I want to preface what follows with a disclaimer: every claim made here is verifiable by documentation that is publicly available to anyone who requests it. Using New Jersey’s Open Public Records Act (OPRA), individuals reading this who desire substantiation can OPRA my emails (Keith Benson) to the current superintendent about the topic of “Camden Enrollment” in the event there is a sense that what follows is hyperbolic or an outright fabrication. (As the elders working in our district commonly say: “documentation beats conversation”). Additionally, it is important to have a sense of who I am in order to weigh the veracity of what is shared here. I am a: city resident, Camden public school educator, researcher on the formation of Camden’s renaissance (takeover) schools, and a former Camden teacher union president from 2017 to 2024. Getting in the weeds and connecting the dots in effort to better understand what’s been taking place in Camden’s schools, and brainstorming with other knowledgeable co-workers and community members to come up with strategies to protect our schools (and community) has been a mission of mine (and countless others) for about fifteen years and counting. Now that all of that is out of the way, let’s get to it…
We started in Part I with the introduction of the Tuskegee Experiment and drawing parallels with that horrific forty-year event and Camden’s Camden/One Enrollment. Where some may not have initially detected the analogous relationship between the injection of syphilis into the bodies of unsuspecting Black men in rural Alabama (which led directly to many of their deaths), and a single enrollment system touted as a convenience for Camden’s families allowing them easily enroll their child into school but whose actual mission was to erode public school enrollment and funnel students into the newly created corporate-operated renaissance (takeover) schools – which with the steady diversion of both student enrollment and funding will ultimately cripple the city’s century-old public school system, to close Part I, I repeated Part II would be much worse, and here we are.
As awful as the Tuskegee experiment was for those who were duped into participating, and evil as people who facilitated that study were, the one thing that could have made the study far more treacherous is if the Black men who were unknowingly injected with the fatal disease, were injected with the fatal disease by someone who was entrusted to care for them or by a person they trusted. Though there was no indication of a betrayal of trust between participants in, and facilitators of, the Tuskegee syphilis study from the 1930s-1970s, the same cannot be expressed pertaining to Camden public schools and Camden One/Enrollment.
(Below is what was shared with the superintendent, board members, and community member about Camden/One Enrollment…back in 2020)
Every year since Superintendent McCombs took over as the leader of the Camden City School District in 2018, I, as union president along with many other educators and building principals have been sounding the alarm about Camden Enrollment, and how it was manipulating our school district’s enrollment. “Really? Let me look into this“, or “I’m gonna have __(this person)___ look in to this and find out what’s going on...” were the common refrains. One might think that if someone were leading an organization that depended on student enrollment (where roughly $29,000 follows a student wherever they attend school), they might do everything possible to maximize and protect their student enrollment, and certainly root out any entity that threatened their student enrollment because again, student enrollment and the attached funding is what subsidizes the functions of a school system: facilities, transportation, supplies/services, and district staff and educators. Cognizance of this operating reality always raised questions among many why Superintendent McCombs never did anything to stop Camden/One Enrollment manipulation of our enrollment (and coinciding funding) to protect the school system she leads.
Here’s a reasonable possibility: Camden/One Enrollment was a needed and vital tool forced on to Camden to fulfill what Christie and Norcross intended since 2012: to topple Camden’s public education system and boost the student enrollment Camden’s corporate operated charter schools. Christie’s appointed Superintendent Paymon Rouhanifard brought in Camden/One Enrollment, an enrollment system he was familiar with from his days in Newark under Cami Anderson, that was (and still is) financially supported by the billionaire-backed City Fund – which incidentally, funds the Camden Education Fund and many other non-profits in the city – as well as the candidacy of current public school board members. Additionally, upon looking at NJ Treasury documents from 2021, the listed “EXECUTIVE. Top Contact” was Camden County “Director Louis Cappelli” – a known Camden County government Norcross acolyte spanning decades (see below). One wonders: Why would Cappelli have anything to do with Camden Enrollment? So here is where we must start to recognize Camden Enrollment as a political organization fulfilling a specific function beyond an organization that simply “looks to do what’s best for Camden families” (as their executive director commonly claims publicly).
But there’s more, from 2018-2020, Superintendent McCombs was on the board of Camden/One Enrollment – the very organization that was limiting “available seats” in Camden public schools for parents who wanted to enroll their child in city schools. Superintendent McCombs sat on the board of the organization we (the Camden teacher union, district principals, and residents) were complaining to her about and never indicating as much. Worse, from 2021 to the latest available federal tax filings in 2024, Superintendent McCombs is listed as the PRESIDENT of Camden/One Enrollment – again, never divulging that information. To recap, the organization that has been granted access to manipulate our public school enrollment, had provably limited the enrollment of several district public schools since its inception in 2015, was supported by our own public school superintendent. (WTF?!) Today, it is far easier to recognize why no matter how many times over the past seven years I, and others, went to the superintendent (with documentation and corroboration) to show where Camden Enrollment was limiting our growth (and funding) nothing was ever done to stop them, or separate from them. It’s much clearer to see why.
In fact, Camden/One Enrollment was deemed so corrupt in its funneling of students to renaissance(takeover) schools specifically, LEAP Academy, a city charter school, pulled out of participation from Camden Enrollment in 2017, and even went to Trenton to protest a proposed law forcing their participation, and all Camden parents to participate.
For nearly a decade, not only were Camden parents and students actively prevented from enrolling in our public schools, our public school district reasonably lost millions of dollars over the years since Camden/One Enrollment arrived because of their shenanigans – with the participation of our current public school superintendent – the person who is supposed to protecting our schools and our students and this community. (The documents will do the talking; and again, feel free to OPRA anything you have difficulty to accepting. Check the 990s). But in the meantime, we must ask, now that this Superintendent has already closed Harry C. Sharp School, US Wiggins, Alfred C. Cramer School, (attempted to close Veterans Memorial and RT Cream) and uncorroborated chatter about more closures looming in the future; now that the District is poised to layoff over 200 vital district employees because of a “$91M deficit” due to less federal funding and “low enrollment”: How many schools will ultimately be closed to do manufactured “low enrollment” and “budget constraints”? How many city education careers were upended due to orchestrated “low enrollment” and “budget constraints”? And how many of our public school district’s claims of “low enrollment” and “budget constraints” could have been avoided had the district had a Superintendent working to protect it rather than helping the foxes (Camden/One Enrollment) raid the proverbial hen house? I guess we’ll never really know unfortunately.
I told yall Part II was gonna be worse…
