Newark schools have been splurging on all sorts of nonsense lately, as state taxpayers send the district more than $1 billion annually in school aid.
But this time, finally, the state has flagged them – and demanded that they pay it back.
The state Department of Education just concluded that the district must reimburse more than $33,000 in state aid it spent on Superintendent Roger León’s extravagant “Fun Day” party in June for hundreds of central office staffers and their kids. Let’s hope the state’s rejection of this kind of waste is habit-forming.
Yet now, the taxpayers of Newark, who are already struggling, will be left holding the bag – forced to foot the entire bill for this partying that was deemed an inappropriate use of state taxpayer funds. When we asked City Hall about that last week, we didn’t hear a word back.
You wonder: Why is Mayor Ras Baraka not talking about this, and the district’s repeated wasteful spending? More important, why are he and other Democrats not banging alarms about the drop in student performance on León’s watch?
The waste is the easy and obvious part. Like the caravans of administrators and board members the district has sent to sunny places all over the country for conferences, including Palm Springs, Puerto Rico, New Orleans and Hawaii.
Last October, the district dispatched at least 19 people to a luxury waterfront hotel in San Diego, featuring a poolside bar with $20 cocktails, tuna niçoise and Wagyu beef. This October alone, it sent groups of 10 or more people to Dallas, Atlantic City and Las Vegas.
The Newark Board of Education’s travel budget broke the $1 million mark this year, TapInto reported; a 78% bump over its 2022 budget of more than $600,000. And even though state regulation says these trips should be “limited to the fewest number” of people, Essex County Superintendent Joseph Zarra apparently approved it all, and declined to respond to our inquiries.
The district was also planning to spend more than $4 million to create a museum about its history when only 23% of the city’s third graders can read on grade level, based on the latest scores from last Spring. And the city has blown more than $2 million on lawyers so far in attempts to claw back buildings it sold off years ago, as part of León’s pointless campaign against charter schools.
Finally, after an outcry over “Fun Day,” state auditors stepped in. “These guys are partying with money that should be in the classroom,” said Republican Sen. Declan O’Scanlon, who’s called for expanded audits of spending in districts like Newark. Other districts, including those that outperform Newark, spend hardly anything on travel, he noted.
Red Bank’s travel budget for the year was $25,000 and they haven’t spent any of it, he said; Asbury Park budgeted $60,000 and spent less than $5,000 so far. “Look at the travel budgets and look at the performance, and see if there’s any correlation,” he said…. “There isn’t.”
In Newark, whose lagging recovery from the pandemic has been among the worst in the state, just about 31% of students passed the state literacy exam last Spring and 17% passed the math test.
Meanwhile, “Fun Day” for a group of about 415 central office workers and their kids was held at a woodsy wedding venue in Warren Township, and reportedly included food, a DJ, inflatable carnival booths with attendants and plush prizes, inflatable axe throwing, access to rock climbing and a bungee activity, arcade games, a social media photo booth with prints, caricature artists, a police officer for security and a rescue squad on standby.
The state said there’s no justification for any of this, since it had little if any academic value. Yet at a recent meeting of the Newark school board, which approved this spending, its president defended this as a morale booster that would help retain valued employees. “It wasn’t a party, it was an appreciation process,” Hasani Council said.
Meanwhile, teachers often can’t even get a slice of pizza at a real professional development workshop, said John Abeigon, president of the Newark Teachers Union: “Like when you’re at the Turtle Back Zoo and it says, do not feed the animals.”
And while Superintendent León said he hopes to hold more “Fun Days” – and that the state has merely provided “guidance” for how the event should be conducted in the future – Abeigon mused: “Don’t they have someone telling them, look, this doesn’t look good?”
“I don’t care if the central office staff is the happiest central office staff on the planet,” he told us… “They shouldn’t have time to be having fun. Every single one of them should be in a school building in the district asking administrators and teachers, what do you need, and how soon can I get it to you?”
It’s rare for a district to have to pay back state aid like this, and not typical to host such big events either, funded by school dollars, where children of staff are invited, said Betsy Ginsburg of the Garden State Coalition of Schools, which represents about 100 districts across the state. Charter school supporters told us the same: They get less state money overall than district schools and don’t use tax dollars like this.
Yet somehow, they manage to keep their staff motivated.
While this latest expense finally attracted the attention of the Murphy administration, we don’t know if that oversight will be sustained. “I hope it is,” Abeigon said. Otherwise, none of Newark’s political leadership, including the Democrats covering Essex County, are making a fuss about this, even as kids are failing. And that’s a tragedy.
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