teaching.”

Alexander Schuetz

Alexander Schuetz is the Chair of the Newark Education Workers Caucus.

Chair of the Newark Education Workers Caucus

More investment in student needs

“We’re an enormous district with a really wide variety of needs. We are really leaning in both words and in cash into the top performing students. We are building these hyper-specialized high schools. We are building evermore, it seems, gifted and talented approaches and internship opportunities, which I don’t have any problem with, of course. But I do not see that same energy being put into our students with the most needs.”

“Our students whether they have a disability or not, or come from another country, so many of our students are just on the back foot from the start, based on the resources they have access to. I would like to see a board that can sort of pause in this victory lap of expansion and take a look at the larger masses of students who feel like they’re being left behind.”

Deborah Smith Gregory urged Newark residents to vote in the upcoming city elections during the 2026 NAACP Newark school board candidate forum.

Debra Smith-Gregory

President of the NAACP Newark

Holding the superintendent accountable

“I want the incoming school board members to work with the current board members to ensure that the best interests of students are put first and that means holding the superintendent accountable for his decisions. I think a prime example is their intent to spend nearly $500 million leasing a building for young people in the East Ward, a building the district will not own until after 30-years. Board members should be asking questions about that.”

Inés Aguilera's daughter is a student at Hawkins Street School located in the East Ward of Newark, New Jersey.

Inés Aguilera

East Ward mom of a third grader at Hawkins Street Elementary School (translated from Spanish)

Fix school lunches

“My daughter tells me she doesn’t have enough time to eat her lunch. Sometimes she brings home the entire lunch I packed for her, or sometimes with only a bite into her sandwich. I also think that the quality of school food isn’t good and the fruits are not good, that’s why I pack my daughter’s lunch every day. And it’s also important to make sure that younger students, especially those whose teeth may be growing in, have their fruits cut up for them. Many of them can’t bite into those hard apples.”

Ade’Kamil Kelly

Ade’Kamil Kelly ran under the "Prioritizing Newark's Children" slate in the 2025 Newark school board election.

Two-time Newark school board candidate

Transparency and fiscal responsibility

“I really would like the board to focus on fiscal responsibility, especially because we’re looking at a budget that just got approved that cuts 30 teachers. Can we tighten up our fiscal responsibility, because all eyes are literally on Newark right now? And I really hate that we constantly have to have the same conversation year after year about the same fundamental things. Even when you look at how the new, proposed Riverfront Elementary School for the East Ward went before everybody, it wasn’t a transparent process that everyone can feel good about. So it’s just a lot of continuous missed opportunities for the school board to just say things clearly to the public.”

Rafael Chavez works with Spanish speaking parents in Newark.

Rafael Chavez

Organizer for New Labor, a Newark-based immigrant rights group

Translation services during Board of Education meetings

“The biggest issue is the lack of translation at board meetings. That’s why some of the parents, actually, maybe most of the parents who don’t speak English don’t really go to those meetings because they don’t understand them. They don’t have a translation there. They throw ridiculous barriers at us, and Spanish-speaking families can’t participate.”

Chesha Hodge

Chesha Hodge leads the Coalition for Healthy Food in Newark Schools, a Greater Newark Conservancy Initiative.

Director, Coalition for Healthy Food in Newark Schools, a Greater Newark Conservancy Initiative

More student involvement in school food decisions

“Students are starting to understand and learn that their voice matters, especially here in Newark, where 16- and 17-year-olds now get to vote in the school board elections. We want to make a way for students to not just have these really basic food conversations, but we also want them to be included in these higher-level conversations that are taking place on the local and state level. Let’s just tap into the power that is our youth right now.”

Jessie Gómez is a reporter for Chalkbeat Newark, covering public education in the city. Contact Jessie at jgomez@chalkbeat.org.

Newark is banking on New Jersey’s future in film with new high school

2026-03-12T22:00:00+00:00

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New Jersey, the home of the world’s first film studio, is reasserting its status as the country’s first Hollywood.

And Newark educators, students, and industry professionals are getting ready to meet the moment.

In November, Newark Public Schools officials announced plans to open New Media High School, which will be geared toward film and TV careers and digital creator roles. Students with stars in their eyes no longer have to move to Los Angeles to make their dreams come true.

“They don’t even have to travel into New York across the Hudson River,” said Desireè Hadley, director of the Newark Office of Film and TV.

The New Media High School website promises a September 2026 opening and a school that will prepare a new generation of “content creators, filmmakers, and digital entrepreneurs to shape the evolving landscape of entertainment and new media.” A mission statement defines part of that preparation as “industry experiences” that will be key to building student portfolios.

Superintendent Roger León declined to comment through a spokesman.

But in public statements, León has said the school is already recruiting new teachers and eighth grade students interested in attending New Media High School and becoming part of the school’s first ninth grade class can apply through Newark Enrolls.

A career pipeline is ready and waiting: Investment in film and TV production is surging in New Jersey, having hit a record high of $833 million in 2024, and a major movie studio is moving into Newark, bringing the promise of hundreds of jobs.

These days, Hadley marvels at the massive “now enrolling” New Media High School billboard in downtown Newark.

“I’m Newark born and raised, and I wish that these opportunities were around when I was in high school,” she told Chalkbeat. “It would have been amazing to be able to attend a New Media High School or to even have exposure to what a production set is like.”

Film production grows in Newark and New Jersey

The growth of New Jersey production, fostered by the 2018 restoration of state film tax credits, stands in contrast to flagging production in Los Angeles. In the next two years, Lionsgate, Paramount Skydance and streaming giant Netflix will open Garden State studios. This bustling vision channels the 1910s, when studios like Fox, Universal, and Goldwyn Pictures called Fort Lee home before the industry moved to Hollywood.

Lionsgate Studios Newark is scheduled for a spring 2027 debut at Great Point Studios in the city’s South Ward. Mayor Ras Baraka, then-Gov. Phil Murphy, and city officials marked the groundbreaking in December. The $125 million, 270,000-square-foot studio will occupy the 12-acre site of the former Seth Boyden housing complex.

New Media High School, set to move into the former Dayton Street School, will be its neighbor.

The Dayton Street school, which closed in 2012, has another industry connection: It was a filming location for Adam Sandler’s “Happy Gilmore 2,” Netflix’s biggest U.S. movie opening, which spent a record $152.5 million in New Jersey.

Young people in Newark are already getting their start in the industry.

Aspiring cinematographer Nia Foote, 18, interned as a Newark locations production assistant on the set of Kevin Kline and Laura Linney’s new MGM+ series “American Classic” and was a PA on “72 Hours,” Kevin Hart’s upcoming Netflix movie.

“I was considering going out west to California,” Foote said. But Hollywood’s production decline and New Jersey’s surge persuaded her to study film and TV production at New York University instead.

Zoe Williams, 20, is eyeing a career in set design.

“I thought I would have to be going to New York for the jobs, but they’ve all been in New Jersey — in specifically Newark, a lot of them,” she said.

Williams has been an intern or PA on a number of productions, including Timothée Chalamet’s “A Complete Unknown” and the upcoming “Paper Tiger” with Scarlett Johansson, Adam Driver, and Miles Teller.

Zoe Williams worked as a production assistant on a movie set in May 2025.

Newark is taking measures to add even more locals to film sets. Last year, the state Economic Development Authority awarded a $750,000 NJ Film Works grant to Invest Newark, the city’s economic development corporation, to fund workforce training for people 18 and older.

“Some of the students will be matriculating on to an apprenticeship program, which is great because that means they’re putting in the hours to get their union cards, and that translates as a career,” said Jon Crowley, executive director of the New Jersey Motion Picture and Television Commission. As part of that program, Rutgers Newark’s Community Media Center will host grip training at Express Newark, where Newark Film School will also run PA training, Hadley said.

“We will have all these huge movie stars come into our community, but the city of Newark is making sure it covers the ground of just helping our residents, educating our residents on the industry,” she said.

Newark and Essex County have played important roles in the history of film. Newark’s Rev. Hannibal Goodwin patented transparent flexible nitrocellulose roll film in 1898 and Thomas Edison opened the very first film studio, Black Maria, in West Orange in 1893.

“We’re just taking back our birthright,” said Diane Raver, executive director of the New Jersey Film Academy, which runs certificate programs at 13 colleges, including Essex County College.

And future New Media students could find work at other Jersey studios.

Netflix is accepting applications to work at its soon-to-be $1 billion studio at the former Fort Monmouth, and Paramount Skydance signed on for a minimum of 10 years at Bayonne’s 1888 Studios. Recently announced: the $250 million Filmology Labs, headed to Paterson.

“Now we see a direct pipeline to the studios who are moving in,” said Keith Strudler, dean of the College of Communication and Media at Montclair State University. “We’ve looked at the kinds of roles that they’re going to be hiring for, and really, we teach all of those skill sets.”

New Media High School could be ‘a filmmaker’s dream come true’

Director Nicole L. Thompson, a Malcolm X Shabazz High School alum and founder of the Newark Film School, said New Media High School will be “a filmmaker’s dream come true.”

Thompson, 33, began studying filmmaking at 13, in a pre-college summer program at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. She continued with video production at Shabazz and went on to study at The College of New Jersey, the University of Southern California, and Harvard.

“A lot of people wake up one day and want to become a filmmaker but they don’t know how,” said Thompson, whose 2022 Lifetime TV directorial debut, New Jersey true crime movie “Suitcase Killer: The Melanie McGuire Story,” recently spent two weeks in Netflix’s top 10.

Newark Film School founder Nicole L. Thompson, at right, with student Destiny Diamond at a documentary class at St. Stephan's Church.

At New Media High School, curriculum plans include classes in narrative filmmaking, short documentaries and short-form videos for social media and commercials, along with editing, cinematography, postproduction, podcasting and streaming. Capstone projects will cover feature-length films, animation, 3D effects, pitching and marketing.

“It almost replicates the model of Arts High School,” said Hadley, director of the Newark Office of Film and TV. “The school is going to train young people who are interested right out of middle school.”

The New Jersey Performing Arts Center and Great Point Studios will also partner with local schools to develop a film and TV production curriculum, said John Schreiber, CEO of NJPAC. He’s a stakeholder in a community benefits agreement between Lionsgate Newark, Great Point, and the arts center. (NJPAC is a redeveloper of the Seth Boyden housing site.)

“We started very early talking about what a new studio like this could mean to the community at large, and then more specifically to young people,” Schreiber told Chalkbeat. He noted that the studio agreed to hire 70% of its onsite employees from the local area, likening the “transformational” potential of the film hub to how Steiner Studios changed Brooklyn Navy Yard.

“We will work with Newark Public Schools and with Great Point Lionsgate to create an apprenticeship and an internship program for high school students, the goal of which is eventually that they learn enough so that they can get a union card and go to work on a set,” Schreiber said. “One needn’t go to college in order to get that card … Those jobs can pay over $80,000 a year and more for a young person.”

Schreiber aspired to be an actor when he was younger. After realizing he’d be “broke for 10 years,” he became a PA.

“There are 50 different jobs that somebody can have in our business that support the work of a performing artist,” he said.

“It’s not just about acting and directing,” said Nick Day, president of the Screen Alliance of New Jersey, an industry group, and co-CEO of Newark’s Edge Auto Rental, which supplies trucks and cars for productions. “There’s electricians, carpenters, rental truck companies … lumber companies, stages, postproduction … Whatever your passion might be, the film industry could be a way to take advantage of your passion.”

That doesn’t just mean people starting their first careers. East Orange’s Jessica Sledge, 38, works in education and is a student in one of the first New Jersey Film Academy classes at Essex County College. She was studying industrial design in New York when a field trip to a professor’s set design workshop made an impression.

“I’ve always been a fan of watching all the behind-the-scenes stuff,” she said. With the intro film class at ECC, it “clicked,” she said. “I was like ‘OK, so this could be my way into doing something like that.’”

Jon Crowley, director of the state film commission, got his start as a PA for the Academy Awards. After an editor fell ill, Crowley, a film school graduate with an editing reel, subbed in and was promoted to editor. It all started with his high school TV production class.

“To actually be working with your friends on projects that we were scripting, we were directing, we were acting in and then we were editing was really exciting because it felt like you had some skin in the game,” he said.

Crowley said the commission would be excited to work with future New Media High School students.

“It’s phenomenal that kids at the high school age are going to be able to experience all these different areas of expertise and skill sets and find out what really gets them fired up, for sure,” he said.

Rise in Newark Public Schools enrollment is changing student makeup, increasing language needs

2025-10-02T10:00:01+00:00

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Newark Public Schools has experienced a nearly 20% increase in enrollment over the past five years, a rare surge as districts across the country report a decline in students.

The district’s enrollment growth includes a rise in English language learners, students with disabilities, and Hispanic students, who now represent the largest student group in the district. Since 2019, the number of Black students has declined as Hispanic enrollment has steadily increased.

Newark’s surge in student enrollment since 2019 stands out as other public school districts cite decreasing or stagnant student populations. Public school enrollment across the country has dropped by nearly 1.3 million students since the COVID-19 pandemic, partly due to declining birth rates and shifts in migration. Statewide, enrollment grew by only 0.39%, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of state enrollment data.

In a press release on Wednesday, the district noted that it had the highest student enrollment growth of any of the 78 largest U.S. urban districts.

But it’s unclear exactly why Newark’s enrollment has increased so dramatically. Paul Brubaker, the district’s spokesperson, did not respond to multiple requests for comment about Newark’s growing public school enrollment.

In Newark, New Jersey’s largest school system, enrollment is shaped by changing demographics, homeschooling options, and school choice policies, among other factors.

Mark Weber, an education policy analyst at New Jersey Policy Perspective, said the city has seen an influx of Hispanic residents in recent years and a “significant growth” in the number of students who speak English as a second language. But whether those trends are related to Newark’s enrollment boost is unclear, Weber added.

“A 20% increase over five years, that’s a lot,” Weber said.

That growth comes as urban school districts around the country experience declining student enrollment, a trend that began before the pandemic, said Aaron Smith, director of education reform at Reason Foundation, a nonprofit think tank that analyzed national K-12 enrollment data.

“I think you can conclude that public school enrollment is plummeting and will continue to fall for years to come. But of course, the situation is local, and local context is key,” Smith said.

This school year, Newark Public Schools enters its fifth year of local control and has seen steady improvements in state test scores, declines in chronic absenteeism, and the opening of new schools. The district last year also spent more than a quarter of a million dollars to rehire a Memphis-based marketing firm to recruit students into district schools.

But, last week, parents at a public hearing to extend Superintendent Roger León’s contract raised concerns about student achievement, racism in schools, and inadequate support for the district’s most vulnerable students, highlighting questions about whether the district is meeting the needs of all students as enrollment grows.

Newark’s enrollment growth sets it apart from other school districts

Last school year, the district enrolled almost 44,000 pre-K through 12th grade students, up from roughly 36,600 in 2019, according to state enrollment figures. That’s just over 7,000 students who have enrolled in the district since 2019. The district also surpassed charter school growth in 2023, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of pre-K through 12 state enrollment data between 2019 and 2024.

In Essex County, Newark’s public schools have reported the biggest enrollment percentage gains in recent years. Essex Regional Educational Services Commission had a 13.16% growth, Irvington Public Schools experienced an 11.99% boost, and Orange Public Schools had an 11.94% increase, a Chalkbeat analysis found.

Newark’s growth makes it an outlier among other urban school districts in the country. Neighboring New York City has lost some 100,000 students since before the pandemic. Philadelphia schools are down nearly 10,000 students since the 2019-20 school year, and Chicago Public Schools enrollment has dipped by roughly 30,000 students since the 2019-20 school year, according to a Chalkbeat analysis.

A closer look at Newark Public Schools’ enrollment shows that the number of Hispanic students increased by roughly 40% over the last five years and accounts for almost all of the district’s 20% growth since 2019, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of state enrollment data. That’s a sharp contrast from pre-pandemic years, when Black student enrollment was steadily growing at the same rate as Hispanic students. Last school year, the district enrolled more than 26,000 Hispanic students; just under 14,000 students were Black.

The enrollment shifts are on par with demographic changes in Newark. According to the latest U.S. Census figures, Newark is home to more than 317,000 people, with roughly 114,000 identifying as Hispanic or Latino and just over 140,000 identifying as Black or African American.

Last school year, the district enrolled more than 12,000 English learners, according to state fall enrollment data. The number of English learner students rose almost sixfold in 2024 compared to 2019, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of district enrollment figures. In 2022, the district also experienced its most significant growth in English learners.

As the student makeup shifts, district officials are also facing urgent questions about the way they provide resources to students, determine capacity demands, and plan long-term to meet the needs of all students.

Smith, the director at Reason Foundation, added that school districts like Newark that receive state funding based on student enrollment are better equipped to absorb growing populations. In New Jersey, student enrollment numbers are used to calculate how much funding a district gets from the state.

“Generally, it might put a little pressure on the facilities side of things, but otherwise, [school districts] will have to find new talent and hire new staff, which they’ll get the additional resources to do so,” Smith added.

The surge in vulnerable student populations prompted Newark to launch a new bilingual education program at Malcolm X Shabazz High School last fall to help English learners access services closer to where they live. At the same time, some students with disabilities missed class during the first week of the 2024-25 school year after being told they did not have a school placement.

Smith added that enrollment changes “don’t just impact the school system,” they also dictate how a district will have to operate during the school year.

“Schools are just going to have to adjust to their new enrollment reality, and part of that is dealing with staffing issues and sometimes, school closures or budget cuts, which are difficult but necessary,” Smith said.

Jessie Gomez is a reporter for Chalkbeat Newark, covering public education in the city. Contact Jessie at jgomez@chalkbeat.org.

Newark Public Schools welcomes six first-time principals, new leadership this fall

2025-07-08T19:13:27+00:00

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The Newark Board of Education has named six new principals – all stepping into the role for the first time – with the majority coming from within the district.

Four of the new principals will be at elementary schools, and two will work at high schools, including the new Newark School of Architecture and Interior Design opening this fall after a three-year delay. The majority are veteran educators and administrators and, combined, they bring decades of experience to the job.

Other leadership changes include the appointment of Sandra Marques as the new assistant superintendent of the East and Central School Leadership Team and Corey Dawkins, who comes from a community college in New York, as the new executive director of facilities.

Candidates for principal roles must have the New Jersey principal standard certificate or a certificate of eligibility for principal and complete an application for the position. Each candidate interviews with multiple departments and staff members before a final interview with Superintendent Roger León.

This year’s announcement of top leaders follows last year’s efforts to diversify the ranks of school principals and vice principals and create teacher-to-leader pipelines. Four of the six principal promotions are for women of color, one is for a Black man, and another for a Latino man.

It also follows the district’s trend of hiring first-time principals while reshuffling school leadership. In previous years, the district’s support of first-year heads had been under scrutiny after it replaced first-year principals at Science Park and Vocational High Schools and last school year demoted Avon Avenue Elementary School’s first-year principal to a teacher.

The new principals “bring a deep commitment to academic excellence and student success,” said León in a district press release last week. The appointees “have demonstrated the expertise, integrity, and passion” to lead district schools, added school board President Hasani Council in the release.

The school leaders must also work to help students learn and create inclusive spaces, as recommended by a district consulting firm following allegations of racism and harassment at the Newark School of Global Studies. More than 90% of the student body identifies as Latino or Black, but the district’s teaching force doesn’t always match.

Six first-time principals to lead Newark schools

The Newark School of Architecture and Interior Design is expected to welcome students in September, and district leaders tapped Soraia Mendes, the former vice principal at Technology High School, to lead the new school. The new trade high school opening in the East Ward is set to focus on three trades – plumbing, electricity, and HVAC – and allow students to study architecture and interior design. It was originally scheduled for a 2022 fall opening, but stop-work orders issued by the state over wage complaints and changes in contractors have delayed the project.

Mendes taught English at East Side High School for six years before assuming the role of vice principal at Technology for 12 years. She holds a bachelor’s degree in modern languages and literature from the University of Coimbra in Portugal and a master’s degree in educational administration from the University of Scranton. As a child, Mendes attended Wilson Avenue School before moving to Portugal.

The district also recruited Kean University assistant professor Dr. Rafael Inoa to lead Bard High School Early College. This is Inoa’s first time in a K-12 administrative role. He will replace former principal David Cutts, who was appointed to the principal position in 2023. Inoa brings more than 20 years of experience as a teacher, researcher, and program evaluator. He holds a bachelor of arts in Hispanic and Caribbean studies from Rutgers University, a master of arts in educational leadership from Saint Peter’s University, and a Ph.D. in educational research and program evaluation from Seton Hall University. He started his career as a middle school English teacher in Jersey City.

The district also hired Michael F. Dixon, the former assistant principal at Orange Preparatory Academy, to lead Belmont Runyon Schools. He will replace former principal Robin Williams, who was appointed last school year. Dixon started his career in 2000 as an eighth grade teacher at the district’s former Miller Street School and later became a teacher coach at Ivy Hill Elementary School. He holds a bachelor of arts in management with a minor in retail merchandising from Montclair State University, and a dual master’s in curriculum and instruction math K-14 and leadership from Concordia University.

At the elementary school level, Tania Sousa-Vilar will lead Wilson Avenue Elementary School after former principal Margarita Hernandez-Abeigon retired after more than two decades in the district. Sousa-Vilar graduated from Wilson Avenue and previously served as a teacher at Ann Street Elementary School and a teacher coach and vice principal at Wilson Avenue. She brings 20 years of experience working in the district.

Najie Kennedy was tapped to lead Rafael Hernandez Elementary School this year, replacing former principal Jessica Rios, who was appointed in 2023. Kennedy began her teaching career in the South Bronx and, most recently, was the vice principal at Elliot Street Elementary School. She earned a bachelor of business administration in accounting from Adelphi University and a master’s degree in childhood education with a specialization in special education from Brooklyn College, and another in educational leadership from the College of Saint Rose.

The district also promoted Qadriyyah Williams to a principal role at South Seventeenth Street School. She will replace former principal Clarence Allen, who led the school for more than 10 years. Williams was the vice principal at South Seventeenth and began her career as an English language arts teacher at the district’s former Harold Wilson Middle School. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Montclair State University and a master’s degree in educational leadership from Seton Hall University.

District leaders also recruited two other individuals for top roles.

Newark appointed Marques as the district’s new assistant superintendent of the East and Central School Leadership Team. She brings more than 25 years of experience working in district schools. She is the former district director of career and technical education.

The district appointed Dawkins as the district’s new executive director of facilities, bringing more than 20 years of experience in facilities management. He recently served as the director of campus facilities and chief sustainability officer at SUNY Orange, a public community college.

Jessie Gomez is a reporter for Chalkbeat Newark, covering public education in the city. Contact Jessie at jgomez@chalkbeat.org.

Changes to federal Education Department could harm NJ students with disabilities, advocates warn

2025-04-28T10:00:00+00:00

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Thousands of students with disabilities in New Jersey could face significant setbacks as proposed federal cuts to special education funding, staff reductions, and changes in oversight could worsen existing challenges, particularly in low-income districts like Newark, advocates say.

As the Trump administration moves forward with changes at the federal Education Department, school districts like Newark that serve a larger population of vulnerable students face even greater risks since they rely on federal and state funding to provide special education services.

“I think that families are scared. I was going to say nervous, but honestly, I think it’s more than just being nervous. They’re afraid, and rightfully so based on what’s happening,” said Carolyn Hayer, executive director for the SPAN Parent Advocacy Network.

Hayer and Nina Peckman, an attorney at Advocates for Children of New Jersey, spoke about the potential impacts of shifting special education oversight, federal funding cuts, and staffing reductions at a virtual panel last week hosted by the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University and moderated by Chalkbeat Newark’s Jessie Gomez.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on March 20 directing the closure of the U.S. Department of Education – a move that could significantly impact special education funding and programs. The next day, he announced the transfer and oversight of special education to the Department of Health and Human Services, though he offered no specifics about the plan.

The federal Education Department has been the sole agency providing resources, funding, and staff to ensure students with disabilities receive a fair education in public schools. The department also issues federal guidance on policies to help ensure students’ rights and existing special education laws, including the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, a law that predates the federal Education Department and ensures students receive a free, appropriate public education tailored to their individual needs.

Hayer recalled what it was like before the creation of the federal Education Department and how children with disabilities were often excluded from public schools. One of her biggest concerns is “if we go backwards to that, what will that mean for our children?”

“Primarily, it will make it much more difficult for families to ensure that their children have access to the services that they need and are entitled to,” Hayer added.

School districts that rely on federal funding are at greater risk

Approximately 7.5 million students with disabilities across the country rely on special education services. In New Jersey, roughly 240,000 students receive special education support in schools under IDEA. Gov. Phil Murphy’s proposed budget for 2026 anticipates $420 million in extraordinary special education aid, according to the state’s school board association.

That money is allocated to schools to fund therapists, transportation, aides, and other support services for students with disabilities, and if cut, would be “terrible for children and families,” especially from low-income backgrounds, Peckman said during last week’s virtual conversation.

“We can see the increased numbers of parents calling for assistance, increased numbers of children not having the right services, the right placements, delays in evaluations, delays in classifications. The lack of access to school-based services because they’re just, you know, nonexistent,” Peckman said.

School districts, such as Newark, that rely on federal Title I funding that supports schools in low-income areas, and special education aid, will be hit hardest by funding cuts, Hayer said. But she says parents need to have a seat at the table so districts can understand where the needs lie.

“I think that is the critical part that we’re not having, not involving [parents] in those conversations and then making decisions without the input of family. So finding ways to engage families, I think, is very, very important,” Hayer said.

Of its 40,000 students, Newark Public Schools enrolled roughly 7,000 students with disabilities this school year, but families this school year have reported delays in receiving services, class assignments, and classroom aides for their students. The district’s students with disabilities receive therapy, in-classroom, and other support services, but face greater learning challenges as they have been among the hardest hit by the fallout from the pandemic, with some requiring makeup services from learning disruptions.

Parents may also be unaware that they can submit complaints to the state when disputes arise over school services for students with disabilities, Peckman said. But families are experiencing delays in special education hearings that may be exacerbated by a reduction in federal staffing and more responsibilities to state education departments, Peckman added.

“Families should continue advocating for services,” Hayer said but added that schools need to help families understand their rights and “intentionally engage families in decision-making as resources become constrained.”

In addition, Hayer said, schools are seeing “a tremendous turnover in school staffing,” specifically in special education teachers and paraprofessionals who help students go to the bathroom, eat, and complete assignments, among other duties during the school day.

“Teachers are stressed, maxed-out. But a lot of it is just that they’re burned out, emotionally, financially, and kind of at their wits’ end,” Hayer said.

Senators question plans to shift special education oversight

Earlier this month, 23 Democratic senators, including New Jersey Sen. Andy Kim, sent a letter to Education Secretary Linda McMahon demanding answers to a series of questions about students with disabilities, including whether the IDEA would be implemented and overseen as required by federal law and how layoffs at the department will affect kids and schools. The letter to McMahon also stressed that the Education Department is “the best positioned” to do the job of enforcing special education law.

“Transferring these authorities to the Department of Health and Human Services will not only overburden an agency already confronting massive workforce cuts orchestrated by this administration, but it will also stretch HHS beyond its expertise as medical, rather than educational, professionals,” the letter to McMahon read.

The letter also highlighted a backlog of 12,000 investigations at the federal Office for Civil Rights, with about half of those cases involving students with disabilities. The Trump administration reduced staffing across 12 regional divisions of the Office for Civil Rights last month.

“While all disabled students are harmed when supports are taken away and barriers left unchecked, disabled students of color are harmed disproportionately relative to disabled white students and nondisabled students of color,” the letter read.

At the virtual panel, Peckman and Hayer agreed that the federal Education Department’s role in special education enforcement is needed, and the transfer of those services could widen the gaps in academic recovery and chronic absenteeism rates among special education students.

“I think one of the most important things that the U.S. Department of Education has done, and why the potential to fully eliminate it is so scary, is they’re responsible for oversight and guidance,” Hayer added.

They also added that the Trump administration’s cuts to research, specifically the Institute for Educational Sciences, which analyzes data around student performance, would also hit students with disabilities the hardest, since it would be hard to determine how federal changes will impact academic performance.

Despite the changing federal landscape, the advocates emphasized that federal and state special education laws have not changed and parents should continue to “advocate and push schools” to get special education services.

“We have to keep in mind that nothing has changed specifically within the law,” Hayer said, “but we do know that as dollars and resources get pulled, services will change.”

Jessie Gómez is a reporter for Chalkbeat Newark, covering public education in the city. Contact Jessie at jgomez@chalkbeat.org.

Newark Teachers Union, district reach tentative deal in battle over Global Studies racial report

2024-10-22T22:21:43+00:00

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The Newark Teachers Union reached a tentative settlement with the district on Monday in lawsuits demanding the release of a report detailing the racial, cultural, and religious dynamics at the Newark School of Global Studies after incidents of racial harassment surfaced in 2022.

As part of the proposed deal, Newark Public Schools would ask the union to withdraw two lawsuits it filed in 2023 and 2024 without admission of liability or fault, according to a letter filed in Essex County Superior Court on Monday by Eltia Montano Galarza of the Taylor Law Group, the district’s attorney in the cases. The full details about the tentative settlement and whether the district would release the Global Studies report as part of the deal have not been disclosed by either party.

The union’s lawsuits are part of a more than two-year battle between the community and the district over the lack of solutions and transparency after incidents of racial harassment against Black students and staff at Newark’s Global Studies High School surfaced two years ago. Since then, district leaders have provided few details about the steps they have taken to resolve the issues at the high school. Superintendent Roger León has said the report would remain confidential and inform the district’s diversity strategy, which remains private.

The proposed agreement comes three months after the union’s attorney, Raymond Baldino of the Zazzali law firm, filed a letter to the courts requesting an update on the case after Superior Court Judge Mayra Tarantino ordered a private review of the Global Studies report in January.

Montano Galarza, the district’s attorney, directed questions about the case to Paul Brubaker, the district’s director of communications. Brubaker did not respond to Chalkbeat Newark’s email about the case on Tuesday. Baldino said the union cannot comment at this time.

The Newark Teachers Union first sued the district in November 2023 for access to the Global Studies report after León said the document would remain internal and the union’s public records request for the report was denied in October 2023. In April 2024, the teachers union filed another lawsuit against the district after a second public records request seeking access to billing records and the contract between the district and Creed Strategies, the firm that was hired to conduct the Global Studies report, was denied in February.

Chalkbeat Newark filed two public records requests in 2023 seeking the report, but the district denied those requests.

On Oct. 9, the district’s attorney filed a letter to the court arguing that the union’s second lawsuit over Creed Strategies billing records and its contract with the district is “moot” because the district later provided the documents. In an Oct. 10 response, Baldino, the union’s lawyer, argues that the documents, which had since been provided to the union, show the district violated state public records laws because they were denied in the union’s initial request for the records in February.

“Despite the absurdity of claiming to not have records related to Plaintiff’s requests related to such a substantial public contract, Defendant now has the audacity to claim that its delay was in good faith,” Baldino said in the letter filed in Essex County Superior Court.

District plans after racial incidents at Global Studies remain private

In November 2022, Black students at Global Studies spoke at a board meeting about the racial harassment they endured at the high school. In response, in January 2023, the Newark school board commissioned the Creed Strategies report analyzing the cultural, racial, and religious dynamics at the high school. The incidents at the high school resulted in at least half a dozen Black students requesting transfers and two Black teachers resigning.

Despite the continued calls for more transparency into the issue, the Global Studies report has not been made public. In June 2023, León said the report would not be released publicly despite requests from members and community leaders, including the NAACP Newark branch. Deborah Smith-Gregory, who leads the NAACP Newark, said she has been asking the district to release the report or provide a summary of the findings but has not heard back.

“Nothing about the report was ever released, and that’s wrong. It is a blatant disrespect by the district,” said Smith-Gregory in a call to Chalkbeat Newark on Tuesday. “And now mind you, the young people who were involved have graduated. They’ve graduated and they’ve gone on, and this still lingers.”

In September 2023, the district provided the first and only glimpse into the unreleased review by releasing three recommendations that call on the district to assess the effects of “anti-Blackness” on the school system, foster conversations about racial issues, and build school staff’s capacity to identify cultural gaps and create an environment that is racially conscious and inclusive. In a school board meeting that same month, León said that “people not having the report in their hands doesn’t mean that there isn’t work … occurring” at the school.

The recommendations came as the high school’s former vice principal, Hoda Abdelwahab, left the district. She was among those called out by parents during board meetings and in legal claims filed by former teachers at the high school for handling the issues poorly. Parents of students at the high school also called for the removal of Global Studies principal, Nelson Ruiz, who has remained in his role.

During a November 2023 school board meeting, board member Crystal Williams asked León for an update on the changes at Global Studies, if any, and member Allison James-Frison said she hoped the report would be released.

Former board member and now Essex County Commissioner A’Dorian Murray Thomas during that meeting also said the district needed to be “firmer and clearer” about its plans to fix the problems at the high school.

But Smith-Gregory on Tuesday said she feels “disappointed in the board” because “members have one job, and that is to hold the superintendent accountable.”

“They didn’t press to get information that could be shared with the public. They did not do that,” Smith-Gregory added.

In documents submitted to the Superior Court in December 2023, León argued that releasing the report would have a “chilling effect” on discussions about racial dialogue and sensitivity practices at Global Studies and districtwide.

Two former Global Studies teachers also filed legal claims with state and federal offices in 2023, alleging they experienced harassment and racial hostility from students and supervisors. The allegations of racial harassment against students and staff are currently under investigation by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, according to Jim Bradshaw, a department spokesperson.

In an email to Chalkbeat on Tuesday, Bradshaw wrote that the “Office for Civil Rights does not comment on pending investigations.”

“We know something happened and we know that there was some type of injustice somewhere,” Smith-Gregory said, “but what are the specifics?”

Jessie Gomez is a reporter for Chalkbeat Newark, covering public education in the city. Contact Jessie at jgomez@chalkbeat.org.

‘We’re already overwhelmed’: Students with disabilities miss class during the first week of school

2024-09-11T20:42:29+00:00

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Robert Brown and his wife moved to Newark after 10 years of living in Florida, where they faced challenges in getting special education services for their two sons who have autism.

Their children, Warren, 9, and Nathaniel, 6, are both nonverbal and require speech, applied behavior analysis, and occupational therapies. Nathaniel has a more severe disability, Brown said, and requires the same services as his older brother along with behavioral therapy and a classroom aide.

After enrolling his sons in Newark Public Schools in July using the Newark Enrolls application online, he thought they were all set.

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But on Sept. 3, Newark Public Schools’ first day of school, Brown took his sons to McKinley Elementary School, the school they were supposed to attend, only to be told McKinley had space for Warren, but not for Nathaniel. The younger boy has been forced to stay home ever since — missing the crucial first week of a school year as well as much-needed services that help with Nathaniel’s disability.

The Browns are not the only family whose return to school has been marked by confusion and disruption. Several other parents of children with disabilities told Chalkbeat Newark that on the first day of school, they were told their child did not have a school placement. Other parents said they were told their child was enrolled at a different school.

The issues families are grappling with this year speak to a growing need in the district where an increasing number of students require special education services. This school year, roughly half of Newark Public Schools’ nearly 40,000 students is made up of vulnerable students in need of additional support and resources. This fall, roughly 7,000 students need special education services and another 11,000 are English language learners.

The district said it’s not experiencing a problem with enrollment and that those seeking a placement can visit the Newark Enrolls website or the school closest to their home for direct assistance and support, Paul Brubaker, Newark Public Schools communication director, said in a Sept. 6 email to Chalkbeat. Students who have completed the enrollment process and are placed at school receive the services and accommodations they are entitled to from their first day of attendance, Brubaker added.

But Brown said that’s not what his family has experienced.

After a plan to move to New York fell through, the family scrambled to secure an apartment in Newark over the summer. Brown said he enrolled his sons in the district by using the Newark Enrolls application. By early August, he had already sent the district his children’s Individualized Education Program, a written plan that outlines the services a student with a disability needs in school, along with a list of 10 schools he would prefer his children to attend.

“We’re going through the motions, but it’s frustrating, you know because I did everything early, I figured that, you know, that would have helped,” Brown said. “I know there’s an overcrowding problem, but you know, he needs to go somewhere. He can’t be out of school, this isn’t the 1700s.”

Brown says he’s reached out to the district’s Board of Education and a special needs coordinator at the state’s department of education, which are in the process of finding a school for Nathaniel but the principal at McKinley told him no seats are available for students with disabilities across the city.

And the clock is ticking. Brown is set to begin work in a few weeks, while Nathaniel sits at home along with his sick grandmother who is cared for by Brown’s wife.

Nathaniel, who has severe autism, will run around the house and scream when he’s told not to do something, Brown said. The family goes to bed by 10:30 p.m. every night so Nathaniel can sleep through the night but often he wakes up around 3:30 a.m. full of energy. His son’s neurologist prescribed medication for Nathaniel but in the end, Brown said, his son needs the proper services to help him manage his disability.

Like Brown, Alyssa Drysdale was told on the first day of school that her kindergarten daughter Eva, who has an IEP, was not enrolled at the school she was supposed to attend: Quitman Street Elementary School where she had gone to pre-K last year.

Drysdale waited over an hour on the first day of classes in the school’s gym with her daughter Eva, who requires speech therapy and may need an aide this school year as she can be easily triggered in a classroom environment. Drysdale wasn’t told why she and other parents had to wait until she spoke with school staff who told her that Eva wasn’t enrolled in the school, Drysdale said.

The school’s principal and her staff were working to find a placement for Eva when Drysdale realized she needed to check her car. As she was walking out, she saw her car getting towed.

“I see my car in the back of a tow truck, and I had to pick up Eva, and she’s so heavy, and I’m literally chasing the tow truck down. Like, please, oh my God, can I have my car back now? I wasn’t expecting to take this long,” Drysdale said.

When she went back to the school, Drysdale “just wanted to cry there, like I was so sad.” She spoke with a caseworker who said to wait for a call from the district with a placement for Eva. In the meantime, Drysdale said, they offered a take-home packet so Eva could do school work at home.

Instead, Drysdale said she returned the next day to drop Eva off at the school.

“I do work overnight, but the only time I do get to rest is during school, so I ended up dropping her in the morning, but this situation was a little weird to me,” Drysdale said.

The next day, a caseworker told Drysdale they would take Eva while the school figured out a permanent placement for her. But Drysdale isn’t sure if her daughter will move to another classroom or when her speech therapy, which Eva needs so she can learn to express herself better, will begin, Drysdale said.

“She can express her needs,” Drysdale said, ”but as far as being in depth, she wouldn’t be able to explain herself.”

Newark students with disabilities face recurring problems

Brown’s and Drysdale’s enrollment issues are just a fraction of the problems parents of students with disabilities have faced in Newark. Students with disabilities also face greater learning challenges as they have been some of the hardest hit by the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, with some requiring makeup services from learning disruptions.

In 2019, the New Jersey Department of Education cited the district for failing to meet key mandates related to education plans for students with disabilities.

In 2022, the state department also found the district had problems with reporting in education plans, notifying parents of meetings, and missing meetings with parents and students with disabilities as part of responsibilities mandated under the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA). The state ordered the district to take corrective action by November 2022.

This year’s enrollment problems are also affecting high school students. Tameerah Green’s son, Jaimir Velez, is a 10th grade student with an IEP, who last year, attended Eagle Academy located inside Weequahic High School. On Aug. 16, Green received a letter from the district confirming that her son’s district-provided transportation would arrive on the first day of school and drop him off at Eagle Academy.

But on Sept. 3, after her son was picked up by his bus and dropped off at Eagle Academy, Green received a call from Clark Thompson, the school’s child study team social worker, notifying her Jaimir was supposed to attend Malcolm X Shabazz High school, not Eagle. No one had told her about the school change prior to that morning.

Jaimir has a learning disability and needs a stable environment with familiar teachers to avoid sparking behavioral issues, Green said. The mother sent Jaimir to Eagle Academy the next day, on Sept. 4, but when he returned home, Jaimir said a teacher told him he wasn’t supposed to be at the school.

On the third day of school, Jaimir started to complain about headaches and stomach cramps, which Green feels is a result of not feeling welcomed at the school. Jaimir hasn’t been back to school since Sept. 4.

“I took him to the doctor today to make sure everything was fine but I know where it’s coming from,” said Green on Monday.

Advocate Nadine Wright-Arbubakrr has a long history of working with Newark families to secure school services such as transportation and, through her nonprofit Nassan’s Place, offers summer camps for children with disabilities. But this is the first time she has heard about parents of students with disabilities facing enrollment issues during the first days of school.

“How is it possible that these parents continue to deal with these problems every school year? It’s just not fair,” said Wright-Arbubakrr, who founded Nassan’s Place more than 10 years ago to help families navigate the problems she once faced as a Newark parent of a student with autism.

With the second week of school underway, Brown and his family are hoping the district can find a school for Nathaniel soon. In the meantime, he’s looking at schools outside of the district, including The Deron School of New Jersey, a private K-12 school that offers programs for students with disabilities at its Montclair and Union campuses.

But ultimately, he hopes Newark can provide his youngest son with a public school education, “because that’s why we came here.”

“I’m going to start working in maybe a couple weeks, but I’m not going to be here, then everything, mostly, is going to be on my wife,” Brown said. “We’re already overwhelmed.”

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Jessie Gómez is a reporter for Chalkbeat Newark, covering public education in the city. Contact Jessie at jgomez@chalkbeat.org.

Newark Public Schools students return to classes amid changes, challenges

2024-09-03T21:15:12+00:00

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It was an exciting morning for Rachel, a fourth grader at Franklin Elementary School, who was eager to help her younger brother Romeo navigate his first day of pre-K on Tuesday.

“Lightning McQueen!” said Romeo, turning around to show off his backpack decorated with the character from the Disney movie “Cars.”

“I’m his big sister, and he’s my little brother,” Rachel said, as she held Romeo’s hand and twirled her purple lunch box emblazoned with hearts.

Around the corner, a small crowd gathered outside the school’s playground, where parents snagged quick pictures of their children before they made their way into the building. Principal Robert Spat, starting his first year leading the school, stood outside wearing a blue cape and greeting students and parents with the help of a staff member in a brown eagle costume, the school’s mascot.

Superintendent Roger León was also there to greet Franklin Elementary students, who were among the nearly 40,000 Newark Public Schools students who returned to classrooms on Tuesday.

“Good morning, buenos días,” said León, a child of Cuban immigrants, as he welcomed Spanish-speaking students and parents.

Franklin Elementary is one of 14 elementary schools in the North Ward where students receive bilingual instruction. At Franklin’s bilingual program, the largest in the district, the majority of students come from homes where Spanish is their first language.

The number of English learners is growing – to just over 11,000 students districtwide this year, 822 more than last year. The district is also home to another 7,000 students with disabilities who, along with English language learners, are considered vulnerable students in need of support services and classroom resources.

“I don’t see it as a challenge, I see it as an opportunity,” said León after visiting classrooms at Franklin Elementary, referring to providing support for English language learners and students with disabilities. Vulnerable students make up just under half of the district’s enrollment this school year.

District leaders are also facing the end of $287 million in federal COVID-19 relief funds this school year that helped boost tutoring programs and expand summer programming. In addition, families are also adjusting to a new school day routine.

Students arrive at Franklin Elementary School on the first day of school in Newark, New Jersey, on Tuesday, September 3, 2024.

This year, all Newark public school students are expected to arrive at school by 8:15 a.m. under a new universal schedule that was part of an agreement between the Newark Teachers Union and the district. The new schedule extends the school day, allowing for more instruction time and an extra 30 hours of tutoring for elementary students during the day per year, according to the district. The change also means elementary students must arrive at school 10 minutes earlier than last year and high school students are dismissed 25 minutes later than last year.

On Tuesday, some parents and students ran to the front of Franklin Elementary after the bell rang at 8:15 a.m. Jaymie Paola, the mother of a first grader at Franklin, said she made sure her son went to bed early so he could wake up on time. Others like Claudia Ramos said they had a hard time waking up their students for school.

The 2024-25 school year marks the fifth year of León’s 10-year strategy, known as “The Next Decade: 2020-30,” an ambitious plan aimed at tackling learning loss, implementing new curriculums, scaling up tutoring efforts, addressing emerging issues, and adding more teachers, among other goals.

School leaders must also address a host of concerns such as improving schools, supporting the growing number of vulnerable students, raising attendance, supporting academic recovery efforts, and assessing the effects of anti-Blackness in schools following concerns of racial harassment at a city high school. The district is expanding AI technology to support teachers in the classroom and keep students safe following shooting incidents outside two high schools last year.

This spring, the Newark school board approved a $1.5 billion budget that included a $6.8 million increase in tutoring efforts previously covered by American Rescue Plan dollars – a one-time payment to school districts across the country as part of the federal government’s three-part relief package to help schools respond to the pandemic.

León visits district schools with new leaders

On Tuesday morning, in addition to his stop at Franklin, León visited three other North Ward schools with new principals: Salomé Ureña, First Avenue, and Branch Brook Elementary School.

At Salomé Ureña, León visited Mrs. Ramos’ bilingual kindergarten classroom as “Remember Me” from the Disney movie “Coco” played in the background. Students in the classroom sat on a colorful rug as they listened to their teacher read “Una carta de tu maestra,” or “A letter from your teacher,” a book that helps educators welcome students on their first day of school.

León also visited two eighth grade classrooms, including one equipped with two air conditioners as part of the district’s ongoing efforts to install the units in classrooms following concerns about hot temperatures at the start of each school year. In late August, the district said it had installed nearly 900 air conditioners with more on the way.

This year, students will also see contactless water fountains in their schools. During August’s school board meeting, the district reported that 79 contactless water fountains out of 843 remained to be installed. The district will continue to install the contactless water fountains this year, a $5 million project funded through COVID relief dollars that began in 2022.

Newark Schools Superintendent Roger Léon speaks to students at Salomé Ureña Elementary School on the first day of school in Newark, New Jersey, on Tuesday, September 3, 2024.

At First Avenue Elementary, León spoke with the school’s entire eighth grade class and asked about their plans for high school, in anticipation of the enrollment application for the next school year opening on Nov. 2. One student said they wanted to go to Science Park, León’s alma mater. Others said they wanted to attend Newark Vocational and Arts High School.

León finished his chat by motivating students to accomplish their goals. “The superintendent’s job is to make all dreams of all students real,” he said.

León also visited the new Branch Brook Elementary School, formerly known as ECC-North, which welcomed 48 pre-K to second grade students with disabilities on Tuesday. The school will expand one grade level next year. The new building is equipped with a sensory room and designated quiet areas for speech, physical, and occupational therapies, said Cristina Pennetti, the school’s new principal, on Tuesday. Inside classrooms, students played with toys while others listened as their teacher read a book to them.

Newark continues academic recovery efforts for students

As Newark students returned to class on Tuesday, officials hoped summer initiatives such as high-dosage tutoring aimed at helping those who have fallen behind will improve student performance this school year. León has said federal COVID relief dollars were the district’s “saving grace” in expanding summer programs to 16 elementary schools this year, up from 14 last summer, and across 10 high schools. The district also extended summer enrichment programs – which were provided by teachers and community-based organizations – to 6 p.m. over the summer.

After-school tutoring starts on the first day of school, León said during August’s school board meeting. Saturday school for high school juniors preparing for the New Jersey Graduation Proficiency Assessment begins in December and, for a second year in a row, Saturday school will be offered to elementary students in grades 3 to 8 beginning in January in preparation for the New Jersey Student Learning Assessments.

Teacher Ana Enriquez-Kozlow reads a book out loud in a pre-K autism class at Branch Brook School in Newark, New Jersey, on Tuesday, September 3, 2024.

Spring 2024 NJSLA scores are embargoed by the state, but spring 2023 test results showed district third graders didn’t see improvements in reading from the year prior. Overall, the district’s state test scores went up by 2 percentage points in both math and English language arts in 2023 but point to students’ slow recovery after the pandemic.

In addition to tutoring, León said lowering the district’s chronic absenteeism rate, which reached 12.1% last school year, down from 12.7% in 2022-23, is one of his top priorities this school year.

In addition to new principals, the district also hired 402 new teachers and at least 14 new special education teachers, 10 new bilingual education teachers, and three educators teaching English as a second language. Every year, the district faces challenges in recruiting special education and bilingual teachers but this year nearly half of the district’s enrollment consists of vulnerable students.

During the August school board meeting, the district reported 197 instructional vacancies. For this upcoming school year, the district created 338 new positions, the district reported.

Before school began at Franklin Elementary on Tuesday, Romeo and Rachel posed for their mom, Sylvana Lopez, in front of a banner that hung outside of the building. They only had 15 minutes before classes were set to start, but Lopez wanted to remember the pair’s first day of school and their excitement before heading inside.

Jessie Gómez is a reporter for Chalkbeat Newark, covering public education in the city. Contact Jessie at jgomez@chalkbeat.org.

Longer days, new teachers: What Newark Public Schools students can expect on the first day of school

2024-08-30T10:00:00+00:00

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Thousands of Newark Public Schools students are expected to return to school next week where they will be greeted by new teachers, new classmates, and a new schedule.

Approximately 40,000 students are enrolled in the district this school year and, under a new universal schedule, will have a longer school day that guarantees a lunch break for teachers. This year, the district said it hired hundreds of new teachers but continues to face challenges in recruiting educators who can teach science, math, students with disabilities, and multilingual students.

The district has seen a surge in English language learners, who make up more than a quarter of enrollment this upcoming year. Another 7,000 students with disabilities will return to classrooms next week, adding to the district’s growing number of vulnerable students.

District leaders are managing a $1.5 billion budget with more money allocated for vulnerable students but face the end of federal COVID relief funds that helped expand tutoring in schools and other initiatives. The district said it installed nearly 900 air conditioners across classrooms this summer, with more on the way. The efforts came after parents, teachers, and students had long raised concerns about the uncomfortably hot temperatures in classrooms at the start of each school year.

The district must also confront several pressing needs such as upgrading its aging school buildings, raising student attendance supporting student academic recovery, and grappling with the impacts of racial harassment and diversity. Superintendent Roger León has said he plans to further artificial intelligence technology to support teachers in the classroom and keep students safe.

New school hours, longer days

This year’s biggest change for students comes after the Newark Teachers Union and the district agreed to a new school schedule that guarantees all teachers a 45-minute lunch break and transition time.

Students across all grades are expected to arrive at school at 8:15 a.m. and will be dismissed at 3:05 p.m. starting on Sept. 3. Last year, the school day ran from 8:25 a.m. to 2:55 p.m. for elementary school students and from 8:15 a.m. to 2:40 p.m. for high school students. The new schedule means students will spend six hours and 50 minutes in school – 20 minutes more than last year for elementary school students and 25 minutes more for high schoolers.

The new hours also extend the work day for teachers to seven hours as they are required to arrive no later than five minutes before students.

More vulnerable students in need of classroom support

Just under half of the district’s enrollment this school year will be made up of vulnerable students.

This year, 11,072 English language learners are enrolled in Newark Public Schools, 822 more than last year. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the district’s number of students learning English has grown, a trend on par with schools across the country.

District leaders anticipated the increases and this year are launching a new bilingual program at Malcolm X Shabazz High School. As of late August, the district planned to enroll 48 students in both ninth and 10th grade but has enrolled 92 ninth graders and 35 10th graders, according to León. Four teachers will teach bilingual education at the high school, the district previously said.

Additionally, the district expects more than 7,000 students with disabilities – who require specialized services such as speech therapists and classroom aides – to return to schools, pointing to a growing need for more teachers and services.

A spike in autism cases in New Jersey, largely due to autism going under-detected in the past among children with average or above-average intellect, is resulting in more students with disabilities in district schools.

More teachers as district enrollment grows

Every year, the district faces challenges in recruiting teachers, specifically in science, math, and bilingual education. Over the summer, the district hired at least 14 new special education teachers, 10 new bilingual education teachers, and three educators teaching English as a second language.

During August’s school board meeting, board member Allison James-Frison said the district hired 402 teachers who attended an orientation at Science Park High School nearly two weeks before the start of school. The district also reported that there were 197 instructional vacancies, during the August meeting. For this upcoming school year, the district created 338 new positions, the district reported.

Transportation needs continue this school year

Under New Jersey law, the district is required to provide transportation to and from school for elementary school students who live more than two miles from their public school or high school students who live more than two and a half miles from their school.

This year, the district’s high school bus pass program will continue, and eligible students will receive a monthly pass. The program, piloted in January 2023, provides students in high school with monthly bus passes instead of daily tickets that can be used for transportation to and from school, as well as outside of school. Elementary students eligible for a bus ticket can apply for one.

Application packets for bus tickets and monthly passes will be available to students on the first day of school, according to the district.

Students with disabilities must also be provided with transportation under their Individualized Education Program. Beginning Aug. 26, student transportation information will be available to parents of students with disabilities if they were enrolled in the district before Aug. 26, according to the office of Special Education. Transportation applications approved by the district and received after Aug. 26 will be processed as received, but busing may not be assigned until the week of Sept, 3, according to the office.

District continues to push upgrades in old school buildings

District officials are also looking to upgrade Newark’s school buildings, some of the oldest in the state.

Historically, Newark students begin school as summer winds down but some years, they struggled to learn in hot schools amid heat waves as they returned to classes. Over the summer, the district ordered 1,300 air conditioners for classrooms and as of late August, has installed just under 900 across schools. The district expects to continue installing air conditioners through the first day of school.

The district continues to install contactless water fountains in schools, a $5 million project funded through COVID relief dollars that began in 2022. During August’s school board meeting, the district reported that 79 contactless water fountains out of 843 remained to be installed

Additionally, León plans to host a series of community meetings this school year after state leaders promised to replace 13 of Newark’s oldest school buildings built before the 1920s. León wants community input to prioritize school construction projects and allow residents to weigh in on a bond referendum to fund those projects. As of late August, district leaders have not said if voters would be asked to vote on a referendum in April’s school board election.

Under New Jersey law, a ballot question is required for any school district to issue new bonds for construction projects to improve existing facilities or to build new facilities.

Jessie Gómez is a reporter for Chalkbeat Newark, covering public education in the city. Contact Jessie at jgomez@chalkbeat.org.

Newark promotes vice principals, department supervisor to lead schools in September

2024-07-02T10:00:00+00:00

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The Newark Board of Education has announced the appointment of eight new principals who bring years of experience working in other district roles to their new positions.

District leaders tapped former vice principals and a supervisor for the Office of Special Education to lead seven elementary schools and a high school for the upcoming school year. Seven of the new principals this fall are women, and most bring knowledge of the schools they will lead this year.

Combined, the new principals bring decades of experience with the majority starting their careers as district teachers before transitioning into administrative positions.

The announcement of veteran leaders signals a change from previous years when district officials ousted and demoted first-year heads and placed Newark’s support of school administrators under scrutiny. The reorganization of leaders also continues Superintendent Roger León’s efforts to create teacher-to-leader pipelines and elevate people of color into principal roles.

The new principals “exemplify how leadership and learning are inseparable,” said León in a district press release on Monday. The appointees were promoted internally “after going through a rigorous interview process, affirming their suitability for their new roles,” added Board President Hasani Council in the release.

The school leaders must also work to create inclusive spaces, as they work in a district where Latino and Black students make up more than 90% of the student body.

District promotes eight new leaders to helm Newark schools

At the high school level, former Arts High School vice principal Regina Sharpe will replace principal Devonne De Nose who took the role in 2021. Sharpe earned a bachelor of arts in political science at Rutgers University and a master’s of arts in administration and supervision at Saint Peter’s College. Previously, she was a teacher at Dr. William H. Horton.

Robin L. Williams will lead Belmont Runyon School and replace principal Dr. Deneen Washington, a 25-year veteran of the district who started her career as an elementary teacher in 1998. Williams was the vice principal at Peshine Avenue School for grades 3-5 and a Newark Public Schools graduate. She earned a bachelor of arts in history from New Jersey City University and a master’s of science in education from Capella University. She taught social studies at Malcolm X Shabazz High School, became the department chairperson, and later the vice principal of curriculum and instruction at the school.

This fall, the district will open Branch Brook Elementary School and enroll students in pre-K to second grade and expand one grade level the year after, according to March’s budget hearing. Cristina Pennetti will lead the school and bring her experience working as a supervisor for the district’s office of special education since 2011. She earned a bachelor of arts in psychology from the College of Saint Elizabeth, followed by a master’s of arts in teacher of the handicapped high incidence disabilities from Kean University. She also obtained certifications as a learning disabilities teacher consultant and supervisor from Kean.

Neysa Miranda will replace Rosa Branco as principal at First Avenue this fall. Branco was promoted to assistant superintendent of the North Ward School Leadership Team last month. Miranda was a vice principal at First Avenue School and with over 23 years of experience, she held various district positions including teacher at McKinley Elementary School and literacy coach at Chancellor Avenue School. She earned a bachelor of arts in psychology and education from Drew University and a master’s of arts in educational leadership from Montclair State University.

Robert Spat will lead Franklin School next school year and leave his position as vice principal at Rafael Hernandez Elementary School. He will replace Amy Panitch who will leave her role to lead another district elementary school. Aside from his role at Rafael Hernandez, Spat also worked as an English language arts teacher for roughly 10 years in the district.

Mount Vernon School will welcome Serenia Farrell next school year, a former vice principal at Louis Spencer Elementary School. She replaces Camille Findley-Browne, who first led the school in 2019. Farrell holds over 20 years of educational experience with experience working as a teacher, teacher aide, and substitute teacher. She earned a bachelor’s degree in communications with a minor in African American Studies from Ramapo College of New Jersey and a teacher certification from Kean University. She also earned a master’s of arts in educational leadership from the College of St. Elizabeth.

Amy Panitch will leave her principal position at Franklin School to replace principal Sylvia Esteves at Park Elementary School. Esteves was promoted to assistant superintendent of teaching and learning last month. Panitch started her career at Franklin as a third and fourth grade teacher and rose to the level of vice principal after working as an instructional coach. She earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania and a master’s of arts in teaching at Montclair State University and a second master’s degree in educational leadership.

Liana Rodriguez will lead Salomé Ureña Elementary School this fall and replace principal Daniella Alvarez, who was appointed to the role last year. Rodriguez was the vice principal at Roberto Clemente Elementary School and began her career with the district at the office of early childhood. She earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology and received her early childhood certification. She holds a master’s of arts in educational leadership from Montclair State University.

Jessie Gómez is a reporter for Chalkbeat Newark, covering public education in the city. Contact Jessie at jgomez@chalkbeat.org.

Battle continues a year after Newark Global Studies’ students first described pattern of racism

2023-12-20T20:06:31+00:00

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When Newark’s School of Global Studies first opened three years ago, it was hailed as an international-themed magnet high school that would value diversity and encourage students to engage with other cultures and global issues.

Instead, over the last year, students and teachers have come forward to describe a pattern of racist harassment on campus that led students to transfer out midyear because they felt the district failed to handle their situation. Teachers claimed they suffered “unlawful and unreasonable treatment” at the school, forcing them to resign.

Superintendent Roger León promised to fix the issues, but he has not been forthcoming about his plans to tackle racial harassment on campus or changes made at the school since the issues came to light.

Tensions between the community and the district have grown over the last year due to the lack of solutions and transparency on the issue. Now, the school community ends the year with continued demands for justice for students, and it still wants the district to release the scathing report on the cultural dynamics at the Newark School of Global Studies.

“We need the findings to be made public,” said Deborah Smith-Gregory, president of NAACP Newark, at the school board meeting on Tuesday, referring to the report. “We can’t fix what we don’t know.”

Earlier this year, León said that the report, which was commissioned by board members nearly a year ago, would not be released publicly despite requests from board members and public records requests from Chalkbeat.

“People not having the report in their hands doesn’t mean that there isn’t work … occurring” at the school, León said at the meeting Tuesday. He also pointed out that a few recommendations from the report have already been addressed publicly.

But despite the continued calls for more transparency, the report remained under wraps this week.

The situation began when a group of Black students from the school spoke out at a board meeting in November 2022 about the ongoing racial harassment they said they experienced on campus. The issues drew heavy criticism from the community about the way the school and district leaders handled the situation.

Over the last year, half a dozen Black students transferred out of the high school. An analysis of the school’s cultural dynamics was completed and recommendations to fix the problems were provided to the district. Two Black teachers resigned and filed legal claims over a hostile work environment, and the school’s vice principal Hoda Abdelwahab, who was at the center of complaints, also resigned. Most recently, the Newark Teachers Union filed a lawsuit over the public release of the report.

A year later, district plans remain unclear

The frustration has been building since November 2022, when León and school board members listened intently as one student described being called a “smart chimpanzee” in his English class because of the color of his skin. Another said his friend’s hijab was pulled off while they were walking in the hallway. Others later described how they were called “the n-word, a slave, a caricature.”

Mayor Ras Baraka visited students in December 2022 to discuss the issues but did not provide solutions for students. León also visited the students, and at the time, asked if they would like a basketball team at the school, further frustrating them. Emails obtained by Chalkbeat Newark showed that school and district leaders had known about the issues months before.

Students and parents complained to León, principal Nelson Ruiz, Abdelwahab, and other school leaders begging for an end to the ongoing harassment and demanding stronger consequences for students who used derogatory language.They would later describe an administration that wasn’t taking the situation seriously enough, and they called for Ruiz’ removal.

In January, student testimonies prompted school board members to hire Dr. Lauren Wells and her firm, CREED Strategies, to examine the cultural, racial, and religious dynamics at Global Studies and provide recommendations to fix the issues. The review was the first mention of the district’s long-awaited plan to mend problems at the high school after the incidents came to light.

That same month, nearly half a dozen Black students transferred out of the school, including the Black Student Union president and school board vice-president Dawn Haynes’ daughter, who spoke at December’s school board meeting about the racial and religious harassment she experienced before transferring during her junior year.

In March, Baraka hosted a town hall event to discuss unity among Black and brown communities and invited Global Studies students to speak about their concerns.

Over the summer, León shared limited details about the school’s cultural report during a press conference. He offered no insight on the report, which he said would serve “as an internal document” for the district to consider. León also said the report was meant to help the district design a strategy to tackle racial issues in city schools but details about that plan have not been made public.

Legal battles mount for transparency into Global Studies incidents

In more recent months, community leaders repeatedly attended school board meetings to demand the release of the Global Studies report. Others continue to press the district to create a plan to prevent the problems from happening again or at other schools.

The district is also facing mounting pressure from former educators. In August, two former English teachers at the school filed legal claims against the district alleging they suffered “severe emotional problems” that led them to seek psychological counseling after experiencing harassment and racial hostility by students and supervisors. The filings could lead to a lawsuit, said their lawyer, David Balk.

In September, Newark Public Schools released three recommendations from the Global Studies report that call on the district to assess the effects of “anti-Blackness” on the school system and foster conversations about racial issues. In addition to the recommendations, principal evaluations were changed to include “equity indicators” and base performance on their school’s climate.

Haynes, who privately read the full report in September when it was made available to board members said it was “traumatizing to read.”

During a school board meeting last month, a year after the students first raised concerns, member Crystal Williams said she expected an update about the changes at the school over the last year and raised questions about the school’s progress. Over the last several months, board members have asked León to provide the public with answers.

“What does the diversity in this school look like? What is the climate like? What is student life like in this building right now?” Williams asked.

Also during that meeting, member A’Dorian Murray-Thomas said the district needs to be “firmer and clearer” on its plans for the sake of students. Board member Allison James-Frison said she continues to “look for justice for those kids.”

“I think more should be done and I hope there’s a day that this report will be released,” said James-Frison at last month’s meeting.

Without knowing what the report says, it’s unclear the extent of how the situation affected teachers, said John Abeigon, the Newark Teachers Union President, last month. In November, his union filed a lawsuit against the district for the release of that report.

The union’s lawsuit is the first court battle to unlock the findings of the Global Studies report and its recommendations. Previously, the district received public records requests for the report, including two filed by Chalkbeat Newark, but denied those requests.

Jessie Gomez is a reporter for Chalkbeat Newark, covering public education in the city. Contact Jessie at jgomez@chalkbeat.org.

KIPP SPARK, Justice Academy students among first in Newark to head back to school

2023-08-17T17:26:06+00:00

The night before his first day of school at KIPP SPARK Academy, 9-year-old Francisco laid out his uniform, packed his “big boy” backpack, and decorated it with his favorite keychain — all on his own.

His mom, Loto Chung, felt a mix of emotions as she watched her fourth grader prepare for his last year as an elementary student.

As she dropped him off in front of the Newark charter school’s entrance, she hugged him tight, wished him a good first day, and took a picture of him with his solid green Reebok backpack.

“He didn’t want cartoon characters or superheroes on his backpack this year. He’s a big boy now,” said Chung in Spanish, as she stood outside KIPP SPARK with a group of moms reminiscing about their own first days of school.

The fourth grader is among Newark’s first students to head back to school this year, more than two weeks before the city’s roughly 38,000 public school students, who start classes on Sept. 5. He joins nearly 800 kindergarten through fourth grade students at KIPP SPARK, up from 500 students last year. Another 200 fifth through seventh grade students at KIPP Justice Academy will also be in the same building.

On Thursday morning, teachers greeted their students with hugs and high fives. Volunteers from other KIPP New Jersey schools welcomed KIPP SPARK and Justice students getting off yellow school buses. Police officers guided traffic as children wearing yellow and blue polo shirts pointed at balloons on the corner of Second and Sussex Avenue.

Morgan Thomas, assistant principal at KIPP SPARK Academy, hugs Foshea, one of her students.

The elementary and middle schools moved to their North Ward location this year after being on Halsey Street in downtown. Previously, the new building was home to KIPP Truth, which is now part of KIPP SPARK.

With more than 300 new families and over 100 staff members, KIPP SPARK principal Tamika Killins said there “is a lot of people to manage and lots of students to be responsible for” but the most important thing for her this school year is making sure her students and families “feel planted here.”

Earlier this month, she welcomed new families, students, and staff members to a back-to-school night where she was able to “start developing relationships with parents,” an ongoing goal for Killins as school leader.

“I have such a strong leadership team and if any school can pull this off, it’s definitely us,” Killins added.

Hundreds of KIPP SPARK and Justice Academy students made their way to school on Aug. 17, 2023, marking the first day of their 2023-24 school year.

The new brick school building comes with more outdoor space and this year, the elementary school plans to build a school garden with the help of the Greater Newark Conservancy, Killins said. Students will also have a chance to delve into space and engineering in a new after-school STEM club led by a first grade teacher.

At the middle school, the staff is incorporating more social emotional learning activities, including 30-minute sessions twice a week to focus on peer mediation and leadership opportunities for seventh graders to lead mediation sessions.

And across KIPP New Jersey schools, the work to boost academic performance after the pandemic set students in Newark and across the country behind will continue this school year with partnerships to provide high-dosage tutoring in math and reading.

Like Chung, Miram Mieles felt nervous about her fourth grader, Santiago, navigating a new school building and making friends. Santiago’s first language is Spanish and he is learning English after his family immigrated from Ecuador earlier this year.

As a result of their move, Santiago attended Newark schools for the first time at the end of last year, Mieles said. He has received help from teachers to develop his language skills and Mieles is hopeful her son will learn English in the coming months.

“He woke up on his own today and he was excited to see his new friends,” Mieles added.

For Ashley Brooks, the nerves set in after she dropped off her second and fifth grade students, Ava and Aubrey. Her oldest daughter has an Individualized Education Program and Brooks wants to make sure she continues getting the support she needs. Brooks’ children are entering their second year at KIPP Spark and Justice and are former North Star students.

“So far, I have no complaints, but I’m always talking to her and asking her questions about her class and teachers,” Brooks said.

Younger students were also eager to wake up at 7:00 a.m. to get ready for school. Shaunice Ross’s third grade son, Dionte, walked to the front entrance of the school, grinning from ear to ear and eager to get inside. He nodded as his mom asked him if he was excited to see his friends and teachers.

Said Ross: “He’s so happy to be going back.”

Jessie Gomez is a reporter for Chalkbeat Newark, covering public education in the city. Contact Jessie at jgomez@chalkbeat.org.

‘I felt like I was lost’: NJ students say school segregation impacted their education

2023-08-07T10:00:00+00:00

As a Black high school student in Newark, Michelle Ametekpor remembers feeling as if her culture wasn’t being celebrated.

Jennifer Garcia, a Latina who attended a majority-white school in Middlesex, didn’t see teachers who reflected her cultural background.

And Jeremiah LaPorte, a senior at an Elizabeth high school, says he wishes he would see more diversity among students in school leadership positions.

The three students shared their experiences of going to public schools in the state at a virtual town hall on Friday. They remember “feeling lost” and “having to fight” to make their voices heard.

The New Jersey Coalition of Educational Equity organized the discussion in anticipation of a much-awaited ruling on a school segregation lawsuit that could have historic consequences for the state’s public schools. The lawsuit, filed in 2018, says the state is responsible for addressing the fact that more than half of Black and Hispanic or Latino students attend schools that are predominantly non-white.

“Our goals are to create a more safe and inclusive and supportive environment where all students can thrive and properly prepare for their future,” Val Posso, a youth organizer for the Latino Action Network Foundation, one of the organizations leading the lawsuit, said during the town hall.

New Jersey, one of the most diverse public school systems in the country, is also the sixth most segregated state for Black students and seventh for Latino students, according to a 2017 UCLA Civil Rights Project study that’s cited in the lawsuit.

Additionally, a recent Chalkbeat Newark analysis of the city’s school demographic data found that Latino students, who are increasing in number annually in Newark Public Schools, are starkly underrepresented in the district’s teaching staff.

“New Jersey can no longer be the state for some, it must be the state that provides education for everyone,” said Tom Puryear, education chairperson for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in New Jersey, one of the organizations also leading the lawsuit.

Students feel frustrated with public school districts

At the town hall on Friday, Ametekpor, a recent graduate of Essex County’s Donald M. Payne School of Technology, said she “felt frustrated” in high school because she had to turn to community-based organizations to help her get to college after seeing her guidance counselors “overworked” during college application season.

Her school, located in Newark’s West Ward, was mainly made up of Hispanic students and she felt as if there were more events targeted at celebrating Hispanic and Latino culture, Ametekpor said.

“I just wished there was more institutional support, especially for the African American students at my school, to help them be celebrated and have their heritage on display,” she added.

Even when she brought issues to administrators or the county school board, she remembers feeling “like I wasn’t heard” and recalls administrators “dragging their feet” to solve the problems. She learned to become an advocate for herself due to her persistence in raising issues affecting Black students, Ametekpor added.

Garcia, a sophomore at Seton Hall University and a Colonia High School graduate, had a similar experience as a first-generation Latina college student. Garcia said she went to a majority-white school in Middlesex and remembers feeling intimidated by her peers.

She felt as if they had an upper hand because of family members or siblings who had already gone to college and knew the system. She also felt as if there weren’t enough Hispanic or Latina teachers who could relate to her experience.

“I felt like I was lost,” Garcia said. “But I know that my other peers had an upper hand against me, and I feel like it just misled me going into college.”

The last time she felt comfortable at school was in elementary school when she was part of a more diverse student body that included Hispanic, Black, and South Asian students that she also learned from, Garcia added.

Laporte, a senior at JVJ STEM Academy in Elizabeth, doesn’t see as many Black and Latino students being involved in after-school clubs. He’s currently the president of the school’s honor society, a club with a majority of white students, said Laporte, who struggles to integrate more diverse cultural representation into his club.

“It’s not just the school itself, it’s the breakdown, it’s the leadership, it’s the way we allocate our resources,” Laporte said.

Local leaders discuss potential solutions

Peter Rosario is the president and CEO of La Casa de Don Pedro in Newark, an organization aimed at empowering people of color in local communities. Rosario says changing school districts into countywide school districts could be one way to integrate students into school and create more funding opportunities for student resources.

“Basing educational funding on your local taxes keeps us segregated as a state and as a people,” Rosario added.

For Leah Owens, former educator and founder of Just Writing, which provides educational and small business consulting, the key to creating more cultural school environments is to “create a system of care” throughout public schools.

She feels schools focus on outcomes and test scores but don’t invest in “the whole person” and issues that affect students’ social and emotional learning. By teaching in a culturally responsive way, students will feel more engaged and connected to their peers, Owens said.

“We have assets in communities of color that do not get reflected in the school buildings themselves,” Owens added. “And if we were to take the cultural practices and utilize them, we would see more positive both academic and social outcomes for our children.”

Puryear of the NAACP-NJ added that “it’s up to the community and the youth” to demand more resources and ultimately, change in their schools. He believes the current segregation lawsuit before the state “is the key factor” in desegregating schools and having a more equitable school system.

The lawsuit, Latino Action Network, et al. v. State of New Jersey, was last argued before Superior Court Judge Robert Lougy in March of 2022. The parents and guardians of nine Latino and Black children and one white child from Highland Park are also plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

The Statewide Coalition of Educational Equity is made up of the NAACP, Latino Action Network, Urban League of Essex County, People’s Organization for Progress, and other voices throughout New Jersey.

Jessie Gómez is a reporter for Chalkbeat Newark, covering public education in the city. Contact Jessie at jgomez@chalkbeat.org.

New Jersey’s teacher prep programs among the worst for literacy instruction, report says

2023-06-15T10:00:00+00:00

New Jersey is among the worst states in the nation at preparing future teachers to teach children how to read using an evidence-based reading approach, according to a report released Tuesday.

The National Council on Teacher Quality, known as NCTQ, evaluated nearly 700 teacher preparation programs across the country on how well they prepare aspiring elementary teachers to teach students to read using an approach known as the “science of reading.” That approach relies on five core components: phonemic awareness (which involves working with the individual sounds that make up words), phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.

The group’s report said that in New Jersey, “no programs adequately teach all five components of reading.” It also said New Jersey is “the worst in the nation for the average number of components of reading its programs adequately address.”

The study analyzed 10 college and university programs in New Jersey that included undergraduate and graduate programs for aspiring elementary teachers. However, another 13 programs in the state did not respond or provide the requested materials to NCTQ for evaluation.

Some education experts have previously criticized NCTQ for relying on incomplete or faulty data, and for giving low marks to teacher preparation programs in states where student performance was relatively strong. NCTQ changed how it analyzes teacher preparation programs following its 2020 report on the programs.

The study comes as educators nationwide continue to debate over how children are taught to read and how much emphasis schools should place on explicitly teaching certain components, such as phonics. Supporters of the science of reading say the approach helps struggling readers who may need sound-it-out instruction, like phonics, and other direct support to build vocabulary.

Dozens of states have passed laws in recent years that require schools to incorporate the science of reading, but New Jersey has not, according to Education Week.

Experts say reading is a key component in the developmental process that starts at an early age and impacts a child’s likelihood to graduate high school, pursue college, and ultimately a career. This year, advocates in New Jersey have called on top education leaders to develop a plan to improve literacy in public schools across the state.

New Jersey’s school districts are responsible for creating curriculums using state standards. In a May committee report, the Newark Board of Education said it’s helping students learn to read by utilizing the science of reading foundations in phonics. The board is set to vote on a new K-3 phonics curriculum for the next school year, according to the report.

Only 19% of Newark’s third graders passed last year’s state reading assessment, the lowest of any grade in the city. Just 19% of third grade Hispanic students passed the assessment, and only 13% of third grade Black students did so. Roughly 92% of students in Newark identify as Black or Hispanic, according to district data from last year.

Last year, 38% of New Jersey’s fourth grade students scored at or above proficiency level in reading last year on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, compared to the national average of 32%. Eighth graders in New Jersey also outperformed the national average.

New Jersey teacher prep programs neglect phonemic awareness

For its report, NCTQ reviewed program materials such as syllabi and coursework overviews obtained through public records requests. The report reviewed each program’s five core components of science-based reading instruction.

The College of New Jersey, Georgian Court University, Montclair State University, Rowan University, Rutgers University-New Brunswick, Rider University, and Stockton University participated in the study.

The NCTQ report gave Montclair State University’s program a C grade, the highest ranking in the state. The other nine programs analyzed across seven academic institutions all earned F grades in NCTQ’s report.

In New Jersey, the programs reviewed by NCTQ were most likely to cover comprehension and least likely to cover phonemic awareness, but none provided at least one practice opportunity for aspiring teachers in each of the five components of the science of reading, according to the study. Six taught multiple techniques or approaches contrary to the science of reading learning-based approach, six devoted some instruction to supporting struggling readers, and five provided instruction on supporting English language learners, the study found.

Over the last several years, New Jersey has overhauled its teacher preparation regulations to ensure aspiring teachers spend more classroom time as they work to become educators.

Ensuring teachers know the core components of reading and literacy is essential for student success, but so is recognizing the complexities and challenges aspiring educators will face in the classroom, said Dr. Margaret Freedson, an associate professor at the Department of Teaching and Learning at Montclair State University.

“Our ideal is that our students have enough of a grounding in these understandings of child development with respect to reading, and understanding of all of these contextual variables to create engaging literacy environments for students from diverse backgrounds and experiences,” Freedson said.

In the report, NCTQ recommends that New Jersey leaders incorporate “a specific evaluation of reading instruction in program renewal or reauthorization processes” for colleges and universities. It advises them to take action if programs are not aligned with the state’s standards for science-based reading instruction.

The group also recommends that the state require “a reading licensure test aligned with scientifically based reading instruction for any PK-5 teachers.”

Jessie Gomez is a reporter for Chalkbeat Newark, covering public education in the city. Contact Jessie at jgomez@chalkbeat.org.

Newark teachers focus on mental, emotional healing after challenging school year

2022-08-12T10:00:00+00:00

In a room full of Newark teachers, Thomas Luna, a seventh grade science teacher, took a moment to reflect on the previous school year filled with unprecedented challenges.

Luna jotted down his thoughts in a notebook while other colleagues in the room sighed as they remembered what it feels like to be an educator during the pandemic. When they were done, some took turns sharing their reflections with the group:

“Expressing how I was feeling was really important to me.”

“I needed space.”

“It was hard to focus.”

Their fellow teachers, sitting at desks, snapped fingers and nodded heads in appreciation.

They were healing, said Dr. Wenimo Okoya, founder of the Healing Schools Project, who led the exercise for KIPP Rise Academy teachers on Thursday, the week before students return to their classrooms.

After two years of pandemic-related stress, the stakes are high for schools and educators in Newark and across the country as students show an increase in emotional and social needs. Teachers and principals are also experiencing more job-related stress at a rate roughly twice that of other working adults, according to a new RAND Corporation survey.

A former Newark Public Schools teacher, Okoya believes that her work helps teachers heal and grow from stressors by creating a stable environment and allowing students to thrive in a healthy school setting. She partners with schools and districts to address and prevent teacher burnout and rebuild school communities after two years of pandemic-era uncertainty.

“During the pandemic, I and my other teacher friends and educators were really burned out from what we were experiencing during the peak of the pandemic,” said Okoya, who launched Healing Schools Project last year. “We started holding virtual healing circles with friends of friends and people wanted more of that.”

Okoya’s work includes workshops focused on fostering connection and care among school staff and leading healing circles as a way to connect with colleagues and promote better mental health at work. At KIPP Rise Academy, which has roughly 50 teachers and 460 fifth through eighth grade students, school leader Kyle Newsome said he invited Okoya because he’s responsible for ensuring the well-being of his staff and students.

An inspirational mural at KIPP Rise Academy greets students as they enter the building.

“If we’re really being honest, community work is people work,” Newsome said. “We’re a people-driven community and there’s no way to even do that if we don’t have some type of priority around it.”

Kerry-Ann McGaw, a fifth and sixth grade special education teacher at KIPP Rise and an educator for 14 years, said it’s more important than ever to have a space with other educators to talk about day-to-day life in the classroom.

For McGaw, having conversations with colleagues throughout the day helps her feel better about her role. She also practices the same coping strategies she teaches her students to deal with life in and out of the classroom.

“When I need to reset in the classroom, I model it by counting down on my fingers,” McGaw added. “I tell students at the beginning of the school year these are the things you can do when you feel frustrated, anxious, and overly excited. Us helping kids is, in turn, helping us too.”

Other teachers participating in Okoya’s exercise said having morning rituals, creating boundaries for themselves, and affirming each other are also ways they cope with the stressors of teaching.

“Providing teachers an opportunity to take care of themselves puts them at a place where they are not looking at students’ issues through a deficit,” said Tiffany Walker, founder of Journey Therapy Center in Clifton, New Jersey, and former program manager for youth development programs.

A clinical social worker, Walker adds that teachers need to create physical and emotional boundaries and make adjustments throughout the school year to prevent burnout and ensure they have enough energy for their families and personal lives.

“What are some of the things that you can commit to in the school year,” Walker added, “and what are some of the things that you have to make adjustments to so that you can ensure you’re showing that wellness for yourself?”

Okoya’s work primarily focuses on student trauma – a critical factor in Newark, where many students are exposed to poverty, discrimination, violence, and housing inequality. But in order to tackle student trauma, adults have to invest in healing their own traumas, especially after the pandemic, Okoya said.

“For our young people that connection is so critical because connection, support, and relationships are the primary factors to overcome trauma, especially in childhood but even in adulthood,” Okoya added.

Amid long-standing concerns over teacher retention, staff shortages, and COVID protocols, Newsome says he’s getting a head start on the year by creating healthy spaces for students. His goal is to invest in his teacher’s emotional and mental well-being for the sake of the students. Healthy teachers, he said, make great outcomes for students.

“Everyone here is excited and that’s something that I hoped for but I had my own concerns because it’s been so rough,” Newsome. “If we hope for the best, it’s gonna feel different for the kids.”

Jessie Gomez is a reporter for Chalkbeat Newark, covering public education in the city. Contact Jessie at jgomez@chalkbeat.org

State shutdown of Newark charter school leaves families in financial lurch

2022-07-21T20:19:36+00:00

The recent state closure of University Heights Charter School, a network of three Newark schools that enrolled about 600 students, upended short- and long-term plans for hundreds of families.

Now, it’s costing them.

Closing the school shortly after the end of another unprecedented school year has led to unforeseen financial burdens, parents said. Unbudgeted expenses, like summer camp and new school uniforms, are quickly adding up.

And midway through summer break, some anxious parents still don’t know where their children will go to school in the fall.

“There was no regard for parents or children,” said Tanysha Flood, a parent of a rising third grader who had attended University Heights since kindergarten. “The timing of this was inconsiderate and it could be detrimental to my child.”

While school closures often occur because of poor academic performance and under-enrollment, research has shown they can be emotionally disruptive for students. A 2018 study noted that some students have faced “lasting negative impacts on socio-emotional health and long-term declines in academic performance.”

The state Department of Education revoked University Heights’ charter June 30. It informed the pre-K-8 network of its decision in a letter dated June 1.

The school, which has been on probation since 2019, struggled to improve students’ academic performance, faced declining enrollment, and had an unstable leadership team. All those factors contributed to its closure, acting Education Commissioner Angelica Allen-McMillan said in the letter.

Even so, parents say, the decision was ill-timed.

Open enrollment for district schools closed in February. Students received notice of their placements in April. And registration for Newark Public Schools’ free summer program ended in May.

Although the district reopened the enrollment window for families of University Heights students, parents say they’re finding their preferred choices are already at capacity for the 2022-23 school year.

With just weeks to go before the start of school, their students are getting waitlisted, they said.

“Our students already experienced so much trauma during the pandemic,” said Christy Oliver-Hawley, who became head of schools at University Heights in August 2020. “Ninety-five percent receive free lunch and have challenges at home. Now, they have yet another life-altering experience they’re forced to go through.”

About 400 families who signed up for University Heights’ free summer enrichment program also had to suddenly seek alternative plans and, in some cases, face late registration fees they weren’t prepared to pay.

“Now I’m scrambling to try to pay a few hundred dollars for something I thought my children were going to get for free this summer,” said Ashley Goins, a parent of two children who had attended University Heights since preschool. Goins sat on the network’s board of trustees as a parent representative this past year.

Goins will also have to pay for new school uniforms, but can’t buy them just yet for one of her children since she is on a waitlist. “School starts in a few weeks and I still have to get uniforms, and the closer to school starting, the more expensive they get,” she said. “I’m very anxious and frustrated.”

Declining enrollment, low test scores, instability

Though families and school officials say the state’s decision felt abrupt, it was years in the making.

When the state put the school on probation in May 2019, the sanction required the network to make drastic improvements to address exceptionally low test scores and chaotic classroom environments.

In 2019, the school’s state test scores fell to the bottom 5% of high-poverty schools in the state. And classrooms “were not conducive to student achievement” due to unsafe, disruptive student behavior, “with limited evidence of staff intervention,” Allen-McMillan said of the state’s observations of the school from three years ago.

School officials say progress was ongoing, but more time was needed to see the fruits of those changes.

“It’s been a Herculean task to turn this around and get us on the right path,” Oliver-Hawley said. “Our goal was to move from probationary status to a National Blue Ribbon School, and I believe we could’ve gotten there.”

Under Oliver-Hawley’s leadership, the charter school conducted an audit to ensure every teacher was certified and qualified to teach, and hired school counselors, attendance officers, and a parent coordinator. The charter also implemented a one-to-one Chromebook program and free tutoring programs before and after school, she said.

But state education department officials determined the progress so far has not been enough, and more red flags cropped up after a site visit this past spring.

Though class sizes were smaller and behavior was “less disruptive” during an unannounced visit by the state on March 14, officials observed “low-level” instruction and student engagement, Allen-McMillan said.

“However, the maximum number of students in each observed classroom was 12, which may have minimized potential disruptive behaviors with considerably smaller class sizes than previously observed,” she added.

That number, in turn, raised questions about the school’s enrollment.

The charter network’s enrollment dropped to 566 students last school year, compared to 742 during 2020-21. The school has a maximum approved enrollment of 1,005 students, but only enrolls 56% of that limit, department officials said.

And concerns about enrollment are related to another problem: the network’s troubled finances.

University Heights faced the threat of foreclosure or a management takeover earlier this year after it defaulted on the terms of a $14.72 million loan agreement. The charter network used that loan to purchase and renovate a building for its elementary school.

UMB Bank, which represents the bondholders, noted the school’s declining enrollment was cause for alarm and threatened its ability to repay its debt. However, Allen-McMillan did not raise that issue in the state’s letter.

During the state’s site visit in March, education department officials also observed students with individual education plans, known as IEPs. Those students, Allen-McMillan wrote in the letter, received instruction “in a small room that was not conducive to learning.”

Further, a properly certified staff member was not delivering instruction and services, “revealing additional non-compliance” with state special education statutes and codes, she said.

The education department also evaluated the charter network’s assessment scores when deciding whether to shut down University Heights.

Since 2019-20 and 2020-21 statewide assessments were canceled, the state reviewed the school’s benchmark assessments from 2020-21, which showed marginal growth, Allen-McMillan said.

“Absent systemic academic growth suggests University Heights lacks the organizational capacity to provide high-quality education,” she said.

Additionally, the state noted the charter has had two executive directors and three school business administrators since February 2020. The school also hired three new principals in 2020-21, but one of them was set to retire this year. Constant changes in leadership roles “has failed to correct organizational instability,” the state said.

‘Blindsided’ by the state’s decision

University Heights has appealed the state’s decision in Superior Court of New Jersey. The school, which is represented by the Johnston Law Firm of Montclair, argues that the timing of the closure “irreparably harmed students who experienced undeniable COVID-19 related learning loss and trauma,” and violated workers’ rights to fair notice of an employer’s closure.

As for the timing of the charter’s revocation, state regulations allow the education commissioner to revoke a school’s charter “at any time” following a review by the department, said Laura Fredrick, the department’s communications director, in an email.

Oliver-Hawley said the school held a job fair for teachers and staff before shutting its doors for good last month.

“We were blindsided,” she said, adding that state officials gave her positive oral feedback after the site visit in March. “We’re still experiencing that sense of shock.”

While Goins awaits for her daughter’s name to move off a school waitlist, she’s concerned about students who might be discouraged because of all the uncertainty.

“I think a lot of students are just not going to start right away because they don’t know where they’re going next,” Goins said.

Catherine Carrera is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Newark, covering the city’s K-12 schools with a focus on English language learners. Contact Catherine at ccarrera@chalkbeat.org.

‘You can’t keep my kids safe’: How violence shook a Newark high school, despite pleas for help

2022-01-11T15:39:00+00:00

The calls for help started the first week of classes at Malcolm X Shabazz High School.

Week one: The police were called about a fight at the Newark school, police records from this September show. Week two: an assault in progress. Week three: “criminal mischief.” Week four: an alleged sexual assault.

In October, a melee in the cafeteria sent the school into lockdown, according to students and videos. In a separate incident, two students punched and kicked a young woman as she cowered in a hallway, another video shows. In November, a gunman fired at students just after dismissal. Around the same time, a fight outside the school ended with a group of students stomping on a young man, a different video shows.

The vast majority of Shabazz students aren’t involved in the violence or disorder; they just want a safe, stable place to learn. But the chaos still has disrupted their classes, tarnished their school’s reputation, and exacted a psychic toll.

“I didn’t really feel safe,” said Alana Syphus, a ninth grader who transferred out of Shabazz this fall.

Across the country, educators reported a surge in behavior challenges this fall and unprecedented mental health needs as students readjusted to school while still coping with pandemic stress and uncertainty. Nearly 60% of parents in a recent poll called increased bullying and violence in school a major issue, and nearly 80% said they’re concerned about how schools are handling discipline issues.

But while the pandemic fueled such problems, it didn’t create them. During the 2019-20 school year at Shabazz High School, students were attacked in classrooms and the main office, according to interviews and incident reports. They were stabbed with pencils and hit by chairs. Both students and staffers had to seek medical treatment after altercations.

In private messages and at public meetings, parents and employees pleaded with officials to address the chaos at Shabazz. Yet it persisted.

“Innocent kids were getting harmed — inside the building, outside the building,” said Sharma Eagan, whose daughter is a Shabazz senior. “A lot of things were happening.”

The safety challenges are only one component of the crisis at Shabazz. In addition to violence, the school has struggled with instability, low academic achievement, and declining enrollment for many years and under multiple district leaders, according to a review of school data, incident reports, and police records, as well as interviews with more than 40 current and former officials, school employees, parents, and students.

Allowed to fester, the problems have intensified. Today, Shabazz’s enrollment has dwindled to 277 students — a third of what it was a decade ago. Its graduation rate fell to 62% last year, almost 20 percentage points below the district rate, and just 1 in 3 graduates headed to college in fall 2020.

During the 2019-20 school year, Shabazz’s suspension and serious-incident rates were many times higher than the district average, even exceeding rates at similar high schools.

This November, nearly 60% of Shabazz students were chronically absent — more than any other Newark high school.

District policies and a lack of urgent attention have entrenched the school’s troubles. Most notably, Newark’s two-tiered high school system steers the top-performing students into selective schools and young people with the greatest academic and social-emotional needs to comprehensive high schools such as Shabazz. Shabazz enrolls far more students with disabilities and behavior disorders and mid-year arrivals than any selective school serves.

The district superintendent, Roger León, promised to revitalize the city’s troubled high schools. Yet by opening even more selective schools, he may have deepened the hole that schools like Shabazz are struggling to climb out of. And while he was directly warned about the turmoil at Shabazz, even receiving videos of the violence, it continued under his watch.

A district spokesperson said all reported incidents at Shabazz were investigated and addressed, and the new principal who started this school year has taken steps to improve learning and safety at the school.

Across the country, no school has escaped COVID’s grip. Yet schools that struggled prior to the pandemic, often because they serve the neediest students with limited resources, were especially vulnerable to its disruptions.

In Newark, the failure to forcefully intervene at Shabazz and similarly troubled schools meant they were on shaky ground when the pandemic erupted. Because state and district officials allowed Shabazz to sink so low over so many years, it faces a far steeper path to recovery. And now, as the latest surge forces students back to remote learning, any fragile progress has been put on hold.

The pandemic might be the most dire emergency to beset the school — but it’s far from the first.

Brit Harley, who helped a nonprofit run an enrichment program in Shabazz for several years, said that long before COVID, successive superintendents allowed Shabazz to spiral out of control.

“I was always appalled at what seemed like the lack of oversight and care from the district,” she said recently. “Why was there not an SOS? How can this continue?”

In 1914, South Side High School opened in Newark’s South Ward. In 1972, the school was renamed in honor of Malcolm X Shabazz.

The making of Shabazz

Before it became Shabazz, the sprawling South Ward campus was home to South Side High School.

South Side opened in 1914 when Newark was a growing, majority-white industrial city. Within a few decades, the population transformed as waves of Black southerners moved North and racist housing policies drew white families to the suburbs but confined Black families to the inner city.

Between 1920 and 1970, Newark’s population shifted from 96% to 44% white, and from 4% to 54% Black. In 1972, South Side students led a push to rename the school in honor of the slain civil rights leader Malcolm X Shabazz.

South Side and Shabazz produced many accomplished alumni, including former Newark Mayor Sharpe James, former New York City Mayor Ed Koch, Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus, and Grammy Award-winning singer Cissy Houston. The campus also has long boasted an acclaimed marching band and powerhouse football and basketball teams.

Shabazz boasts an acclaimed marching band.

Yet as deindustrialization, white flight, and government disinvestment wreaked havoc on Newark over many decades, Shabazz suffered too. Violence and poverty in the community seeped onto the campus. “It’s getting more and more difficult,” a Shabazz teacher told a reporter in 1993 as the school grappled with gangs and absenteeism.

The state seized control of Newark’s schools two years later, but little changed at Shabazz. In the 2000s, it spent seven consecutive years on the state’s struggling schools list due to poor performance.

In 2010, state observers found students roaming the halls during class and pulling fire alarms. The “adults in the building have lost control,” the observers wrote, calling it “a school in crisis.” Faulting the state-operated district for providing inadequate support, the reviewers recommended shutting down Shabazz and replacing it with small academies.

The state did not close Shabazz. “It would be like tearing down City Hall,” a former district official told Chalkbeat, citing its devoted alumni network. Instead, in 2011, Shabazz got its fourth new principal in as many years: a 27-year-old named Gemar Mills.

“The school was in disarray,” said Mills, who was promoted from vice principal. “Students were running the building however they wanted to.”

Mills and his team made aggressive changes. They cracked down on gang activity and fights. They replaced graffiti with murals. They held weekly pep rallies and posted online videos promoting “the new Shabazz,” symbolized by its feisty bulldog mascot.

“When we first got there, Shabazz was one of the worst schools in the country,” said Altarik White, an alum who joined Mills’ administrative team. “Through our efforts, we were able to bring back that bulldog bite.”

But when Mills left after just four years at the helm to help lead a national nonprofit, Shabazz began to backslide. The school had relied on a charismatic leader to overcome structural challenges that never went away.

The deep-rooted obstacles include pervasive poverty and crime surrounding Shabazz. In 2019, the poverty rate in the school’s ZIP code was five times the statewide average. Last year through Dec. 5, the local police precinct encountered more than 40% of the city’s shooting victims.

In addition, Shabazz and its feeder schools compete for students and funding with Newark’s many charter schools, which are concentrated in the South Ward. But arguably the greatest hindrance is the district’s own enrollment system, which ushers high-achieving students to selective high schools and the neediest students to Shabazz and the other comprehensive high schools.

This school year, about 31% of Shabazz students have disabilities — nearly twice the districtwide rate. Some parents of students with disabilities say district employees steered their children to the school. (The district spokesperson did not respond to that claim.)

“They said we had to go to Shabazz because he has special needs,” said Theresa Pringle, whose son enrolled at the school in 2018. “They guide you where they want to put you.”

In 2018, the most recent year when such data was available, Shabazz enrolled more students with emotional difficulties that affect learning and behavior than did any other district high school. And compared with selective high schools, a disproportionate share of students transfer to Shabazz during the school year, often because they were forced out of other schools due to discipline problems.

“Instead of having an alternative school, it’s been determined that Shabazz will be the school where all the behavior disorder kids will go,” said Donald Massey, a former Shabazz security guard and football coach.

A Shabazz 9th grader, whose name Chalkbeat is withholding, said the concentration of students with behavior challenges can impede on everyone’s learning.

“It creates a whole distraction for the school,” she said, “because now they bang on the doors, they run in the hallways.”

A 2011 study of Chicago schools found that schools serving more students with academic challenges were more likely to struggle with safety and order. In fact, students’ prior academic achievement had a bigger impact on school safety than crime and poverty in the surrounding area, the researchers found.

“We’re making some of these issues more challenging in the way we sort students” into schools, said David Johnson, a senior research analyst at the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research, who co-authored the report.

By sending so many students with academic and behavior challenges to Shabazz, the district created a combustible situation. By 2019, the situation had come to a head.

Chaos before the storm

Newark officials received repeated warnings that Shabazz was in trouble.

Theresa Pringle, whose son attended Shabazz, raised concerns about violence at the school during an August 2019 school board meeting.

In August 2019, Pringle stood up at a school board meeting to call attention to the chaos. The previous school year, Shabazz had reported 62 serious incidents, the majority involving violence. Its rate of incidents was six times the district average. East Side High School, with four times as many students as Shabazz, reported only 38 offenses.

“These incidents are taking place on school grounds during the school day and escalating into the community,” she said, “putting my son’s safety in imminent danger.”

As predicted, the violence resumed as soon as the 2019-20 school year started. On Sept. 12, a brawl broke out between periods, records show. The next morning, three students attacked a young man at a nearby bus stop. The student was rushed to a hospital.

In the following weeks, students fought or were attacked in stairwells, hallways, and locker rooms, according to incident reports and videos. One student flung a laptop at a classmate’s face, sending him to the hospital. On at least two occasions, security guards had to seek medical care, the reports show.

“It was constant fights breaking out,” said Naheim Dixson, who was a senior that school year.

Video screenshots show some of the violent incidents that Shabazz students recorded during the 2019-20 school year.

Students recorded the mayhem. In one video, the principal, wearing a black suit, rushes into a crowd of dozens to break up a fight. In another, a young woman pummels a student on the floor of the main office. In yet another, four young men assault a fifth student in a stairwell. “The incident could be described as extremely violent and predatory in nature,” the incident report reads.

León was aware of the violence. An alarmed Shabazz employee had been texting the Newark superintendent videos of the brutality, which León referenced at a staff meeting, according to an attendee.

On Feb. 5, 2020, the employee sent León a video of a young man entering a classroom, punching a seated student in the face, and chasing him into the hallway.

“I know in the past I’ve sent you multiple videos of the mayhem that’s going on in Shabazz,” the staffer wrote to León, according to a screenshot of the message shared with Chalkbeat. The employee wrote that León previously referred him to an assistant superintendent, whom the employee contacted, yet the violence continued.

“Mr. Leon if something isn’t done soon,” he wrote, “Shabazz will inevitably end up on the 5 o’clock news.”

The warning was eerily prescient. The next day, footage of several Shabazz basketball players attacking their coach appeared on the evening news. The story soon was picked up by the Washington Post, CNN, and Fox News. Newark’s mayor issued a statement and the assistant superintendent met with Shabazz families, but parents and staffers said they didn’t hear from León.

“When the big stuff goes down, he ain’t there,” said Eagan, the Shabazz parent.

León did not respond to questions about the specific steps he took to address the violence at Shabazz.

“Any and all reported incidents regarding Malcolm X Shabazz High School have been investigated, and appropriate action has been taken in response,” district spokesperson Nancy Deering said in a statement.

The disorder weighed on students. Erica Mends, who was in 12th grade that year, recalled students wandering the halls during class and teachers locking classroom doors to prevent intrusions.

“Every single day we go to school, we don’t know what to expect,” she said. “What is going to happen in the hallway? Who is going to say what to who?”

The chaos compounded other issues. Former students remember sitting in half-empty classrooms while their peers skipped school, and long-term substitutes replacing teachers who quit mid-year.

“It was a miserable, unhappy place to work,” said a teacher who left after the 2019-20 school year.

The violent videos were widely viewed, overshadowing students’ many accomplishments.

“Shabazz is filled with smart kids,” said Dixson, who graduated in 2020 and plans to join the military. But they were “outshined because everyone shined a light on the bad things.”

Pringle felt she had to remain vigilant while her son was at Shabazz. She documented 38 visits to the school to raise concerns about safety and other issues.

“Safety has to be addressed,” she said in an interview. “Parents should feel confident that when their children go to school, they won’t get a dreaded call that something has happened to your child.”

The violence at Shabazz continued through March 13, 2020, when a “male student decided to start hitting [a] female student” in the cafeteria, according to the incident report. That evening, the district announced it was shutting down school buildings due to the fast-spreading coronavirus.

The following year and a half of remote learning offered students a reprieve from the violence at Shabazz, even as the pandemic created new hardships.

In spring 2021, more than a year after dozens of documented fights and assaults at Shabazz, León replaced Principal Naseed Gifted, whom he had installed at the school three years earlier.

Superintendent Roger León spoke at a back-to-school event at Shabazz in 2018. In the background is Naseed Gifted, whom León appointed as principal.

That June, the Shabazz employee who had sent León videos of the violence followed up with the superintendent in an email, which Chalkbeat obtained. (The employee, who no longer works for the district, requested anonymity to avoid retaliation.)

In the June 24, 2021 email, he said he had warned León, another official, and school board members about the “mayhem” at Shabazz, but “my concerns [fell] on deaf ears.” Now, he said, he worried what would happen when Shabazz students, who already “had major social and emotional issues prior to the pandemic,” came back to a school with new administrators and staffers.

“Mr. Leon, I’m praying the district has a plan for the students who will be returning to a school that doesn’t remotely reflect the school they left,” he wrote. “I’m praying for these kids.”

A steep climb ahead

Schools nationwide reported a wave of fights and disruptions when in-person learning resumed this fall. The strain was heightened at Shabazz, where students returned to a new principal and a campus known for violence.

“At the beginning of the school year, it was a fight like every day,” said 10th grader Amiyah McClinton.

A current Shabazz employee, who asked to remain anonymous, described witnessing many of the same problems that plagued the school before the pandemic: terrible attendance, frequent fights, and students wandering the halls during class. Remote learning had also exacerbated academic and mental health challenges.

“You come in and want to teach content,” she said, “but you can’t without first putting out a zillion fires.”

Shanaya Thomas, whose two children attend Shabazz, was already worried about the violence when she learned that a man fired a gun outside the school on Nov. 30, narrowly missing two students. The next day, Thomas emailed Superintendent León to ask that he allow her son and daughter to learn from home.

“You can’t keep my kids safe, so why would I send them to school?” she said in an interview. Last month, she notified the district that she’d be homeschooling her children.

Shabazz students say fights were frequent at the beginning of the school year, but things have since calmed down.

Yet despite those persistent challenges, the school has made some progress. Students say they’ve been impressed with the new principal, Atiba Buckman, who previously led a district elementary school. Buckman meets regularly with the newly established student government, rewards students for good grades and attendance, and recently brought some calm to the school, they said.

“There used to be fights every day; now it’s like every other day,” said Imani, a ninth-grader who declined to give her last name. “It’s not perfect, but they’re doing their best.”

Even when the school has seemed in disarray, it still offered opportunities. Members of Shabazz’s Biogeochemistry Team compiled data that was included in a published study; in 2017, one of the student-researchers won a full ride to Harvard. Parents and students praise the school’s cosmetology and engineering programs, its partnerships with local universities, and its vaunted athletic teams and marching band, which recently performed at an event featuring former President Barack Obama.

“A lot of people were telling me, ‘You put him in there, he’s going to fail,’” said Yvonne Davis, whose son, Tariq, is a sophomore who’s in the marching band and on the honor roll. “Tariq proved them wrong; he’s doing really good.”

Yet the school remains in distress. Its enrollment is at an all-time low and its graduation rate, which trails far behind the district average, is lower than it was a decade ago. Only 31% of Shabazz graduates in 2020 entered college that fall. This November, 6 in 10 Shabazz students were chronically absent, an alarming trend that suggests students are falling further behind instead of making up ground lost during the pandemic.

The dire situation at Shabazz and other struggling high schools bears little resemblance to the vision laid out by León, a former selective school principal who became superintendent in 2018. Early in his tenure, he promised to make high school improvement a centerpiece of his agenda.

“We are changing the entire landscape of not only this school system, but of every single high school,” he proclaimed in 2019.

His marquee reform was reinvesting in vocational programs at the comprehensive high schools and recruiting businesses and universities to support their career training.

But he has been less clear about his plan to improve academics at those schools, which continue to lag far behind the selective high schools in every key measure. For example, when New Jersey last gave its annual exams in 2019, 63% of students at the selective Science Park High School were proficient in math, compared with just 3% of students at Shabazz.

At the same time, León has made changes that could hamstring the comprehensive schools. He eliminated a small school for struggling students, and sent them back to the traditional high schools. He opened several new selective high schools, and instituted a new entrance exam that the selective schools can use to admit top-performing students. Meanwhile, Shabazz and the other comprehensive schools must admit all who apply.

“If they don’t get accepted by any other school on their high school application, they get funneled to Shabazz,” said the current Shabazz employee. “Honestly, I think the district is setting up the school to fail.”

Deering, the district spokesperson, said León plans to eventually restore alternative education programs, which previous superintendents phased out. She added that all comprehensive high schools offer honors and Advanced Placement classes. (Only 9% of Shabazz students took AP classes last year, according to district data.)

“Many South Side and Shabazz graduates have gone on to successful careers, major leadership roles, and a rich history with a committed, dedicated, and supportive alumni association,” she said in a statement. “The new leadership at the school has instituted steps to address academics, culture, climate, and students’ social and emotional learning needs.”

Deering declined to provide details about the improvements. Principal Buckman and Newark school board President Dawn Haynes did not respond to multiple emails.

The district’s response to the acute challenges at Shabazz and similar schools remains a work in progress.

At the December school board meeting, members pressed León about concerningly high rates of absenteeism, serious incidents, and suspensions. León cited an ongoing review of the district’s discipline policies and a plan to train students to provide peer-to-peer counseling.

“A lot of really important work needs to happen,” León told the board, “to actually see these numbers on a downward spiral.”

While successive officials promise change, generations of young people encounter similar problems at Shabazz.

Malachi Muhammad graduated from Shabazz in 2016. Today, he’s part of a group that monitors students as they travel to and from school.

Malachi Muhammad, who graduated in 2016, remembers fights at the school and certain classes that offered little more than “babysitting.” It was known “for being a school that you get dumped into,” he said.

Today, Muhammad is a member of the Newark Community Street Team, whose staffers watch over students outside several designated schools, including Shabazz. Each day, the 24-year-old greets Shabazz students as they arrive and leave. He was talking to the two students the day the gunman exited a white car at dismissal and shot at them; Muhammad helped them escape.

Last month, he stood in the shadow of one of the school’s towering brick walls. It once featured a mural of Malcolm X Shabazz holding a page that read, “By any dreams necessary.” The mural was removed during repairs and never replaced.

Muhammad thought about the brilliance contained within those walls. Like young people everywhere, the students at Shabazz are capable of such greatness, he knew, if given the chance.

“A lot of these minds are revolutionary and they want something different,” he said. “But no one’s enabling it.”

We read Roger León’s Clarity 2020 plan for Newark’s schools so you don’t have to. Here’s what to expect in the next year.

2019-07-15T20:34:49+00:00

Roger León’s Clarity 2020 plan for Newark schools, unveiled last month, has 168 action items. We’ve broken them down so students, parents, and educators can know what to expect in the upcoming year.

Some of the items are concrete and measurable, such as creating a system that flags struggling students. Others, such as pairing every Newark student with a mentor, name goals that seem challenging to achieve in just a year. Some outline plans to collect information that would allow changes to be made in the future. Much of Clarity 2020 is open-ended, listing areas where the district still needs to come up with detailed plans.

León has already gotten started on some of the agenda items but others have yet to undergo public discussion or action. What happens with the plan matters for León’s future, and that of the city’s schools, as observers are watching closely to see whether his ideas translate into action and improvements for students.

We’ll be tracking what happens to the promises — and will update them when León delivers a more detailed, decade-long plan that he has said is coming as soon as next year.

Here are the Clarity 2020 plan items, broken down into changes that students, guardians, and educators in Newark could see in the next year.

Newark seventh graders listening to Superintendent Roger León in September.

Students should see changes to their school buildings, how they get to school, and what happens if they fall behind.

Renovate school buildings: The district plans to make sure students attend class in “state of the art buildings and classrooms with the light, heat, space, air, and technology needed to learn and compete globally.”

This could be hard because … many Newark schools are in disrepair, with leaking roofs, faulty heating and cooling systems, and outdated technology. Despite a court order requiring the state to replace Newark’s dilapidated schools, the state has only funded a fraction of the repairs Newark requested — and it has no plans to build any new schools in the district.

Revamp special education: The district says it will place students with disabilities in the “least restrictive environment,” analyze how often black and Latino students end up in special-education classes, and train educators and administrators about how to best work with students with disabilities.

This is important because … federal law says students with disabilities should be placed in the “least restrictive environment,” which generally means classes with non-disabled peers whenever possible. (New York City’s recent push in that direction resulted in more students with disabilities attending integrated classes and also raised concerns about how well they are being served.) Nationally, black and Latino students students tend to be referred to special education more often than their white and Asian peers.

Support the “whole child”: The district will develop programs to support students’ physical and mental health, embed “health and social services coordinators” in every school, and train staff to help students cope with trauma.

To accomplish this … the district wants to fill schools with social services for students and their families. This “community schools” approach has been tried before in Newark, with mixed results. It is expensive, complicated to pull off, and won’t by itself improve student achievement. But advocates say that students cannot learn until they feel safe and their physical and emotional needs are met.

Catch struggling students: The district plans to create a system that flags when students are struggling and prompts schools to come up with strategies to improve their attendance, academic achievement, and likelihood of graduating on time.

To accomplish this … Newark could draw from successful models in Chicago and the Bronx where schools actively work to identify struggling students and intervene before they fall too far behind.

Extend learning beyond the classroom: The district plans to work with local businesses and colleges to create more internship and apprenticeship opportunities and to pair every student with a mentor.

To accomplish this … the district can build on existing career-focused efforts, including a summer jobs program run by the city. Outside groups, like Schools That Can-Newark, specialize in helping schools provide real-world learning experiences for students. But finding mentors for all 36,000 students, or even a subset of them, could prove much harder.

Get students to school safely: The plans calls for “comprehensive transportation plan” developed in partnership with the city and New Jersey Transit, as well as the expansion of a program that places adult monitors along the routes that students walk to school.

This is important because … families have long called on the district to offer transportation to more students, especially after the district stopped automatically assigning students to their nearest schools and instead allowed them to apply to schools anywhere in the city. Providing transportation to more students and monitoring students who walk to school could help reduce absenteeism and give families access to more school options. (The “Safe Passage” program that places monitors on students’ routes to schools is already expanding.)

Newark families will get more support under the Clarity 2020 plan.

Parents and guardians should get more help getting involved with their children’s schools and learning.

Help parents prepare their children for school: The district says it will make sure parents have access to prenatal care, health insurance, and immunizations; develop a “Healthy and Ready to Learn” plan for children entering preschool; and support teen parents.

This is important because … children from low-income families enter school far behind their higher-income peers. León wants to tackle that phenomenon, which researchers call the “school readiness gap,” by starting to support students “while the baby is in the womb.” While research has shown that increase access to preschool and support for new parents can help close that gap, it will be an expensive and demanding proposition for the district to extend its services to thousands of younger children and their parents.

Get families involved: The district plans to establish parent organizations in every school that encourage families to get involved in school and district policy. León also plans to launch a “Superintendent’s Council of Parents.”

This is important because… students’ grades and graduation rates can increase when their families are more involved in their education. However, schools sometimes struggle to draw parents in and many parents don’t feel welcomed or valued at their children’s schools. And it’s unclear the degree to which León wants parents to play a concrete role in decision-making — a question that has generated tensions in other districts’ parent engagement efforts.

Improve communication with families: The district says it will create an app to keep families informed about district news and resources; put out information in multiple languages; and use electronic billboards to send “essential messages.”

This is important because … parents often say they’re unaware of what’s going on at their children’s schools or across the district. While better communication with families is a start, some observers say the superintendent and school board need to be more transparent about the policies they’re pursuing and changes they’re making.

Educate parents: The district will offer parent workshops, create a “Parent University,” and prepare a home-based learning program for parents.

This could be … similar to New York City’s “Parent University,” which taught parents how to navigate their child’s education, or Detroit’s “Parent Academy,” which allowed parents to enroll in free parenting and career courses. Either way, parents who participate are likely to be more involved in the school system — a major goal of Clarity 2020. However, it’s still unclear what Newark’s parent-education program will actually do.

Tamara Leveridge, a sixth-grade teacher at Ivy Hill School in Newark, is the district’s 2019 Teacher of the Year.

Teachers and administrators should experience more concerted efforts to help them improve.

Facilitate collaboration: The plan calls for “professional learning communities” among school staffers, including by enable principals to visit each other’s schools and give feedback.

This sounds similar to … former New York City Schools Chancellor Carmen Farina’s approach to strengthening her school district. Her “Learning Partners” program emphasized collaboration among district principals and teachers. Lauren Wells, a consultant who helped write Clarity 2020, has said that one of the district plan’s tenets is “helping schools work together rather than in isolation.”

Diversify the teaching force: Newark plans to work with universities and outside groups to recruit and retain more black and Latino male educators.

This is important because … research shows that when students have teachers who look like them, their performance improves. While roughly 90 percent of Newark students are black or Hispanic, only about 57 percent of their teachers are. Other districts are also looking to hire more nonwhite teachers; in 2018, New York City launched a $16 million program called NYC Men Teach aimed at recruiting and training male teachers of color.

Provide more training: The district is planning to train educators on an array of topics, from how to respect students’ cultures (known as “culturally responsive education”); how to develop students’ social-emotional skills and help them cope with trauma; and on the “science of learning.” School leaders would also get more coaching and mentoring under the plan.

This is important because … students and parents have complained about cultural insensitivity at some Newark schools. Training faculty to embrace students’ cultures and recognize their own biases is one way to combat that problem. In general, much on-the-job teacher training has been found to be ineffective in changing teacher practices and improving student learning. Yet experts say that well-designed training that gets teachers to work together and provides coaching — two components of Clarity 2020 — can improve teacher effectiveness. The plan also plugs Newark into a robust national discussion about the need for teaching practices to reflect the latest understanding of how children learn.

Create pathways to promotion: The district plans create a program to develop “leadership capacity” in teachers and principals and to help “per-diem staff” (such as classroom aides) move into permanent roles.

This is interesting because … León has made clear that he wants district leaders with extensive experience working in schools, so creating a leadership program for educators could be a way to prepare them for central-office roles. Giving teachers and principals opportunities for career advancement could also help keep them in the district.