Rice Wants Newark Schools Back in Local Hands

State Sen. Ron Rice (D-Newark) called on the federal government Thursday to investigate the state government’s management of New Jersey’s three largest school districts, adding a demand for a return to local control.

“I think it’s important we recognize that this is an issue that is not going to get addressed without federal intervention,” said Rice, who was joined for the press conference at Newark City Hall by representatives from the Newark, Jersey City and Paterson districts, all of which have been run from Trenton for a generation.

Newark taxpayers who help pay for the public schools are being “disenfranchised,” Rice added, saying local residents have “taxation without representation.”

The districts, which serve mostly black and Latino students, first started to come under state control beginning in the late 1980s due to poor academic performance and mismanagement. Local elected boards of education were downgraded to advisory boards that work with a superintendent appointed by the state.

The law enabling the takeovers also created a review process where the districts are assessed annually in several areas though a grading system known as the Quality Single Accountability Continuum (QSAC). If a district scores above 80 percent in a given area of district management -- categories that include personnel, governance and operations --  that area is supposed to be returned to local school district control. Newark had already regained local control in one area, operations, in 2007.

In 2011, Newark’s QSAC scores exceeded 80 percent in four of five areas, prompting calls for a return to home rule. Acting Commissioner of Education Chris Cerf refused, however, citing the district’s low graduation rate and test scores. When the Newark-based Education Law Center and other groups sued last year, the state balked until this past July, when, shortly before a deadline, it released new QSAC scores showing Newark falling well short of the 80 percent threshold in nearly every category, the Star Ledger reported.

Rice and other speakers Thursday saw this as evidence that the state is moving the goalposts in order to keep the Newark, Jersey City and Paterson districts under its control.

“We will control it in perpetuity That’s what he was really saying,” said Rice, who wants the federal departments of justice and education to examine the state’s management of the schools. 

Other speakers Thursday said if Newark and the other districts really are deficient even after 20 years of state management, then state management itself may be the problem.

“Either there’s a conspiracy for the Newark Public Schools to remain indefinitely under state control or we have been forced to have a superintendent incapable of running the district,” said  Antoinette Baskerville-Richardson, the chair of the Newark School Advisory Board.

Calls placed to the state Department of Education were not immediately returned Thursday.

Speakers Thursday also said the three districts were being singled out, with Rice circulating data showing that dozens of districts under local control have failed to earn a “passing” grade in at least one QSAC area. Some districts, including Bloomfield, were deficient in as many as three of the five areas.

Given that Jersey City, Newark and Paterson serve mostly minority students, James Harris, president of the state conference of the NAACP, said that it was clearly a “racial issue.”

"Why is it that when African-Americans are in control the rules change?" he said.