NJ Education Report

On Friday Summit Assets, a private investing group that had a contract with Newark Public Schools to build a new high school, announced its withdrawal from the deal. This development comes after a series of scathing articles, courtesy of Tapinto Newark’s Tom Wiedmann and Mark Bonamo, showing that taxpayers would end up paying twice as much as the building was worth with Summit making huge profits; that Summit was using non-unionized construction workers (illegal for a public project of this magnitude) and forcing them to endure terrible conditions and low pay; and harassing the landlord of a century-old tenant near the site, Olshin’s Pharmacy, because he wouldn’t sell his lot to Summit.

Thus, there will be no “Newark High School of Architecture & Interior Design” at the old site of Jefferson Hospital; Summit will build apartments there instead.

Yet state and Newark taxpayers are still on the hook for almost $900K, according to TapInto’s latest.

Summit’s cancellation of the contract raises more questions than it answers, particularly about the stewardship of Newark Superintendent Roger Leon. What did he know and when did he know it? Why is he claiming ignorance about a project tightly under his control? And, more concretely, why is Newark building a new $160 million vocational high school when enrollment is flat and other district facilities are under-enrolled?

Certainly, Leon has a history of failing to confront unhappy information or lying about it. To wit:

• While Leon said last week he was “appalled” by the news that Summit was paying construction workers well below prevailing wage, “union officials have shared emails that show the superintendent and the school business administrator were informed of the prevailing wage situation as early as February 1, 2022.”
• Tapinto reports that even though Summit was handling all the construction for the new high school, this past May “the district decided to hire its own construction manager” for up to $672K  to provide onsite construction management services: Remington & Vernick Engineers of Cherry Hill.  So if NPS had  personal oversight paid for by taxpayer money, why didn’t district leaders know what was going on? (Hint: they did. Also, there were “two additional contracts related to the 155 Jefferson project” that come to $857,000.)

Need more information to establish the pattern?

• In June, when news broke that only 6% of district students in grades 3-7 were proficient in math and fewer than 10% were proficient in reading (local charter outcomes were far higher), Leon dismissed the results, telling the school board the tests represented “a moment in time.”
• In May Leon denied there were any bomb threats that week, even though everyone knew there were three.
• In March, during a presentation to the school board, Leon (or someone in his office) altered graphs to distort test results so learning loss appeared less severe. During the meeting León ebulliently announced “Dreams are coming true” for Newark’s district students.
• Last July Leon’s office submitted data to the State Board of Education claiming nearly 100% of students were present during remote instruction. Chalkbeat later reported that this feat was accomplished by ordering teachers to falsify data and not enter absences into PowerSchool. When local activist Oscar James wrote about this incident, Leon called him up and threatened to sue him.
• In January 2020 Leon wrote lengthy letters to then-New Jersey Education Commissioner Lamont Repollet demanding that the DOE cancel approved expansions to four Newark charter schools. In the letter on People’s Prep, Leon compared outcomes at the public charter, which accepts all students, to Bard Early College Program, a district school with a competitive admissions process that requires writing samples, interviews, a grade point average of 85% or above, no more than 10 unexcused absences, and and passing Bard-specific math and writing tests. (Apples to oranges, anyone?)

You get the idea. Leon alters facts to suit his preferred narrative. Yet, remarkably, even as Tapinto journalists reveal insidious machinations behind the Summit Assets contract, Leon continues to plead ignorance. John Abeigon, Newark Teachers Union president, said,

Our message from the union to the school board and the superintendent is this—there is nothing that was going to be taught in that school that can’t be taught in the high schools that exist already. With the tens of millions of dollars that were going to be spent at 155 Jefferson Street, we can teach those building trades skills in the schools that exist now.

So what’s really going on? Why is Leon pretending he doesn’t know what is going on behind the scenes? Why is he so intent on building a new high school at back-breaking cost when even the teacher union president says it will simply replicate programs already available to students?

How much can Leon get away with before the School Board takes action?