By David Cruz
NJ Today
When your school system has been under state control for almost two decades, the prospect of the return of any control is welcome, but the announcement this week that Education Commissioner Chris Cerf will return control of fiscal matters to the local school board is getting mixed reaction.
“I would hope that it means that we would have full fiscal control over contracts and over all fiscal matters. I would that it would mean that, if perchance, we had to veto something that it wouldn’t be overridden by the superintendent, but the details of what that actually means are still not clear to us,” said Antoinette Baskerville-Richardson, Chair of the Newark Public Schools Advisory Board.
The commissioner says he will send a letter to the board within a month detailing exactly what the return of fiscal control means. State Senator Ron Rice (D-28) wants to limit the length of state takeovers to five years. He says if you can’t make a change in that amount of time, you shouldn’t take a system over in the first place. Rice says turning over fiscal control now is a case of convenient timing on the part of the education commissioner.
“And so now the commissioner’s saying that we’re going to give the fiscal management piece because there’s a $57 million budget deficit that we, the state, screwed up. We’re gonna give it back to you, the taxpayers, and your advisory board members to fix that. You have to find the $57 million,” said Rice.
The local school board and others are in court because Cerf chose to retain state control over the system in 2011, despite the fact that Newark’s schools have met or exceeded state standards set forth in the Quality Single Accountability Continuum (QSAC). Former board member Shavar Jeffries was out front in the fight to force a return to local control until he left the board last month. He called Cerf’s promise a good first step.
“Any time parents get more control over the destiny of their kids, I think that’s a good thing,” according to Jeffries. “At the end of the day, though, our school systems haven’t been what they oughta be for a long time and so while we have to have community-based reform, nonetheless we need reform.”
The budget for the Newark Public Schools is close to a billion dollars, so control of the purse strings is no small matter. Superintendent Cami Anderson’s office didn’t make anyone available to talk to us, but sources close to her say they’re confident that, whatever plan the commissioner comes up with, the superintendent’s veto power will remain intact.
The board members we talked to say some control is better than no control but if the state-appointed superintendent can veto board decisions does that constitute control at all. The devil, it seems, remains in the details and we’ll get those in the next 30 days.