NJ Education Report

Or maybe he’s just nostalgic for the good old days when Newark Public Schools District was on the hook for maintaining multiple buildings with no benefit for students, families, or taxpayers. Who doesn’t like a fat real estate portfolio?

Nah, it’s the charter school vendetta. Chalkbeat reported back in February 2021 that Newark Superintendent Roger León’s attempt to “claw back” an old school building previously owned by the district was his “latest salvo against the spread of charter schools.” The follow-up, vigorously researched by Tapinto Newark journalists, is that a  year and a half later the cost of León’s quest to stifle the city’s popular charter school sector has a very large price tag.

Last month Tapinto took a deep dive into the odd real estate dealings of León with a five-part series on how the school district’s plan to build a new high school at the site of the old St. James Hospital would end up costing taxpayers twice as much as the building was worth while illegally underpaying construction workers. Yesterday Tapinto unveiled a second series —the second piece is up today—on how, under León’s leadership, the district has spent an additional million dollars (and counting) on trying to claw back two old school buildings it sold five years ago.

Here are the details we know thus far. Back in 2016 then-Superintendent Chris Cerf, with support from Mayor Ras Baraka, put together a portfolio of 12 poorly-maintained school buildings and asked the Newark Housing Authority (NHA) “to help it dispose of the buildings in order to get their costs off of its books and realize revenue that could benefit students.” Two of those buildings were Maple Avenue School and State Street School, which NHA sold to a developer called Hanini Group who intended to convert Maple Street to residential property.  But when the residential conversion fell through in 2020, Hanini sold the building to the non-profit Friends of Team, which supports KIPP NJ’s mission to provide high-quality education to low-income students.  (New Jersey doesn’t provide facilities funding for public charters so they have to rely on other investors.) Friends of Team spent $10 million converting the old building into what TapInto calls the “state of the art” KIPP Seek Academy which now educates over 500 Newark students, almost all Black and low-income, in grades K-4.

As KIPP spokeswoman Jessica Shearer explained at the time, “The building, which has been empty for a very long time, went through a massive restoration and abatement process to ready it to host students once again, and celebrate the history and vibrancy of the South Ward.”

But León wants the building back, despite the fact it was sold five years ago. From TapInto:

One month after the sale to Friends of Team, Newark Board of Education sued the NHA to try to claw the building back, claiming that it should not be used as a school and that the NHA should have ensured that the developer didn’t sell the property to another school. The Board of Education also sued Friends of Team and Hanini.

If the school district, led by Schools Superintendent Roger Leon, wins the building back, it hopes to raze it and build a new school for $160 million, according to the district’s long range facilities plan filed in court.

In court documents, Leon describes his plan to reopen the Maple Avenue Schools as the ‘Michelle Obama Elementary School in commemoration of the former First Lady’s historic visit to the school in 2010-2011 school year’ despite the fact that Leon already opened the Michelle Obama Elementary School in September of 2021 at the former Fourteenth Avenue School.

Meanwhile, the district has spent more than $846,000 on two law firms trying to “claw back” Maple Avenue and State Street School while NHA has been billed $233,000. Also, taxpayers are on the hook for $430,000 owed to another law firm, Riker, Danzig, Scherer, Hyland & Perretti,  to get back State Street School. In addition, NHA has spent over $200,000 defending itself against the district, also at taxpayer expense. Friends of Team has spent $200,000 defending itself (not on the taxpayers’ dime but money that could have been spent on Newark students).

In a follow-up article today, Tapinto reports that the law firm engaged by the district to “claw back” State Street School, Riker, Danzig, Scherer, Hyland & Perretti, has dropped out of the case. After Tapinto started asking questions about the connection between the firm and school district attorney Brenda Liss, it was revealed that Liss was a partner at the firm until 2020 even though she took the job at the district in 2018.

Tapinto filed an Open Public Records request with the district to see all contracts executed by Liss from 2015 until now but the request was denied.

Here’s an example of the billing practices from Riker, Danzig, Scherer, Hyland and Perretti:

On Sept. 3, 2021, one Riker attorney clocked 8.1 hours to bill $1,417.50 for the day. Four days later, he worked nearly 6 hours for $1,032.50. Mid-month, on Sept. 13, he billed another $1,505 and on the next day, Sept. 14, he clocked 8.7 hours on the case to bill $1,522.50. All together, that attorney billed 90 hours in September of 2021 totaling $15,802.

Your tax dollars at work!

Back in 2021, Chalkbeat interviewed the Hanini lawyer, Thomas Dolan, who was defending the company’s sale to KIPP.  “As we have argued in Court, we believe the NBOE’s litigation is a transparent attempt to impede the development of a new charter school in Newark,” Dolan said in a statement, referring to the Newark Board of Education. He added that the lawsuit threatens “the educational plans of hundreds of Newark school children who plan on attending the 33 Maple school this coming fall.”

But León’s multiple claw-back attempts have nothing to do with Newark children. They have to do with personal power. That’s what politics is, right?