The Demise of Newark

Special Report: The Life and Death of Newark's Eighteenth Avenue School

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Going to the Principal's Office

Gibson won on a platform of reform. Before turning to politics, he had been an engineer, first for the state of New Jersey and then for Newark. He is credited with keeping Newark stable during his four-term administration, but, like Mayor Addonizio, he left office under suspicion of wrongdoing. During his last term he was indicted on state charges of conspiracy and misconduct but was eventually acquitted. After leaving office, Gibson was involved in a scandal over a school construction project his engineering firm was managing.

He also pleaded guilty in to one count of tax fraud, for which he received three years probation.

Sharpe James defeated Gibson in the mayoral race and is currently serving in his fifth term as mayor of Newark. He was elected to the city council in on the same spirit of reform and civil rights as Gibson, at a time when the city was still struggling to recover from the devastation of the riots. In and , James's administration experienced a series of scandals. Grant were both convicted of bribery. Chief of Police William Celester, who had been hand-picked by James, was convicted of using police funds for trips for his girlfriends.

James survived these controversies and has been mayor of Newark for 19 years. The city America loves to mock is starting to blossom. Population of Newark throughout History est. The thinking goes something like this: It presents a no-holds-barred consequence to the improve-or-else approach, and is being taken up in other urban districts, including Paterson and Camden. I am very much persuaded that you can take a building not working, and essentially reopen it as a new school. Still, the research is limited as to how effective closing schools is, and it has become a sore spot in the battles over school reform nationwide.

It concluded that financial savings were relatively small and achievement gains hard to measure beyond the anecdotal. It was clear about one of the consequences of closure: In Washington, public discontent over the process contributed to the ouster of a mayor and a schools chancellor. In Chicago, it led to the enactment of a state law governing all future closings in the city. Cerf often cites what he says is the jump in achievement that has come with school closures in New York City, where he was deputy chancellor before coming to New Jersey.

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He said graduation rates shot up from 30 percent to 70 percent. But for all the gains, there are questions about what closure does to the stability of a neighborhood that is often in need of sure footing. In Newark, the closings have been at the center of the very public outcry that has greeted Anderson at each step. Ervin has been at some of those community meetings, looking out for her old school as it moved further down the plank. Anderson said she understood the human impact, too, and stressed that a central component of the new renewal schools will be neighborhood building, with faculty and staff knocking on doors.

But leaving open a school like Eighteenth Avenue is neither educationally or financially sound, Anderson said. But our job is to put children on the path to excellence.

Some of the staff had turned over in the eight years since I had been there last, but many remained. They were as friendly and accommodating as ever, even knowing why I was visiting. John Strickland had been a physical education teacher at the school, one of the few men in the building and a dynamo of energy. He had the option of following Ervin to the new school, but was choosing another for its more modern facilities.

I asked Ervin what could have been done differently, what might have saved this school, and what will be different about this next round of reforms. She sounded like the woman I had met eight years earlier, talking about how much more she knew now, wanting to talk about the future rather than dwell on the past. It is just not cost-effective, and it hasn't been cost-effective for the last three or four years. But she said the training for the renewal schools has been more intensive for principals, especially when it came to using data. The opportunity to choose her own teaching staff also is an advantage.

The world does not expect it to happen and the politics does not want it to happen. It was an especially solemn occasion this year, with the school itself reaching what could be the end of its life.

History of Newark, New Jersey

Nonetheless, it was a far cry from even the same event in , the auditorium only half full and the graduating class of just 29 students. Only five of them were boys, a curious statistic; but there were only four boys in the seventh grade class behind them. The beaming children and their proud families were caught up in their own world.. Please do not block the aisles. Outside, families waited to be let back into the building, while the Newark Fire Department went through what is almost a daily ritual, answering false alarms at schools.

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Ervin told families they could go home, but a few lingered longer, the streets around the building slowly emptying. Felicia Hawes had attended the school, and that day saw her daughter Quazinah graduate.

The Demise of Newark - Nick Gallicchio - Google Книги

Her parents had attended it, too, she said. I went here and both of my kids went here from pre-K to now. She was talking with Renee Pitts, whose fourth grade son will now transfer to Cleveland up the hill. Helmreich notes in his book that in a Reform rabbi, Marius Ranson, was invited to address the Yong Israel Sisterhood. People were not permitted to wear a yarmulke or tallis in his temple. Imagine a Young Israel synagogue today tendering an invitation to such a rabbi! The end of Jewish Newark is described by Helmreich in all its sad detail.

He makes a point of stressing that, in a larger sense, Jewish Newark had begun its inexorable decline decades before, with a steady stream of Jews slowly making their way out of the city and into the surrounding suburbs. But it was the escalating tensions between Jews and blacks that added a sense of urgency to Jewish flight. Neighborhoods across the country were witness to the seemingly anomalous spectacle of liberal Jews fleeing their homes and neighborhoods at the first sighting of black newcomers — while presumably more conservative blue-collar white ethnics stayed put.

The journalist Max Geltman, in The Confrontation: But in Newark things were different. My daughter heard the word schwartze for the first time in her life — from friends whose parents were members of the A. There was a time when black-Jewish relations in Newark held at least a semblance of promise. But that relatively idyllic state of affairs could not survive the contrasting fortunes of an upwardly mobile Jewish community and a black populace struggling, mostly unsuccessfully, to overcome poverty, prejudice and a series of ill-advised government policies. As the old cities decayed, they were surrounded by a glittering array of shopping malls, corporate parks and residential communities whose newness seemingly underscored the inferiority of urban life.

Although many old cities experienced much the same decline after World War II, few rivaled the losses which Newark sustained in population, vitality, and prestige. The riots of July served as the coffin nails for a Jewish community that had for all intents and purposes died years before. For Jews, Newark today is little more than a graveyard, figuratively and literally:

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