Newark’s school chief Cerf to consolidate power–local control is still far away
Christopher Cerf, the state bureaucrat, private business entrepreneur, and charter school advocate who was supposed to bring local autonomy to the Newark public schools, isn’t acting like someone about to give up state control of New Jersey’s largest school district. In fact, he is about to announce a sweeping reorganization of the system that only entrenches his–and the state’s– power.
Gone or demoted will be all of the assistant superintendents, including Roger Leon, for a long time the anti-state activist community’s superintendent-in-waiting once state control was eliminated. While Leon will keep an administrative position under Cerf, he will not longer be an assistant superintendent, according to sources close to officials at school headquarters.
The only exception to the top-level purge will be Brad Haggerty who will become the second-in-command under Cerf. Haggerty was for years the enforcer for Cami Anderson, the former state-appointed superintendent and Cerf protégé.
“He’s the new bright star in the state administration,” said one source at school headquarters.
This is what I wrote about Haggerty in April, 2014–when he got a fat raise from his friend Anderson:
Then there is Brad Haggerty, who was a charter school leader in New York for “New Visions,” one of the endless number of private, non-governmental organizations that Cami surrounds herself with. His raise was $35,000, from $140,000 to $175,000. He has served as Cami’s hatchet man for negotiations.
Gone–apparently without much remorse from anyone–will be Peter Turnamian, a less than popular assistant superintendent who founded what he called the best charter school in Newark. The best charter school in Newark failed. Turnamian also was the less-than-genius behindefforts of the school district to take away special services from special needs children by developing a new “pathway” that meant intimidating teachers into talking parents out of the services their children needed. He helped to write a literal script for the money-saving assault on special education.
Also out of a job is assistant superintendent Mitchell Center, another long-time Newark’s school chief Cerf to consolidate power–local control is still far away |:
