NJ Education Report

Camden Superintendent Paymon Rouhanifard announced last night that the district would lay off 400 staff members in order to close a $75 million budget shortfall. Currently the district employees one person for every 4 student and one teacher for every nine students. (From more on this, see here.) Current cost per pupil is close over $27K per year. Here’s Superintendent Rouhanifard in today’s Courier-Post:

“This extremely low student-to-staff ratio is not sustainable from a financial perspective and not necessary from a student learning perspective.”

In the Star-Ledger see this comment regarding historical district dysfunction:

“I don’t want to point fingers about what the cause of the shortfall is, but I would point out that I am the fourth superintendent in the district in the past two years,” he said. “Despite Camden being one of the highest-funded districts in the county, we’re not seeing results.”

One other note: Rouhanifard’s a fast learner; his mentor must be Newark Superintendent Cami Anderson,, vilified for closing neighborhood schools despite sharp drops in enrollment. Lesson learned, Rouhanifard tells the Philadelphia Inquirer,

No schools will close or be turned over to charter operators in the 2014-15 school year, Rouhanifard said. However, underperforming and low-attended schools could be phased out, he said, meaning they would not take additional students beginning next school year, but would allow the current population to continue through to graduation