field notes

Sometime in the Spring of 2016, I was talking about my impending future with my supervisor at the time, Boone. I was finishing my Master of Public Policy and working part-time as a Graduate Assistant for the community service learning arm of our Student Activities office. Boone said to me, “why don’t you go into organizing?” and I replied, “No. I’ll never be a paid organizer.” I wasn’t scoffing at the suggestion (though maybe I was scoffing a little bit about paid organizing); I felt like I knew that it wasn’t the correct path for me. That I’d be burnt out. That it’s not my place and I’d take up space. That I’d rather do research and policy advocacy.

Sometime in the Fall of 2016 I took a job as a community organizer--bet you didn’t see that one coming--and this week marks my one-year anniversary. I even got a raise to show for it. Over the course of the year, I’ve done a lot of thinking, both silently and aloud with my coworkers, about what our work means, whether or not our participation in and with each other is just, and what to do when we feel like we’re stuck here.

When I was at the University of Massachusetts Amherst there was a lot of discussion about why paid organizing can be bad for communities, the most obvious reason being that it’s disempowering and silencing. We debated this question citing people and movements from Alinksy and Chavez to Occupy and Garza, Tometi and Cullors, and generally concluded that the people doing the work should be of the community, or at the very least, not participating in a saviorist narrative. These discussions informed my opinions on when and why paid organizing works and doesn’t, and I’ve been fortunate enough to continue them with my current coworkers. I haven’t been able to read much about it, and I’m hoping that my thoughts here will serve others who are also looking for discourse on organizing.

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Something I remembered today on my drive in is that it is my duty to organize myself out of a job. I don’t mean that there is some social paradigm around organizing that makes this every organizer’s duty, but, paid community organizing is inherently flawed, so I try to operate in this flawed role by making it a goal to be replaced by a community native.Take, for example, UFW--the organizers that led farmworkers from strikes to a union contract were themselves Chicanx farm workers--Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta. Seeking my own replacement does not mean imparting some special knowledge or skills, or secretly preparing someone against their will to take on this work, or even training someone; rather, since my organization is based in another region, and doesn’t yet pay fair wages for the COLA in NJ, seeking my replacement means uplifting members into leadership that mirrors and one day exceeds mine, and, while I’m still in my position, advocating for better wages.

I think that organizing, especially community organizing, is best done by the community because it is not a job. It is not something with a boss, that is confined by the hours in our days. That doesn’t mean that people shouldn’t be paid, that they shouldn’t have direction and support, and that they should work tirelessly for 16 hours everyday. But, the issues that communities organize around persist until we organize out of them. I go home to a totally different county everyday; I quite literally leave work behind, and while that’s healthy, it also puts me in a position of choosing to face these issues on my own time with the luxury of returning to a wealthier, safer community. Then, why do I organize at all? I do love what I do--I work directly with the leaders of the community and am working alongside them to recruit their friends and neighbors to their cause. The work is tangible, it is meaningful.

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My biggest gripe with paid organizing is that it is chronically and drastically underpaid. The job I have now should have been given to my part-time co-worker, M, but it doesn’t pay enough for M to relinquish their full-time job. So M does both. M is a parent, a lifelong community member, and has been organizing around our issues since I was in high school! It is bonkers to me that progressive organizations like ours so easily underpay their workers while campaigning for concrete improvements to the communities served.

The starting salary for organizers with our organization is $35,000; after one year, you get about a 10% raise, which seems like a big raise, but only increases monthly take home by about $170, to $2,240. Typical one bedroom apartments in the county I work in go from $680-$1200 a month, and that’s just living space. NJ has the highest property taxes, and in South Jersey, public transit is limited so cars are often necessary. For a member of a family, that wage is simply too low, and the work is too intense. For most of my first year I also worked a second job at a retail store, and for five straight months I worked seven days a week. It’s not worth it, and organizations fighting for justice need to afford it to themselves. Take breaks, use your flex-time, heck, unionize and get it all in a contract! I don’t think I can comfortably leave this job until I know that whoever follows me will be better off.

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The last thing I want to include in this post is a bit about intra-organizational identity politics. Everyone’s favorite topic! No really, this portion will not be about identity politicking within, but, my thoughts on the importance of recognition of difference. The leadership of the organization I work for is masculine, not all cis straight white dudes, thankfully, but people who in some way are masculine, and that energy can be draining to me! I often feel like the women on the team, who are not managers, perform all of the emotional labor, and when our work suffers because of identity-based issues, like harassment, we can’t have a productive conversation about it with a supervisor. There is also a culture of ableism not amongst activists and organizers, but amongst organizations that explicitly state that the hours are abnormal and long, that are unwilling to offer real training and support for on-the-doors organizing, and that are rarely willing to stray from the single method of organizing that they practice.

What I wish is that managers would just make it a point to steer clear of neoliberal work practices and instead cultivate a more symbiotic, community-oriented model. That they would cease even being “management” and work more horizontally, which allows for greater skill sharing and growth. I also wish that people within these organizations, especially the leaders, would be frank about the issues organizers face in the office and in the community. For example: I work in a Black and Brown community, and primarily with middle-aged and older adults. There is rampant sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and colorism and racism within the community. I am a young, cis, white woman from an affluent suburb and I went to arguably the most liberal public university. It is difficult for me to have a values-based conversation with some folks! And not because we don’t want to, but because I come off as the clear outsider that I am and the conversations aren’t always productive. I’m not hurt by being on the outside, but part of my role is to help build our base, and we can’t do that if we’re alienating members of our own community. To a supervisor, it seems what I need to be told is to just “address it,” but there is no easy way for me to do that, and I don’t want or need it to be easy! I just need it to be respectful and authentic and productive.

I have two take-aways on this point: I think orgs needs to find a balance for sharing that suits them so that staff all have the space they need to grow and develop, and there should be a commitment to justice for folks inside as well as outside the office. I also think organizers have a commitment to each other--if you’re not unionized (and I know most of us aren’t), build a support system if you can (on the way to unionizing?!). I know it’s not always possible, necessary, or even wanted, depending on your place and the culture, but, I’ve found it useful.

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In 2012 the New Jersey legislature passed the Urban Hope Act, which allows private, nonprofit charter management organizations to “partner” with local public schools to create Renaissance schools. I signal the word, “partner” because in practice, this partnership is nothing but a takeover of an established neighborhood school; once the CMO moves in, every sign that the facility was ever managed by the local district is moved out, and soon, that will include people, too.

The original act provides the grounds for these takeovers; the school district has to be struggling and high-needs based on standardized test scores, and the new schools must operate in new or substantially renovated buildings. So far, the only district out of New Jersey’s 590 districts to create these “partnerships” is Camden City; so far, CCSD has given away eight schools and nearly 2500 students to Renaissance operators and the program is only beginning its fourth year.

Now, five years later, some NJ lawmakers want to make these takeovers even easier by including buildings constructed within five years in the “newly built” category, amongst other deregulatory changes. In Camden and other Abbott districts, like Paterson and Trenton (now considered Schools Development Authority, or SDA districts), many schools are 50+ years old and in need of substantial renovation or replacement, but the communities have no control over that need; rather, the SDA, a state agency headed by a Christie-appointee, decides which schools are to be replaced and when. Both Camden and Trenton are slated to have their historic high schools replaced; Trenton is further down the line and already at the reconstruction phase, while Camden awaits demolition. Both schools, if these amendments pass, would be far more vulnerable to Renaissance takeover, and the neighborhoods around them at an even greater risk of gentrification.

I often describe myself, when asked about my political leaning, as “anti-capitalist” because to me, in a country where profits matter more than party, and certainly more than people, choosing a party or even a side seems unnecessary, even silly. What I didn’t realize, until having a mini-epiphany mid-conversation with a colleague, is that when I say “anti-capitalist” (some) people hear “anti-democracy” because the two, in the bleeding hearts of liberal and conservative Americans alike, are bound by the same mystical forces that have ensconced in us such joyful combinations as the Reese’s cup, Ben & Jerry, and “Billary.”

So what came first, capitalism or democracy? Technically, and as most everyone should know, democracy; the answer changes if we are speaking specifically of the U.S. though, in which case I would argue that at the birth of this nation we welcomed twins into this world. I’m not going to rehash all 241 years of U.S. history, but what I will say is that if the two systems were ever symbiotic, that point has long past (though I’d add that the benefits have only been available to cis straight Christian white men).

Capitalism is a parasitic threat to democracy. Let’s get the standard arguments over with: first, the free market is not free. The U.S. economic market is controlled by top Wall Street executives and behemoth companies like Wal-Mart and Amazon. Ever wonder why deodorant is sold without a box? If you’re a millennial like me, you a) probably never noticed this change because of your age, or b) are questioning whether you played a role in the violent death of the deodorant box. Luckily this one wasn’t our doing; it was Wal-Mart’s. Yes, that’s right: Wal-Mart wanted to save some money, and has enough monopsony power to make such demands. I’m not condemning the positive effects of the switch, but rather illustrating just one example of corporate America’s invisible strong arm. Want a more threatening example? Most elections are decided by money, not votes. Luckily, there has been resistance to big money in politics in the last few cycles, most notably in the 2016 Presidential election, but big, dark donors still determine many major decisions.

Okay, next argument: it is illogical to let “the law of supply and demand” govern our society. In a controlled market that offers only one good, such as labor, it is quite easy to find an equilibrium price/wage that satisfies everyone, that pays and employs just the right amount; no need for a price floor here! However, in the chaotic mess that is our market it simply doesn’t work that way. To continue with the labor example: numerous studies on the relationship between wage and unemployment show no conclusive relationship between the two. The prevailing argument is that if an employer can offer 100 jobs at $7.25/hour, an increase in the wage will reduce the number of available jobs while increasing the demand for jobs at the higher wage rate. What economists have found is that in many industries the opposite is true, that when we see gains in wages we see gains in employment. Not exactly easy to illustrate on a graph for 11th graders. Sorry.

But wages and labor are just one example; from a moral standpoint, consider price-gouging in the wake of a disaster like Hurricane Harvey. A recent article actually called for price-gouging because it is an efficient way of rationing scarce resources. In Texas, as in many other states and the District of Columbia, price gouging during disasters or emergencies is actually illegal, a regulation that true free market capitalists, like the author of the Forbes piece, would argue impedes the market achieving equilibrium; in such extreme cases though, equilibrium can look like $75 for a case of water bottles and $8 for a gallon of gas, goods that otherwise cost between $3-$5. On paper, that is equilibrium. But the root of the word also happens to be the root of the words equity and equality, other values many of us try to champion even under our oppressive economic system, and how is allowing anyone who’s lost their home and other important assets to pay $99 for a case of water exemplary those values? It’s not, but capitalism and basic economism give us an excuse to hide behind when what we want is to be greedy and selfish.

Oddly enough, neoliberal capitalism is exactly what’s created that need though, to distance ourselves from our neighbors and focus on amassing great personal wealth. This mentality is the 80s-era “pull yourself up by your bootstraps,” popularized by supply-side economists and Wall Street’s corporate raiders who themselves saw an opportunity to sell a false hope to the public while amassing all this wealth for themselves. The ideology has since torn apart communities like the one I work in, and has left many to internalize the notion that we are more valuable as individuals than as members of communities, that we are only as valuable as our hours worked outside of our homes.

Anyway, enough about this dysfunctional dystopia. I want to return to the original argument: capitalism is a parasitic threat to democracy. This system so champions taking from the poor and giving to the rich that it is what’s created the poor and the rich. It is what defines white bodies as more valuable than black and brown, men more valuable than women, our monetary gains more than our intrinsic growth and extrinsic contribution. Capitalism is about tearing us apart and letting us believe that we are either working or not working, the latter synonymous with laziness, disability, worthlessness. It is about celebrating culture when it’s on sale at Urban Outfitters and simultaneously terrorizing those we stole it from. It is about maintaining the oppression and supremacy that keeps everyone in place, that keeps black and brown and poor people from voting, that restricts decision-making power to those with the money to buy it, that beholds old white men as the prevailing rulers of this disaster. It eats away at our imagination and sends us barreling down tunnels of self-preservation and survival, no room for collective joy, art, leisure, pleasure, exploration.

I am anti-capitalist because I favor strong, fluid, active communities; self-exploration; free access to knowledge, art and artifact; failure in learning; representative representation; health and laughter; joyful advancement at one’s perfect pace; holistic and just healing; dynamic families; social change; the choice not to work free of guilt; the ability to exist, visit, worship, speak, change, create without fear; valuing work of all types and respect for time and trade; freedom over borders; the old, the present and the coming; nature, flora and fauna; space for nurturing and love.

Ha, so these posts have actually become totally irregular! Far from semi-regular I’d hoped for. Anyway, I worked on this one for a while, and kinda gave up a bit at the end because I just needed to be done with it. You’ll see what I mean.

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In the few slow moments I’ve had at work over the last few months, I’ve been revisiting and rethinking Jonothan Kozol’s Savage Inequalities, perhaps his best-known collection of observations of educational injustice and socioeconomic disparity. The book comprises stories of schools from cities as standard as New York and as forgotten as Camden; I’ve been thinking most of the latter since it’s where I spend my days.

In 1990 Kozol visited Pyne Poynt Middle School, Camden High School and Woodrow Wilson High School. What he observed--hungry students trying to learn without books, aging facilities with arcane equipment, and underpaid educators tired by months of preaching preparation material for state-approved aptitude tests--is still largely observable. The hardships his hosts describe, like high taxes, obvious over-pollution, and lack of access to basic necessities like healthy food and dental care, still burden many families. The local government is still corrupt and run by the Democratic Committee (ahem, Norcross family), and to the untrained eye it would seem that little has changed since Kozol’s visit; or, perhaps more accurately, that the changes, some unwelcome, have not improved the conditions that initially shocked us.

If Kozol returned to Camden in 2017, he would be unable to visit Pyne Poynt Middle School, and he may soon be unable to visit Camden High School; Woodrow Wilson remains unchanged. Both Pyne Poynt and Camden High still stand, though not as they once did: Pyne Poynt is now owned and operated by Mastery Charter Schools of Camden, one of five public schools between North and East Camden that were taken over by the Philadelphia-based Charter Management Organization. Known as Renaissance schools, the charter-public hybrid was introduced in Camden in 2014 and Mastery has since taken over five of Camden’s public schools across North and East Camden. Camden High is still public and still operating, but in October 2016 was threatened with demolition and reconstruction. No ground has been broken yet, but the hearts of many students, alumni, faculty, and community members have; the Castle on the Hill is a beloved and cherished beacon of hope, advancement, and connection to greatness past and present. There is an effort to preserve it, but the future remains unseen.

On a day-to-day basis I invest most of my energy talking with parents and students in Camden. I’m not surveying or interviewing so much as I’m agitating; organizing is about building collective power, and part of my job is identifying the individuals that the Camden collective comprises. My general line of questioning almost always involves asking, “If you had a magic wand to wave over your city, what would it look like to you?” Sometimes, people do not want to imagine; it takes a lot of energy! But when they do, I hear the same things--better schools with teachers that really care about the community; expanded transportation for students who, no matter their address, likely pass through unsafe spaces on their way to school; honest politicians and civic leaders; books for every student in each classroom; edible and satisfying lunches; and extracurricular activities other than basketball.

None of these claims are outlandish or unachievable. In fact, people shouldn’t have to struggle to imagine their lives under “better” conditions that in other communities are the most basic. It’s like asking someone who drives a beat up, ‘92 Honda Civic to imagine themselves in an ‘06 model with such luxuries as air conditioning and electric windows and watching them struggle to do so; meanwhile, in suburbia, it’d be like asking some who probably drives a new Ford Explorer or 3-series BMW to imagine themselves in a Porsche Cayenne or 7-series Beemer.

I shouldn’t even have to pose a question about school inequality, but its prevalence persists, seemingly no matter what we try, no matter what acronyms come floating out of the White House or the State House. To reference the slowly boiling frog, Camden is tough and overcooked. Unable to imagine life outside of the pot because we’ll probably die in the pot. That’s not to say that residents can’t imagine anything better, or aren’t working towards it already; it is to say that we might need to turn the heat off and ask the frog what it needs in order to heal, and become stronger than it was before we threw it in the water. What parents and students want is a return to the old days of neighborhood schools, of walking to class past the elders on their porches waiting to tell your parents if you acted out, of attending school events along with everyone else on your block, of dealers and gangs hiding their business from once-hallowed grounds. What they’ve been given is a glut of mediocre schools in varying physical condition along with the choice to attend any one of them, regardless of address, meaning that Fairview kids attending school Downtown and East Camden kids in Parkside might never know their neighbors as their parents did. Rather than using Camden’s declining enrollment as an opportunity to focus on improving fewer schools as unnecessary campuses close, the district has instead opted to open even more schools, though at the hands of CMOs KIPP, Mastery and Uncommon, essentially passing off responsibility until there is no need for a local board or traditional district.

I was hoping to keep my posts here semi-regular, but time has gotten away from me and it’s been a while. So, here’s something new.

Let’s start with something startling: Camden City School District now enrolls nearly 10,000 fewer students than it did in 1999. That’s right, a district with nineteen public schools enrolls just 8,888 for the 2016-2017 school year, compared to 18,536 just before the new millennium.

Now, some of that loss can be attributed to population decline; the 2000 census recorded 30,566 children aged 0-19 and the 2010 census just 26,924. Without employing any fancy statistical modeling, I would estimate that there may be between 22,000 and 23,000 children in the City now, but again, I’m just pulling that number out of the air.

But let’s get back to these enrollment numbers. Where have are students gone? Well, according to school enrollment data, about 30% of them attend charter schools (5,014) and about 14% attend Renaissance schools (2,195). Last year, charter school enrollment was about 28% (4,401), and Renaissance was about the same (2,189). In 2014-2015, the first school year that Renaissance schools were operating in Camden, an estimated 26% were in charter schools and just 3% were in Renaissance schools.

So, we know where they’re going. But why are they going? And why is the district fostering the growth of privately managed schools and allowing its own enrollment to shrink? I’ve had a lot of conversations regarding that first question, and for many parents and their students, the answers are the same: the Renaissance school took over their neighborhood public school, so they chose to stay, or; there are no more public schools within walking distance, or; the charter or Renaissance facility is newer and better, and the school offers more activities, better classroom management, etc. Overwhelmingly, the reasons have nothing to do with classroom education, which could mean that the quality of instruction at each type of school is similarly good, or similarly bad, or, worse, that people are not truly concerned with their children’s educations. I refuse to believe the latter point not only because of my naive optimism, but because the parents I meet and know care deeply about the quality of education in this district. Truthfully, I think there are talented educators and administrators who work in Camden’s Renaissance and charter schools and I know they believe they are doing their best for their students, and parents see that. They also see new facilities, and an inaccessible, washed out school board that neglects the 100 year old school buildings peppered throughout the City--why shouldn’t they make the switch?

Onto the second question: why is the Camden City School District self-destructing like a Voltorb? To answer this, I can only speculate, though given the current socio-educational political environment as of late, it isn’t too hard to make an educated guess.

New Jersey has nearly 600 school districts, and each district relies on some combination of local, state and federal aid. Camden City, despite having one of the highest tax rates compared to income in the state, requires a lot of aid from the state because its tax base is small; median income in the City is just $25,000, and thanks to the Economic Opportunity Act, a large chunk of its commercial tax base was simply given away and we won’t reap the real benefits for at least ten years. On top of that, the district was plagued by corruption in the years leading up to the 2013 state takeover. It was ripe for a turnaround.

Naturally, they turned to charter management organizations. The Urban Hope Act of 2012, engineered by then-State Senator Donald Norcross and orchestrated by Democratic power elite George Norcross III, made way for the hybrid Renaissance schools, and Christie-era charter school expansion had already hit. Camden City School District once educated close to 20,000 students (and probably more before the population began declining) at more than 30 schools. Now, there are 37 schools (excluding the three parochial establishments) and about 16,000 students. What gives?

This year, two schools, Bonsall and Sumner will be closing, Camden Community Charter School had its charter revoked, and Sharp and Davis were nearly merged; concurrently, both Uncommon and Mastery schools are constructing enormous new facilities! At this point, it seems as though the district is willing to give up its schools, one by one, until we are managed by a strange and disconnected web of sneaky for-profits and nefarious non-profits.That shift would effectively dissolve the board of education here, though not the State’s nor the locale’s commitments to funding the schools. Good times.

When I joined the organization I work for back in October, it was explained to me that the backbone of the education justice campaign here in Camden is local control, meaning the return of power to elect a Superintendent and Board of Education, which the city lost in 2013. Okay, yes, we can win it! A long-term goal of course, but a great point of agitation and surely something we can achieve by putting enough pressure on the right people.

So back then I knew very little about state takeovers. I spent my formative young adult years in Massachusetts and admittedly did not keep up with New Jersey policies and practices. I was familiar with the Abbott case and its related districts since my mother teaches in one, I guess I knew about Paterson and Newark and Jersey City, and I probably heard it on the news when Camden was taken over. I never gave it much thought; it was outside my scope.

Now the issue is very much in my scope, so I’ll tell what I know. In 1987, New Jersey became the first state to enact state takeover legislation, meaning that if the state deemed a school district to be failing, they could step in and take control of finances and operations until test scores improved or something. Sounds like a bit much, right? I’m not exaggerating though! Here it is a bit more formally, directly from the NJ Department of Education website:

“This law, commonly known as the ‘state-operation law,’ specifies that districts that fail to provide a ‘thorough and efficient system of education’ to their students may be taken over by the Department of Education for a minimum of five years. The criteria for becoming a state-operated school district in New Jersey are characterized by a district's ‘unwillingness or inability’ to meet the state certification standards, which consist of a series of performance and quality control benchmarks frequently referred to as "monitoring indicators." These indicators assess a variety of district-level performance issues, such as student performance on state standardized tests, student attendance and dropout rates, the condition of school facilities, and school-level planning requirements, among others. Districts that continually fail to meet these indicators are candidates for state-operation.”

A minimum of five years has turned into twenty eight years for Jersey City, twenty six for Patterson, and twenty two for Newark, the original three “takeover” districts. So far, this year marks the fourth for Camden, so legally it must endure at least another year.* But without a legislated maximum length of stay, who’s to say that Camden won’t end up just like it’s sister cities in the North? I don’t have an answer to that question, but I can unpack it a bit, and I’ll begin (and likely end) with the indicators and assessment of state-operated school districts.

Every public school district in New Jersey is subject to the triennial NJ Quality Single Accountability Continuum (QSAC), which comprises five areas of evaluation: instruction and program, personnel, operations, fiscal management and governance. A score of 80% or higher in any area is considered passing, and a score of 50%-79% necessitates an improvement plan for the area(s) in which the score was received. If a district receives a score lower than 50% in any area, the State Commissioner of Education authorizes an in-depth review, and the district becomes eligible for state-intervention. In 2012, Camden City School District scored 9% in instruction and program, 19% in personnel, 47% in operations, 79% in fiscal management and 33% in governance. The following year, the State seized the district and went so far as to shift the local Board of Education to an advisory role, and to appoint a new Superintendent. To date, Camden is the only district in New Jersey that is under state control and without power to elect district leaders.

Three years later, QSAC scores had improved, on average to 11% in instruction and program, 20% in personnel, 40% in operations, 64% in fiscal management and 66% in governance. While there were actually drops in operations and fiscal management, Camden’s average score in 2012 was 37.4%, and in 2015 had climbed to 40.2%; the jump in governance is by far the most notable achievement. But, given that Camden is still technically “failing” in all five areas, it is unlikely that the State will relinquish control by 2018, which will mark the five-year minimum. However, if a district demonstrates success and improvement, the Commissioner may decide to return control in one to five areas; so, if Camden scores an 80% or higher in governance in 2018, it is possible that the district could see a partial return of control.

Okay, let’s pause. That section has a lot of numbers and overuse of the clunky acronym “QSAC” so I’m going to shift back to casual, conversation. Cause that’s what blogs are for, right?

A little “fun-fact” about me: I have a difficult-to-repress belief in democracy and progress via policy change (surprise, I am a privileged white girl with left-leaning parents who believe in capitalism, i.e. Baby Boomers), and when I was a student-staff member at my University's student organizing agency, I was often told that I didn’t like direct action (yes, people told me what I liked and didn’t like, but that is neither here nor there). It’s no secret that I am interested in policy change, but it is not true that I hate direct action, though I honestly feel that it won’t always work. And my evidence for that is not any past failures of organizing, but rather my understanding of when and how policy change happens. Sometimes, direct action gets the goods, and I like when that happens; that’s democracy and people power. But sometimes, I think it needs to happen in conjunction with legislative and political organizing.

So, here we are in Camden. We want local control, and we’re going to organize for it. Only problem is, organizing on the ground in Camden won’t change QSAC scores, and right now, we’re still required to pass the test to graduate. If we want to organize our way out of a state takeover, we could be so radical as to literally reject it (which the Board here would never do), or we can take our fight to the Statehouse, and demand the policy be amended to include something like a maximum number of years for intervention, or in the very least demand our right to elect school officials. This is the point at which I as an organizer get stuck and frustrated. How do we demand a cessation on Renaissance and charter school expansion when our Board of Education only has advisory status? How do we pressure our Superintendent when we cannot even invoke electoral action? Of course there are strategies and tactics we can and do use, but sometimes it seems like a win is impossible. I tell myself, and more importantly my members and the community that victory is possible in Camden, but I can’t say that I fall asleep every night believing it. I don’t think I’m being pessimistic, but I have a history of operating in an idealistic, optimistic space, and as I’m growing I just trying to keep things real.

Since I started working in Camden on a campaign for education justice, I’ve been asked to explain what charter schools are, and why I fervently dislike (most) of them. Most recently, my sister’s friends joined us for chili after a day of sledding, and as I’m dousing my serving with Texas Pete’s, my mother invites me to explain to the youngsters (all juniors in college, on average) what I do. I give them the standard, “I’m a community organizer…” soliloquy, one I’ve rehearsed often, but my mother interrupts me to remind us that the mother of one of our visitor’s works in a charter school in Camden, Mastery. Pause. In Camden, Mastery operates Renaissance schools; I explain that they are a hybrid of charter and public schools, the best comparison I can conjure, and that they are taking over public schools in Camden.

There is some misunderstanding about nonprofits actually being allowed to make profits (uh, they are, that’s how they survive as businesses), and, further, about how a nonprofit could possibly be harmful. Frustrated, I flip to my favorite example of a charter school that I don’t dislike: in Amherst, MA, most children attend Amherst Regional Public Schools, but there is another option, a Chinese Language Immersion Charter School, situated amidst the traffic and fields and chain restaurants of scenic Route 9. The difference I describe is that the language immersion school in Amherst offers students and families the choice of an alternative education, but does not effectively harm the public school because it is not trying to masquerade as a traditional public school.

Flip back to Camden (by this point, I’ve given up on the conversation at my dinner table because it is of no use to argue with cocky college students), and the relationship is not so balanced. Camden only has six charter schools—not so bad, right? Perhaps, but what the New Jersey Department of Education will not tell you is that there are ten, soon to be fourteen, other schools in Camden that are managed by private, nonprofit charter corporations disguising themselves as traditional public schools. These institutions are Renaissance schools, aforementioned as the hybrid between charter and public schools. Don’t be fooled; the only “public” aspect of Renaissance schools are that they must accept all students within a catchment zone who apply; students from outside the catchment zone are subject to a lottery, like a traditional charter school. Outside of that requirement, they function like charter schools; they have independent boards, can hire teachers without state credentials, and often end up educating fewer special education students than neighboring public schools by way of “creaming.”

Renaissance schools, created by the Urban Hope Act of 2012, are New Jersey’s answer to the education crisis plaguing Camden; they function, purportedly, like public schools, but are managed by nonprofit charter management organizations (CMO). The Urban Hope Act limits the number of Renaissance school projects in any one district to four, but those four operators may manage more than one facility. In Camden, the three lucky winners thus far are KIPP, Mastery, and Uncommon Schools, so, hooray, there is room for one more. What could be so bad about these tried and true charter management corporations? Why shouldn’t we be happy that they’ve offered to relieve us the burden of being involved in our children’s educations?

Let’s start with KIPP. The Knowledge is Power Program was founded by two Teach for America alumni in 1994 in Houston, TX upon five principles: high expectations, choice and commitment, more time, power to lead and focus on results. We are off to a great start! Teach for America recruits recent college graduates to teach in poor, black and brown neighborhoods for two years minimum; TFA-ers are provided five weeks of training and thrust into communities they know nothing about, and then jet-off to higher-paying careers with a fancy, social justice-y line on their résumé. This post is about schools, not teachers though, so let me get back on track. Since its inception KIPP has expanded to 200 schools across the U.S., and receives funding from such notable foundations as the Walton Family Foundation, the Doris and Donald Fisher Fund, and, in Camden, the Norcross Family via their foundation and the Cooper Foundation. They began their stint in Camden first by taking over Lanning Square School, and have since absorbed J.G. Whittier Family School; their goal is to serve students K-12 in their downtown complex. But, KIPP is just one CMO with a foothold in Camden.

The other two are Mastery and Uncommon. I’ll work my way in, from Texas, to New York and finally to Philadelphia, so I’ll begin with Uncommon. The Uncommon Schools Network has a vague beginning; a nebulous group of pro-charter folks supported the creation of Newark’s North Star Academy in 1997, and eight years later, the Uncommon Schools Network was formalized and founded by James Verrilli and Norm Atkins, who currently chairs their Board. Verrilli now runs Newark’s Relay Graduate School of Education (GSE), a partnership program of Uncommon, KIPP and Achievement First that trains people to become instructors in charter schools. I purposely used words like “program,” “trains,” “people” and “instructors” because the GSE employs no professors of education and offers certification to the charter educators based on the charter curriculum and standards. Relay GSE is by no means a traditional graduate school of education, but already it has been embraced by nine states.

In addition to using “alternative” teacher certification methods, Uncommon also uses alternative names for its schools; most do not actually bear the organization’s designation, but rather an innocuous, prestigious title. In Newark, they are North Star Academy and there are currently ten North Star Academies; the same is true in Camden. Uncommon currently operates one school, Camden Prep, with plans to open another school on Haddon Avenue in September 2017 to serve 800 students K-8. My belief is that by giving their institutions neutral, relatable names Uncommon is hoping to establish itself as something as close to a traditional neighborhood public school as it can get.

The third CMO in Camden is Mastery, a Philadelphia-based charter founded in 2001 as High Tech High. A year later, it became Mastery Charter Schools and now operates 21 schools, including five in Camden. What makes Mastery unique is that it offers three types of school management: charter, turnaround and renaissance. There seems to be little difference between the turnaround and renaissance models; what I’ve discerned is that the turnaround initiative, which is a Philadelphia model, is focused on miserably failing schools, while the renaissance model, which we have here in Camden, simply takes over any school the district allows. Recently, Mastery has been struggling with its pedagogy; its test scores plummeted in 2014, though they have since made modest improvements. The drop was attributed to the organization’s softening of its strict “no excuses” model, which was done in response to alumni calls for better college preparation. Since 2014, they’ve reinstated some of the strict disciplinary model that defined them for fifteen years, and things are starting to improve.

But that’s just on paper. When I talk with parents and students of Mastery’s Camden schools, I hear about physical discipline of elementary school students, including arm-twisting, and about lack of support for special education students. It is no surprise that a CMO school would make every subtle attempt to push special education students out to maintain higher scores, but accounts of physical restraint and discipline are abhorrent. Mastery already has a foothold in one of Camden’s poorest neighborhoods, Pyne Poynt, as well as in neighboring Cooper’s Poynt and East Camden, and they are constructing a new K-8 facility to serve 750 students in Cramer Hill.

I really don’t like going to so many meetings, but I certainly have been learning a lot.

I was going to post a casual piece about the renaissance schools in Camden but I’m still working on it. In the meantime, here’s a story about today.

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In an attempt to better understand the Camden renaissance school machines (and find some more “angry charter parents”) I’ve been making the rounds to their monthly board meetings. Last Wednesday, I went to Mastery’s with my colleagues. It was totally weird. The whole board meeting happened via phone conference, and we were awkwardly welcomed and thanked profusely for attending a public meeting.

Today was much different. Today’s featured institution was Camden Prep, an Uncommon school co-located with Henry L. Bonsall (now middle) school. I arrived a few minutes before 9:00 a.m., the scheduled start time of the board meeting, wound my way to the inconspicuous off-street entrance, signed in, and made my way to Room 103. I was greeted, warmly, introduced to the COO, asked to sign-in (again), then informed that the Board would be taking closed session first. It usually lasts about 45 minutes to an hour, but they would try to keep it to 45 minutes. Thanks!

On my way to the main office, I met Giana, Director of Regional and Community Initiatives. She was attentive and kind, and seemed genuinely interested in my interest. She stayed nearby throughout my visit. My colleagues, M and V, arrived about quarter after. I brought them into the office and together we waited.

At 9:45 on the dot (really, I even congratulated Mike, the COO, for being right on time) they came to find me, found the three of us, and escorted us back to Room 103. We sat in three chairs (it was as if they knew!) on the low-end of their U-shaped set-up, two members’ backs to us. We listened, asked a few questions, and the meeting adjourned at 10:14 a.m. We were thanked for attending, and shown out by Giana. She really was very sweet.

What was so strange and unnerving was how comfortable it all felt to me; young women, white, black, and brown, working together in an open office, wearing cute clothes, knowing the names of every “scholar” who graced the office. An old, urban building fixed up just enough to look hip, Panera on the table for the Board. I could work there. I’m actually over-qualified to teach at a charter school (funny, because I’ve no background or certification in education, nor do I have teaching experience).

That is fucked up. The fact that I was so at-ease, almost envious of the space is fucked up. Because it means that people who aren’t like me are probably uncomfortable. Now, don’t get me wrong; everyone I met was kind and competent, and the staff was actually pretty representative of the community. But that school, for decades a traditional public school, is now being taken over by Uncommon, a charter management organization based in New York. That school, once a place that your mom went to before you, with long-time, committed educators, with roots in the community, is being transformed. The aftercare program costs $75 per student per quarter; there are school-specific uniforms; children (referred to as “scholars”) chant about colleges and traverse the halls following strict, taped lines with their arms stiffer than an Irish stepdancer’s; and, new this year, every Friday is a half-day so that parents can conveniently schedule any and all appointments between the hours of 1:00 and 5:00 p.m. How courteous!

This past June Governor Christie unveiled his latest plan for New Jersey schools. His ironically titled “Fairness Formula,” which would level per pupil state funding at $6,599, is his budgetary proposal to save failing schools and lessen the burden of property taxes for everyone. The current formula, determined by the School Funding Reform Act (SFRA) of 2008, allots $279,847,597 to Camden City School District, though SFRA has not been fully funded since 2009. Even so, it is estimated that Camden City School District would lose 60% of its state funding, and have cut FTE staff from 1284 to 507, a huge blow to a district that has long-suffered at the hands of the state.

Four months later, in early October, the same Governor, alongside Camden Mayor Dana Redd, announced that the landmark Camden High School would be demolished and rebuilt at a cost of $132.6 million. The proposed new facility will no longer operate as a traditional high school, but as four smaller learning communities, including Dr. Charles Brimm Medical Arts High and Camden Big Picture Learning Academy, as well as a Business and Law program and a technical and engineering program. There is no discussion yet about what may happen to the existing Brimm and Big Picture campuses, nor has the district disclosed plans for the soon-to-be displaced Camden High students.

Taken together, these proposals could create a volatile reaction: on one hand the school is set to lose millions of dollars in funding and undoubtedly a good portion of its staff, while on the other it is to be expanded, surely amassing additional costs. In the 2015-2016 school year, there were 1.39 billion public school students in New Jersey; under SFRA the average per pupil funding in 2015-2016 was $16,612. In Camden City, there were 15,308 enrolled students and per pupil spending was higher than average at $18,744. In an already suffering district unable to provide every student with contemporary textbooks and hire enough full-time teachers to fill every classroom, according to Camden High School students, a cut of over $12,000 per student would be detrimental.

There are counter proposals, one from Senate President Sweeney and another from Assemblyman Cittarelli. Sweeney’s plan calls for a reëxamination and possible rewriting of the SFRA by a bipartisan committee The new proposal would be brought before the Legislature only for a vote though; Sweeney’s plan prohibits any amendments from the Legislature. Cittarelli, on the other hand, wants to completely reform the SFRA to more equitably distribute aid since most of it is concentrated in former Abbott districts, like Jersey City, Asbury Park and Camden. While both plans are certainly better than Christie’s, there is still a clear risk for districts that receive high amounts of state aid.