As children fail, Newark school officials hit the road again with taxpayer money | editorial

It’s going to be a fun October for school officials in Newark! They travel extensively to conferences in Dallas, Atlantic City and Las Vegas.

According to expense reports approved by the school board, at least 18 school board members and district employees will travel to sunny Dallas, 14 will travel to Atlantic City and 10 will travel to a conference at the Bellagio in Vegas, including the superintendent. So far it’s cost a total of almost $70,000, just this month. Who knows what adventures the rest of the year will bring?

This traveling around the country has become a habit that we have written about several times. Last October, for example, at least 19 Newark school officials, including the principal, attended a conference at a luxury waterfront hotel in San Diego with a pool bar serving $20 cocktails, tuna Niçoise and Wagyu beef.

The year before, the district sent staff and board members to conferences in countless sunny locations such as Palm Springs, Orlando, Puerto Rico, Last Vegas, New Orleans and Hawaii – including at least 10 people in both San Diego and Miami. Apparently it’s an annual tradition.

And once again, Newark Superintendent of Schools Roger León and School Board President Hasani Council are refusing to explain why the district needs to send so many people on these trips or how exactly this will benefit the academic performance of Newark’s children who have the most problems.

Only 29% are proficient in reading and only 15% are proficient in math at grade level, according to state testing last spring, which is truly alarming — and represents only a 2% improvement in reading and math skills compared to last year.

School officials should be in crisis mode and focused on combating learning loss, not planning costly trips. For about the same price as that $70,000 spent on travel, you could, for example, provide high-dose tutoring sessions three times a week to dozens of children for several months.

State regulations say travel to conferences should be limited to “the fewest numbers” of board members and staff, but the district tells us that all upcoming travel has been approved by Essex County Superintendent Joseph Zarra, who responded to our call It didn’t respond to the discussion.

The Newark school board approved those upcoming trips to Dallas and Vegas in August, just before the school year began in chaos for families with children with disabilities. Some missed the first week of classes entirely because district schools had no available spots for them, their parents said chalk stroke – something a spokesperson told us. Superintendent León is not allowed to talk about it for student confidentiality reasons. Right.

He and School Board President Council are scheduled to travel to Dallas, Atlantic City and Vegas, leaving the district for the middle of October. In statements, they told us they didn’t choose the conference venues because they provided “valuable insights,” León said, an opportunity to network and “share our district’s best practices,” as if other schools were eager to learn the secrets to learn of Newark’s poor performance.

The council president is legally barred from complaining about León, even if he wanted to, because his father is a county employee. That is a clear conflict of interest with his role as the superintendent’s supervisor. What a perfect mess.

León previously told us that Newark is a “truly high-performing district” that other districts are learning from: “By any objective measure, the progress that Newark schools are making is undeniably incredible.” Given the results and the failure to make significant improvements , this is a delusion.

Give him the benefit of the doubt for a moment and assume that these conferences might have some value — like the one in Dallas held by an urban school advocacy group, the Council of the Great City Schools, where León is and Council are in leadership positions. Even then, Why send 18 people? According to Betsy Ginsburg, head of the Garden State Coalition of Schools, which represents about 100 districts of varying sizes in New Jersey, the average superintendent attends only two to four conferences a year and board members attend perhaps one or two. Newark makes a habit of having a crowd.

The few who leave report to the others, says Ginsburg. That’s just common sense and what many districts will be doing for the school board convention in Atlantic City this month – because those who can’t come can simply complete their training online. “Most of them are busy and don’t have that much time for conferences,” she said.

Additionally, other districts are losing state funding and being forced to lay off teachers, she notes. “A third of the districts probably could barely afford to send people to Atlantic City, let alone anywhere else,” she said. “Imagine thinking about even broadcasting one Sending a board member to an out-of-town conference while simultaneously laying off teachers. This is bad pedagogically, bad visually; That’s just bad.”

Right. And the same goes for kids failing in Newark.

As Newark Teachers Union President John Abeigon said after all the previous trips were revealed, “The city’s education system is clearly in crisis, according to state testing. We’re in recovery mode…And it’s a slap in the face to teachers who have to plan months in advance to document and rationalize a trip to the Turtle Back Zoo in a five-page proposal.” Advice that apparently fell on deaf ears .

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