Perth Amboy Superintendent Janine Caffrey was involved in a battle with the school district’s Board of Education, but decided that she will leave her post at the end of the school year when her contract expires. She told NJ Today Managing Editor Mike Schneider that she had been hoping the new school board that took over in January would overturn a previous decision to not renew her contract, but that turned out not to be the case.
Caffrey said at the last school board meeting in August, the president announced members would be searching for a new superintendent. She said she wasn’t given a reason why, but said any time there is a cultural shift, it gets uncomfortable for people.
“I came into this district and we had some incredibly terrible things happen to children. We had bilingual students that had been segregated because they spoke Spanish. We had kids who were earning high school credits in academic subjects for pushing brooms. Thirty-six percent of our kids don’t finish high school,” she said.
According to Caffrey, positive changes have been made during her tenure and she had hoped the new members of the school board would let her continue her work. While she said new board members aren’t behaving illegally and unethically like the previous ones, she said they are caving to pressure from a small but very vocal group of people.
“There are some people in the community who would like for the politicians to have control of the jobs. There are some people in the community who would like bilingual children to be segregated. There are some people in the community that are not passionate about making sure that every child graduates,” Caffrey said.
Caffrey’s greatest fear is that the district may revert back to old ways after she leaves as its leader. “If I leave and everything goes back to the way it was before, it’s a whole generation we’re going to lose. So that’s why I’m committed to staying through the end of my contract and making sure we can keep things as firmly in place as possible. But we’ve had such a cultural shift with faculty and with many members of the community that I have to be optimistic,” she said. “I can’t for a minute believe that we’re gonna lose this generation of kids.”
There has been a documented feud between Caffrey and the Perth Amboy Board of Education. Caffrey previously said she would fight to stay in the district, but has now decided to move on. She said she believes members of the board will likely believe they’ve won, but she’s hopeful others will carry out the work she began.
“I hope that when I leave that there is a system and a community who demands the kind of schools that our kids deserve, who will not stop until we are making decisions based on what’s right for children,” Caffrey said.