Saturday, February 15, 2014

Newark voters will decide–either Ras Baraka or Christie’s plan to close city’s public schools | Bob Braun's Ledger

Newark voters will decide–either Ras Baraka or Christie’s plan to close city’s public schools | Bob Braun's Ledger:

Newark voters will decide–either Ras Baraka or Christie’s plan to close city’s public schools

Ras Baraka outside Weequahic HS. A real school choice

Newark’s voters won’t be able to stop Gov. Chris Christie’s plan to close and sell off the city’s neighborhood public schools and expand charters unless they elect Ras Baraka mayor. That is not an endorsement. That’s not even an opinion. That’s a fact. Baraka has turned the election into a referendum on Christie’s privatization policies and, if Baraka loses, the governor and his agent in Newark, Cami Anderson, will use his loss as a powerful argument to continue to bulldoze public schools in the city. Even if Baraka wins, it will just be the beginning of the effort to stop selling and closing Newark schools.

Baraka and the city’s public school supporters face a tough fight. Essex County Executive Joe DiVincenzo, the turncoat Democrat who campaigned for Christie last fall, will do whatever he can to stop Baraka. So will the rest of the Essex Democratic party organization. The big money—from Republicans as well as Democrats, from Essex County, the rest of New Jersey, and even from outside New Jersey—will be flowing to Shavar Jeffries’ campaign to stop Baraka.

Jeffries, a charter school supporter, has been a loyal champion of Anderson and even doubted she sent out the racist letter last November warning that the city’s children would “get into trouble” if teachers attended a convention and schools were closed. The letter was sent out to thousands of city school children. Anderson later insisted it was “only a draft,” although it bore her signature and was printed on her