To be clear, and before anyone reads any further, I want to express this explicitly: Even though I am the President of the Camden Education Association, I am not advocating for the closure of any school in Camden; whether public, charter or renaissance. Closing schools hurts children, hurts neighborhoods, and has not been shown to improve students’ academic outputs. In every way, closing schools is a disastrous ed-policy decision, as well as unsupported by academic research in achieving commonly posited arguments by politicians and education “reformers” rationalizing that course of action. That said, the Urban Hope Act (UHA) of 2012, must be radically reformed, sooner than later.
For those unaware of former Governor Chris Christie’s, George Norcross’ and Dana Redd’s mis-adventures in using Camden as their collective petri dish for marginalizing and alienating residents under the mirage dubbed, “Camden Rising”, one of the elements comprised within “Camden Rising” was the taking over of Camden’s public school system and imposing up to fifteen corporate-operated charter schools (KIPP, Mastery, and UnCommon) on Camden via the UHA. To be clear, the UHA applies only to Camden and was the brainchild of Norcross and Christie as it aided both men’s ambition of amassing more power by stripping decision making abilities from Camden residents – those who actually live here. Norcross used his brother Donald to introduce the legislation as state senator, Assemblypersons Angel Fuentes and Gilbert Wilson as co-sponsors, and shepherded the bill through the upper chamber by Steve Sweeney. The bill passed easily primarily due to Norcross having an iron-grip on South Jersey Democrats’ political futures, and because none of the legislators supporting the bill outside of the 5th legislative district, are impacted by its negative impacts as it only effects Camden residents and Camden students.
Today the Camden City School District (CCSD) is forced to support its own District schools (19), charter schools (8), and renaissance schools (10) – effectively, three separate school districts with one budget. Quite predictably, the District being responsible for supporting 90% of the city’s charter school budget, and 95% of the city’s renaissance budget causes an enormous annual drain on the District’s public school budget, which is still the segment of city schools were most students attend school. The mandated addition of 10 of the 15 renaissance schools also caused an explosion to the District’s transportation budget with the District spending over 300% more on transportation today, than before renaissance schools were established. In 2020-2021, the District will spend about $120M on renaissance schools and transportation – a little over 30% of CCSD’s total budget. That’s $120M that could have went to improving District facilities, modernizing and expanding course offerings, and improving the District’s fiscal health. What’s more, because of the vast pool of outside funders and philanthropists supporting corporate charter schools KIPP, UnCommon, and Mastery have an endless rolodex of wealthy financiers and powerful politicians from which to elicit material and financial donations if they ever found themselves in need.
The consequence is this: with every passing year, a bigger financial squeeze is put on our Camden public-school children, our schools, and our staff because renaissance schools were forced on this community without community input. There are those who would reflexively say, without much thought or analysis: Camden schools were terrible, and something had to be done; and parents are choosing what school they want their children to attend and the money is simply following them. And while on the surface that appears sensible, like everything pertaining to Camden and its “successes” under “Camden Rising”, those concepts warrant far greater scrutiny. First, our District lost thousands of students because the former superintendent Paymon Rouhanifard, simply closed public schools without parental or community input, and gave them away to renaissance providers, costing the District thousands of students and millions dollars, while providing enrollment and financial gains for renaissance providers. Secondly, the determination that Camden’s public schools were awful hinged inordinately on student performance on standardized test scores – a metric that has long lacked legitimacy among academic researchers and educators alike, and increasingly colleges themselves. Using standardized assessments to judge the quality of education, as was rampant under both Christie and Rouhanifard, only demonstrated their calculated interest to target Camden schools for takeover, and their disregard for established education research. And with that, CCSD is paying the heavy price now.
Fortunately, there is still time for elected leaders throughout the state to lead and make substantive changes without harming any existing renaissance school. Our legislators in the Assembly and Senate should look closer at the UHA and demand changes to the 95% funding requirement and mandate that renaissance schools be responsible for providing their own transportation given renaissance schools’ unique ability to garner resources from outside entities in a way our public schools cannot. Or legislators could cap the number of renaissance schools to the number it currently stands at 10 as opposed to 15 – which would surely cause a near total collapse of an entire public-school system in NJ under their watch. (Think: a slowly, and avoidable Hurricane Katrina aftermath.) None of these suggestions are radical in nature and could easily be implemented while not harming any child or existing school while protecting traditional Camden public education, a fundamental entity in this city.
The other suggestion, which would be more brazen yet doable, would be for the District to utilize their Brown and Connery attorney to challenge the legality of the UHA on the grounds that the legislation singles out only Camden public schools and public school students to bear the brunt of political decisions that never included public input from the Camden public. As unlikely as that seems, there is a recent trend of Camden residents being victorious in the higher courts. In 2017, the NJ Supreme Court issued a decision forcing the returning of municipal board of education elections to the people, and in Redd v. Bowman (2015), the Supreme Court ruled the people of Camden were within their right to have the matter of the dissolution of the Camden Police Force to create the Camden County Police Department, brought before the voters. If elected officials opt out of their duty to protect public education in a given municipality in NJ, that only leaves our District to stand up and fight for its schools and their sustainability through the courts.
So again, in case folks missed it: I am not advocating, nor would I ever advocate for the closure of any school because it hurts children, neighborhoods, and is bad education policy. What I am urging, is for our current crop of elected officials to correct what they may have missed in support the UHA of 2012, or for our District to fight to protect our schools and public education here in Camden by challenging the law that is holding us back from being at our best for our young people and our community.
