Newark Students Will Walk Out of Their Schools on Friday May 22, 2015 in Protest Over Cami Anderson and the $70 Million Deficit

Cami-Anderson

by Peter Greene

Teacher and writer; blogger, curmudgucation.blogspot.com

Who's Listening in Newark?

Posted: 05/19/2015 10:53 pm EDT Updated: 05/19/2015 10:59 pm EDT
LINK

The mayor of a state's largest city joins protestors in blocking the main street during rush hour. Just imagine how that would play out anywhere else. Bill DeBlasio joins high school students to stage a protest shutting down Times Square. Rahm Emanuel joins members of the Chicago school community to bring traffic through downtown Chicago to a grinding halt (okay, that last one might not actually be noticeable).

But when Mayor Ras Baraka joined a student protest on Newark's main drag last Wednesday, it was if New Jersey media had collectively decided they were going to silence the dissenting voices of Newark. Go ahead and search for news about the protest on google -- you'll find nothing. You can find an account from independent journalist Bob Braun and not much else.

Mayor Ras Baraka

 

The protest was just one more in a long series of protests featuring the Newark Students Union and students from East Side High, groups that have consistently called attention to the embarrassing educational train wreck that is Newark.

Here's how reformsters keep telling us this is supposed to work: After collecting data that shows certain schools are failing, the powers that be will rush to make sure those schools get the assistance and support they need. That data will make sure those students (who often turn out to be not white and not wealthy) are not invisible. It's the civil rights issue of our era!

Here's how it actually has worked in Newark: After collecting "evidence" that the schools of Newark were in "crisis," the state took the district over, pushing out the superintendent and the elected school board. Today, Newark Schools are run by an outsider who won't meet, speak to, or respond to the students, parents and citizens of Newark, saddling them with a school system that is a bedraggled mess. They have elected a mayor to speak for them on this issue, and he, too, has been ignored. It has taken a series of demonstrations and protests to get the students and citizens of Newark any kind of attention at all. It's almost as if they're invisible.

Newark is what the solution to the "civil rights issue" of our time looks like. An entire community silenced, cut off from access to any power over their own schools, forced to create a larger and larger fuss just to get people to notice and acknowledge that things are not okay.

People want to be heard. When they are ignored, they just raise their voices, and keep raising them. The strategy of the PTB in New Jersey (which includes the news media) has been to ignore those voices, and to keep promoting a charterized system as a great way to meet the needs of the people, even as the people are out in the street blocking traffic and explaining just how un-met their needs are.

As quoted by Braun, here's what Ras Baraka had to say last Wednesday:

This struggle is not emotional. It's not about us being angry at Cami Anderson. I don't want to make it about her and me or make it about her personality. We're opposed to what's going on and, who's ever down there doing it, is wrong. No matter who they are or where they come from, it's wrong.

We're not against it because she's from New York, but because she's wrong. We're not mad about her personality. We're mad because she's wrong. We're not upset about anything else except for the fact that she wrong.

She was supposed to be here helping public schools grow, not closing them down. That's what we're upset about.

Why am I upset? Because we have a 70 million budget deficit for the Newark schools that keeps growing because she keeps putting teachers on the EWP list, putting them in rubber rooms, putting administrators on the list, too,  and making the city pay for it. The taxpayers are paying for it -- not just the state taxpayers but Newark taxpayers -- are paying for that, too. That's why we're upset.

We're upset because she keeps 'renewing' schools and it's not working,  the renew school thing is not working, but she keeps doing it and it's not working.

We're upset because she says she's going to turnaround  schools but that's a code name for closing them down. She's getting money from the state for the turnaround and we don't see any of that money. The state is supposed to be working with the schools for the turnarounds but that's not happening either.

We're upset because she is splitting people's families up. Because she's sending kids with special needs to schools and the schools  don't offer special needs programs. We're upset because she's sending English language learners to schools without English language learner programs.

That's why we're upset.

Cami Anderson must go, he concluded. "Not tomorrow. Today."

The mayor of New Jersey's largest city stood in the street, blocking rush hour traffic with students and community members, and the press chose to ignore it.

I do not know how folks like Cami Anderson and Chris Christie imagine this is going to end. Do they really think that at some point, the citizens and students and parents and community leaders of Newark will shrug and say, "Well, we tried, but I guess they're going to ignore us, so let's go home and just quietly enjoy being disenfranchised, ignored, and silenced. It probably won't be so bad." Is that what New Jersey's bosses think is going to happen.

The whole business reminds me of Patrick Henry's Speech in the Virginia Convention and his response to those who insist that more "proper" and "quiet" means of trying to resolve differences must be tried.

Sir, we have done everything that could be done to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and Parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the throne! In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free -- if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending -- if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained -- we must fight!

I don't know how things are going to end in Newark. The activists of Newark are thoughtful and committed. I admire how they have been able to respond to the situation with strong concerted action, but without lashing out in anger. As they raise their voices louder and louder, nobody will be able to ask why they didn't try more reasonable or appropriate ways to be heard. What people should ask is why in all that time, nobody in the halls of power bothered to listen.

The students of Newark have announced their intention to walk out of school this Friday, May 22. Let's watch and see if anybody listens this time.

Tenured Teacher and EWP LaRhonda Ragland Was Set Up To Fail Says Arbitrator Timothy Brown in Newark New Jersey

From Betsy Combier:

Read this quote from the article below:
"Throwing tenured teachers out of their jobs and making them EWPs has been a favorite strategy of the state administration under Anderson."

Cami Anderson

The new term EWP (“educator without placement”) has been born, and we have former District Superintendent  (and Joel Klein-clone) Cami Anderson to thank for it.

Here is Arbitrator Timothy J. Brown, Esq.'s decision in the case of LaRhonda Ragland

LaRhonda Ragland

February 5, 2015

How Newark set up a tenured teacher to fail

LINKTenured Newark school teacher LaRhonda Ragland—a former member of the Alvin Ailey dance company and a New Jersey Nets cheerleader—was set up to fail by the state-run school administration, a state-appointed arbitrator has ruled. In a 41-page decision reinstating the teacher after the district tried to fire her, the arbitrator described how Ragland, a single mother with a teenaged child, was declared an “educator without placement” (EWP) by the administration of superintendent Cami Anderson, then transferred from Maple Avenue School to Arts High where she was given non-teaching duties to perform. She was assigned to teach only when administrators wanted to evaluate her–then gave her poor evaluations.

“The District set Respondent (Ragland) up to fail and simply marked time until it could file tenure charges against the teacher,” wrote state-appointed arbitrator, Timothy Brown.

Ragland, far right, with members of the New Jersey Nets cheerleading squad

Brown described how Ragland, who had appeared in the Off-Broadway show “Jam the Groove,” was made a hall-monitor and some-time substitute teacher of non-dance subjects at Arts High where administrators made it clear early on in her stay there that she was not welcome.  She was only evaluated for the few days she was assigned to teach high school-level dance classes, something she had  not done in her previous nine years in the Newark public schools.

“It is fiction to believe that Respondent would succeed in observations of
her teaching high school students at a high school devoted to the arts
when Respondent had previously taught dance only at the elementary
school level and had been assigned hall monitoring and substitute
teaching in non-dance subjects at the arts high school,” Brown concluded.

The arbitrator made it clear that the administration wanted Ragland to fail.

“By its actions and inactions….the District pursued a course of
conduct that assured that, rather than conduct observations of a dance teacher teaching a
dance class of the teacher’s students, the District could conduct observations of a
substitute teacher/hall-monitor attempting to teach students for whom the teacher had no
teacher-student relationship. The outcome of such observations were effectively
determined before they began….”

Throwing tenured teachers out of their jobs and making them EWPs has been a favorite strategy of the state administration under Anderson. By the beginning of this school year, Anderson had assigned more than 400 teachers to EWPs positions in the apparent hope that many would quit rather than be paid for doing nothing.

Many, however, did not quit and Ragland’s experiences shows what happens–they face being set up to fail by being assigned to jobs they are not trained to do.

The arbitrator also found the administration had no intention of helping Ragland overcome whatever problems she may have had in her difficult transition from an elementary school teacher to a EWPs position in high school. Such efforts to help teachers with alleged problems are required both by the new teacher tenure law and the district’s contract with the Newark Teachers Union (NTU).

“TEACHNJ”–the new teacher tenure law–”contemplates that, before he or she may be terminated from a teaching positions (sic), to improve the performance of the struggling teacher, such a teacher will receive a real – rather than feigned – prolonged effort to provide guidance and mentorship from the most advanced and knowledgeable educators in the teacher’s school: the principal and high-level administrators. Here, the District, through its administrators at Arts High School, predetermined that Respondent would never improve and could not be successfully reformed and arbitrarily withheld such efforts from Respondent, ” the arbitrator wrote.

Brown, the arbitrator, describes just how unwelcome the school administration made Ragland feel. He wrote, ” Only a week or two before her first observation,
Respondent was unambiguously advised in a disciplinary write-up from
principal (Lynn Irby-Jackson) that ‘…you are a EWPS teacher…you are not
an Arts High School dance teacher…’ Such
reflects Respondent’s status as an outsider at the school and the
Principal’s view that Respondent was not at the High School for
purposes of teaching dance.”

Brown also noted that the principal called Ragland “functionally illiterate” and said she was “outraged” that she was allowed to teach at Arts. Clearly, whatever the motive Anderson may have had for sending her to Arts as a EWP, Irby-Jackson didn’t want her there.

The NTU, which has represented Ragland and nearly a dozen other teachers brought up on tenure charges by Anderson, has won all its tenure cases this year and has repeatedly called on the superintendent and state Education Commissioner David Hespe to stop the efforts to fire tenured teachers,

The other cases were thrown out because Anderson insisted on using evaluations in both the 2012-2013 and 2013-2014 years as admissible against teachers under the new anti-tenure bill, TEACHNJ. However, both law and regulations considered that first year to be a “pilot” year and evaluations conducted then could not be used.

Under the anti-tenure law, any teacher who receives two years of bad evaluations must be brought up on expedited tenure charges.

The arbitrator in the Ragland case cited that reason for dismissing the tenure charges against her but he also pointed out that the district failed any effort to try to help the teacher improve.  The efforts, he said, were “feigned,” and not real.

Ragland, 44, was raised in Chicago and began her dancing there. She moved east in 1993 and worked professionally as a dancer until 2005 when she was hired by the Newark public schools as a an alternate route teacher.

Robert Pickett, the West Orange lawyer who defended Ragland, called the arbitrator’s  decision “a major victory, not just for Ms.Ragland, but for all teachers who must rely on the new tenure law to keep their jobs.”

Pickett said he already has demanded that Ragland be reinstated “in a position that is consistent with her license and her experience.”

Ragland said she would not comment on the case.

Bigger than Bridgegate? Christie’s $25 million in no-show Newark school jobs

 New Jersey Governor Chris Christie

 

Newark schools chief, teachers union clash over seniority

Cami Anderson

 

By Jessica Calefati/The Star-Ledger The Star-Ledger
                  Follow on Twitter
                 on July 26, 2012 at 8:30 AM

Cami Anderson

 

NEWARK — Newark Superintendent Cami Anderson’s formula for boosting student achievement in struggling schools is built on a simple concept — allowing principals to select their teaching staff regardless of seniority.

The union representing Newark teachers, however, believes the practice invites favoritism and puts older, more experienced teachers at a disadvantage. It plans to file a labor-relations complaint with the state if schools are not staffed based on seniority this fall.

"Teachers with the most years of experience must be offered jobs in their area of certification," said Newark Teachers Union President Joseph Del Grosso. "This is not negotiable."

Last year, roughly 80 tenured teachers without classrooms were offered jobs as assistants and specialists with no dock in pay. Retaining them cost the district $8 million.

If the union follows through on its complaint and prevails, Anderson could be forced to shuffle staffing in the 40,000-student district mid-school-year, a state Public Employment Relations Commission attorney said.

"We can require the district to undo whatever it has done," said Martin Pachman, general counsel for the state Public Employment Relations Council, an administrative agency responsible for upholding New Jersey labor laws.

Staffing at eight of the city’s schools whose teachers and administrators all had to reapply for their jobs would be most affected if Anderson’s policy is struck down. The superintendent contested the union’s claim and said her policy does comply with state law on teacher seniority.

"Our main focus is to make sure that there is a high-quality, effective teacher in every classroom in Newark," Anderson said.

Teachers left without a classroom last year because their school closed or consolidated were considered first for openings at other schools. But principals who could not find qualified candidates among that group were allowed, under the policy, to hire nontenured teachers instead.

 

 

 

FACES: Dr. Timothy F. Lisante, Superintendent of District 79

Riker's Island. The kids incarcerated there are forgotten. Nothing shows the disconnect between the NYC DOE and reality more than the reports of those reporters and people who believe that horror has to be public.

Report Found Distorted Data on Jail Fights at Rikers Island
By MICHAEL WINERIP, MICHAEL SCHWIRTZ and BENJAMIN WEISER SEPT. 21, 2014

October 1, 2014  

Getting Teen-agers out of Solitary at Rikers

By Jennifer Gonnerman

8 Appalling Stories of Inmate Abuse From Rikers Island’s Teen Jails

 

 
Justice Scholars Enable Teens to Get Back on Track
By: Bianca Flowers | July 14, 2014

 New Website to Connect Youth To New York City Resources

 

Dr. Timothy Lisante

Superintendent  tlisant@schools.nyc.gov

Pathways of Possibility Conference

CUNY Baruch  College

February  27, 2013

GED Plus 

GED 

Career & Technical Education
Services for Student Parents
Educational Programs for Students in Drug Treatment
Correctional Education
Co Op Tech
LYFE
ReStart Academy
Phoenix Academy
East River Academy
Passages Academy 

Youth Justice Education

(Involuntary Settings) 

Programmatic Areas
Schools & Programs 

Educational Pathways/  Challenges / Promising Practices
STEP

District 79 Portfolio of Programs

EAST RIVER ACADEMY – Rikers Graduation  2012

GED PLUS  Graduation


Critical Partnerships for D79 Programs that serve

Court-Involved Students

City Agencies:

• New York City Police Department/School Safety
• Department of Probation
• ACS/Division of Youth and Family Justice
• Department of Health and Mental Hygiene
• Department of Youth and Community Development
• Department of Correction

 Interagency Committees/Networks

• NYC Juvenile Justice Advisory Committee
• School Justice Taskforce
• Alcohol/Substance Abuse Provider’s (ASAP) Youth Committee
• ICC Court-Involved Youth Working Group
• Re-Entry Education Network

D79 Advocacy                 Solutions Intervention

 DOE Court Liaisons provide current and applicable information that supports court-involved students in achieving their educational goals
Back on Track (collaboration with the District Attorney’s Office) and Outreach Academy are Re-Start  programs that serve as alternatives for overage middle school students. GED classes in 3 different NY courts Close to Home initiative expanded Passages Academy to support students in building social and emotional and academic skills. Close to Home impacts youth placed by the Family Court in ACS custody.  Adolescent Behavioral Learning Experience (ABLE) is a partnership between  DOE, DOC and the Osborne Association to support ERA students in reducing the likelihood of re-incarceration 

 Re-Entry Support
 

• Home School Re-entry Process allows students who transition out of ERA and Passages to return to the their home school’s register immediately

• Referral Centers for High School Alternatives connect students who have had an interruption in their studies to alternative education program 

• Transition Counselors at ERA and Passages prepare student for their return to the community and connect students with no home school to Referral Centers 
• Specially trained Probation Officers for 16-17 year olds

Current Initiatives for Students who are Court-Involved Intervention 

• PEAK program is a school based diversion program in collaboration with the Department of Probation which will  provide  support  and programming including robust after-school and summer offerings

• Enhance options for Overage Middle School students (Bx/ Man) 

 Re-Entry Support 

• Plan to Succeed NYC will serve as an electronic portfolio and individual learning plan that will help Passages and ERA students stay on a pathway to graduation and plan for transition

• Transition Coaches will serve as community-based support to assist in re-entry into home schools  

• Friends of Island Academy Initiative will enhance services for 16-year-olds at ERA 

• Cross-over youth pre-release planning initiative will be a collaboration between ACS and the DOE to support students on Rikers who are also ACS-involved 

Tim Lisante  LinkedIn page:

Experience

Superintendent

NYC Department of Education

1978 – Present (37 years)Education

The Catholic University of America

1974 – 1978

Holy Cross High School, Queens, NY

International Univ of Graduate Studies, Ph.D.

New York University, M.A.

M.A.

Rikers Island school boss helps young prisoners turn their lives around

 



 City replacing two Rikers schools with one smaller program
by Maura Walz on June 28, 2010 8:54 pm

 

LINK

Teachers at the only two schools on Rikers Island learned today that their schools will close next year. In their stead, a new school will open — one with a smaller and possibly new set of teachers.

The change is part of a wider attempt to end programs under the city’s alternative schools office, known as District 79, that city officials believe are ineffective, Department of Education officials said today. Earlier this year, the city announced it was also closing its only school designed to transition students from detention back into mainstream high schools.
 

“Despite some of our best efforts, we’re not making the gains for the students in some of the specialized programs,” said Timothy Lisante, District 79’s deputy superintendent for corrections and detentions.

 

In an interview today, Lisante and District 79 Superintendent Cami Anderson said that consolidating the two programs would allow for smoother day-to-day operations of the school. Restarting the program will also give the city the opportunity to redesign its placement process, directing some students towards coursework that will prepare them to return to their community high schools and giving others more vocational training.
 

“The prime vision here is to do everything we can to create a program that will accelerate [student's] progress so they can return to their home school or, if they’re older, go into a rigorous GED program,” Anderson said.
 

But teachers union officials are crying foul at the city’s timing, arguing that the last-minute announcement was disrespectful to the school’s teaching staff.
 

“We’re certainly for improving programs but no one’s going to convince me that they just woke up in June and thought this had to be done,” said United Federation of Teachers Secretary Michael Mendel.

The city currently runs two academic programs on Rikers Island. Students under the age of 18, who are legally required to attend school, enroll in the Island Academy, while Horizon Academy enrolls older students who opt into the program. (Last month, I visited the Island Academy for a Top Chef-style competition among its culinary arts students.)
 

Together, the schools employ about 197 staff, including teachers, counselors, psychologists and other support staff. On an average day, approximately 900 students attend classes at the two schools, each of which are split into a number of different sites throughout the island’s detention facilities.

Lisante estimated that the new school that opens in the fall will serve the same students but with about a 20 percent smaller staff. City and union officials said today that they were negotiating whether and how the schools’ staff members can apply for positions in the new program. Lisante said that the city would consider teachers who currently teach at the schools but would also look at outside candidates.
 

Mendel charged that announcing the restructuring so late in the year put teachers at a disadvantage; teachers will now have to reapply for their jobs over the summer, when many have already made plans to travel.
 

Data on the two schools’ credit accumulation and Regents pass rates wasn’t immediately available today, but I’ve asked the DOE for the schools’ achievement statistics and will update the post when I receive them. Because students in the schools are so transient — many students stay on Rikers Island for only around 30 days — achievement data for the programs is tracked differently than for other city schools.
 

City officials said today that they took the September arrival of new Department of Corrections Commissioner Dora Schriro as an opportunity to re-evaluate the educational programs in the city’s correctional facilities and that the new plan came as a result of recommendations from the corrections department as well as from teachers in the two schools.

In an interview today, Schriro said she had spoken to the DOE “regularly but infrequently,” but that the two departments share the same goal. “We’re looking for opportunities to be more efficient but more effective as well,” she said.
 

Tim Lisante LinkedIn page:

Experience

Superintendent

NYC Department of Education

1978 – Present (37 years)

Education

The Catholic University of America

1974 – 1978

Holy Cross High School, Queens, NY

International Univ of Graduate Studies, Ph.D.

Ph.D.

New York University, M.A.

M.A.

****************************
Dr. Lisante's former boss, Cami Anderson, is the very same current NJ Superintendent who is alienating Newark parents.

See below.

Betsy Combier

January 30, 2014                 

Hey, Cami Anderson–don’t run away, answer the question

LINK

I’ve listened to the tape many times and, as best as I can determine, Natasha Allen said this to Cami Anderson at Tuesday night’s Newark school board meeting: “I’m trying to figure out, like, do you not want for your brown babies what we want for ours?”  That’s when the superintendent abandoned  her responsibility and ran away.

Natasha Allen

I spoke to Ms. Allen afterwards and asked her to repeat what she said and she offered a fairly close paraphrase. Ms. Allen was not speaking from a script, she was speaking  extemporaneously and from anger, so the words might have been a little different when she repeated them to me.
I took it as a sincere question from one young mother to another that really meant this:
Why can’t you understand we want for our children what you want for yours?
I found nothing offensive about the remark. I found it poignant and honest and direct–and maybe the most important challenge thrown at Ms. Anderson the entire evening. And I am seriously puzzled by why the superintendent chose that moment to run away from her responsibility to explain her disruptive plans to the residents of Newark.
I’ve read some accounts that the state-appointed superintendent was “driven” from the meeting. That is utter nonsense. She left freely–and, indeed, the audience booed her for running away. The city’s residents wanted an answer to the question–why doesn’t a state official have the just plain human decency to understand the pain of others?
Ms. Anderson appears, on the tape, to be shaking her head and saying, “Not my family,  not my family.”  I get that public officials don’t want their private lives dragged into the public sphere–including public officials like Gov. Chris Christie who put his family into taxpayer-funded campaign ads posing as ads aimed at raising money for relief from Superstorm Sandy.
But let’s be real here. Natasha Allen is not a school employee afraid of losing her job. She is not a politician running for office. She is a mother–her daughter Sapphire Allen, a 16-year-old honor student t at Newark Vocational, also spoke that night–and she came to a recklessly overcrowded venue Tuesday night to express her fears and her anger about what the superintendent was doing to her child and all other “brown babies” in the city.
“I used the words ‘brown babies’ because it’s the black and Latino children who are the most hurt by her plans,” Ms. Allen told me.
Ms. Allen was direct. She set the tone early, insisting she would not call the superintendent “Ms. Anderson” because she felt the boss of the Newark schools had shown disrespect for the city’s residents and children. She expressed anger about reports–so far denied by her press spokesman, Matthew Frankel–that the schools superintendent moved to Montclair.
So there it was: One woman, one mother, against another. Face to face. One woman asking another an important personal question. One mother asking another mother why Ms. Anderson doesn’t understand that, despite poverty, despite racism, despite the state’s criminal neglect of its cities and their schools, the mothers of brown babies love their children as fully and as passionately as more affluent, more fortunate, mothers love their babies–brown or white or black.
The superintendent owes Ms. Allen an answer. She owes all parents an answer. Not as the former executive director of Teach for America. Not as Christie’s $300,000 agent in Newark. Not as one of Time magazine’s up-and-comers. Not as a school superintendent.
But as a mother. Cami Anderson–this is a woman who has disrupted thousands of families in Newark with a plan that will close their schools, require them to put their children in unfamiliar neighborhoods. She has insulted parents by suggesting their children would cause an  increase in crime if they stayed home from school because of the teachers’ convention.
So how about an answer? To my paraphrase of Ms. Allen’s remark: Why can’t you understand we want for our children what you want for yours?
Or, as Ms. Allen put it that night: “I’m trying to figure out, like, do you not want for your brown babies what we want for ours?”
You can’t run away, Cami Anderson. Come back and answer the damned question.
 

Written by Bob Braun Posted in Education, Politics

19 comments

1. January 30, 2014 - 7:34 AMKelly

   I agree completely Bob. I was there and was one of the “overflow” attendees who were finally allowed into the cafeteria so we wouldn’t freeze to death outside. Three of us carpooled and drove around the area for at least 30 minutes looking for parking (which was ludicrous considering the school had an empty underground lot and there were PLENTY of police to secure it).
   Luckily, a friend inside was keeping us abreast of what was happening via instant messaging. We then decided to “FaceTime” so we could see and try to hear part of the proceedings but the noise level and lack of satellite signal eventually ended that solution. At about 8:00, our friend on the inside alerted us that many people left and there were plenty of seats available.
   I told that to one if the many officers in the hallway and asked if we could be let in to occupy those seats. He replied, “It doesn’t work that way. They’re not allowing anyone else in.” Really?
   So my colleagues and I quickly texted and posted via Facebook to the Union leaders. By 8:20, we were ushered in to the vacated seats. Just in time for the hullabaloo.
   I believe Ms. Allen and all Newark parents deserve an answer to that question. I also commend the Board for continuing the meeting although that was not what Ms. Anderson wanted. They showed the community respect and it was returned with gratitude. The people of Newark are informed and have valid points. They will not be pushed around (and anyone who grew up in Newark knows that). If the powers that be think this was the climax of events, they are sorely mistaken. This is a taste of Newark citizens waking up and getting READY to fight. We are relentless and focused. In the words of a Newarker, “You don’t mess with mine”. Looks like gloves are coming off.
   Bob Braun: Thank you for your insightful note. Twice in one week the Anderson administration risked the welfare of the city’s residents–first by keeping schools open in a storm and then by scheduling what it new would be a heavily attended meeting at an inappropriate site. Mindless.
   

   Reply         
2. January 31, 2014 - 7:48 AM Becca Field
   • Ms Anderson risks the welfare of the children of Newark every single day by
   • allowing them to attend schools that are in dangerous disrepair – full of exposed
   • mold, asbestos, poor air quality, poor heat and ventilation. And she has not used her direct line to the Governor to expedite repairs. I believe endangering the life of a
   • minor is a crime.

     Reply
3. January 30, 2014 - 8:03 AM Awo

   This was a typical and textbook reaction when people are called out for their colorblind/
4. covert racism. They storm away in a huff to make it about their hurt feelings and distract
5. from the issue at hand. It’s her way of trying to sabotage the discussion, dialogue, and even
6. the meeting. The other textbook reaction was to ensure she had people around her who would pat her on the back to comfort her *pain* and hurt feelings. Well, what about the pain and
7. hurt feelings of the children, parents, and community of Newark? They are hurting too. Don’t their hurt feelings and pain matter? But here is the deal: the people of Newark were not there for her hurt feelings; they were there for their democracy, their survival, and the education of their brown babies.
   Bob Braun: Nicely put.

November 14, 2014

Cami Anderson: A national embarrassment

LINK

 

The stark, black screen says it all. “Please stand by. Starting soon…The story of Newark.”  Nothing is exactly what did happen–nothing ever did appear on the blank YouTube screen that was supposed to provide a live feed of a speech Thursday by Cami Anderson to the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) in Washington, D.C.

Anderson, already an embarrassment to herself and the state of New Jersey, never did speak, at least not publicly. She canceled her PUBLIC speech. Why? Because a busload of 40 students, parents, and other community residents showed up to hear what she had to say and, perhaps, to ask her a few questions.  They had to go to Washington because Cami Anderson won’t talk to them in Newark. Won’t attend public board meetings. Hasn’t since January. The Hermit Queen of Newark.
So those 40 people who yesterday followed her to Washington literally scared her speechless, poor dear.  Little Miss Muffet fled indecorously from her tuffet when people like Sharon Smith and Michael Dixon and Kristin Towkaniuk tried to sit alongside her. She recorded her comments “for media only,” according to AEI officials.

That shows how far media has sunk into corporate sycophancy. They are supposed to represent the people, not join in secret cabals with organizations like AEI and privatized school entrepreneurs.
Anderson, the highly-paid toadies she brought with her on the junket to the nation’s capital, and staff members from the AEI, a conservative think-tank, made asses out of themselves by panicking and declaring a small group of perfectly well-behaved and properly registered  people “a security breach” and first tried to evict them, turned the lights off in their own auditorium, and then called the police.
A security breach? Some crazy guy with a knife hopping the White House fence and entering the executive mansion–now that is a security breach. Kids and adult chaperones showing up for a buffet lunch in Washington DC is a field trip.

What a spectacle.  Like elephants stampeding in the presence of a mouse.

“They just showed a lot of disrespect,” said Roberto Cabanes, a spokesman for NJ Communities United, which helped arrange the trip to Washington, along with organizations including the Newark Student Union, PULSE, and the People’s Organization for Progress.

Cabanes said the Newark residents properly registered and paid their fees for the event and behaved well when they got to the room in the building on 17th Street NW where Cami was scheduled to speak. But one of Anderson’s $175,000-a-year assistants, Peter Turnamian, noticed some familiar faces among the people who came to hear Anderson talk about her “successes” and “triumphs” in Newark.  Not the  sort of faces normally seen at the events of an organization run by some of the biggest capitalists in the nation–including that patron saint of free enterprise and maniacal public policy, former Vice President Dick Cheney.

(Turnamian, before he became one of Anderson’s roadies, is probably best known for founding a charter school that billed itself as “The Best School in Newark,” a charter school subsequently ordered closed by the state because it was such a failure. Naturally, he would be working for Cami Anderson.)

We call them our neighbors–they call them a “security breach.”

Turnamian warned the nervous biddies who run the AEI of the dangerous “security breach” and tried to have some of them evicted. Meanwhile, the 11:30 a.m. program was delayed. The AEI folks then said Anderson’s talk would be given elsewhere, perhaps in a lavatory or slop closet somewhere in the building–then finally gave up and canceled Anderson’s antic  road show. The Washington Post, however, reported Anderson may have given the speech “without an audience.” Turns out, that’s exactly what she did.

Making us wonder: If Cami gave a speech and no one was there to hear it, would it still be a pack of lies?

The answer is: Yes.

When the students and parents tried to explain the reason for their presence to what was left of the AEI audience after the cancellation was announced, the organization’s staffers decided to combat the security breach by turning off the lights.  How better to ensure the safety of people inside a building than to plunge them into darkness? That should have made everyone feel more secure. It understandably got the Newark residents angry.

Want to laugh? Here’s how the AEI describes itself: “The American Enterprise Institute is a community of scholars and supporters committed to expanding liberty, increasing individual opportunity and strengthening free enterprise. AEI pursues these unchanging ideals through independent thinking, open debate, reasoned argument, facts and the highest standards of research and exposition.”

Independent thinking? Open debate? Reasoned argument?  Does all that include refusing to answer questions from constituents–and turning off the lights? And hiding behind closed doors?