The Prize Read Online Free PDF Page A

the growing Puerto Rican population united to elect Kenneth Gibson, a city engineer running on a reform platform, the first black mayor of a major northeastern city. He defeated Addonizio, then on trial for extortion. True to his words about the riches he expected to reap as mayor, Addonizio was convicted, along with four compatriots, of extorting $1.4 million from city contractors. Both Gibson and Sharpe James, his successor, also became convicted felons. Booker was the first Newark mayor in forty-four years not to be indicted.
    In 1994, state Department of Education investigators cited gross mismanagement, corruption, and instructional failure throughout the Newark district, even as school board members treated themselves to public cars, tropical junkets, and expensive meals. The investigators found rat infestation, asbestos, and high levels of lead paint in a rented building being used as an elementary school. The school board was negotiating to buy the building, worth about $120,000, for $2.7 million. It turned out to be owned, through a sham company, by two school principals prominent in Italian American politics. They were indicted on multiple charges and later acquitted.
    In a series of rulings in the nineties, the state supreme court found that funding disparities among school districts violated the state constitutional right to an education for children in New Jersey’s poorest communities. The court ordered the legislature to spend billionsof dollars to equalize funding, portending a windfall for Newark. In 1995, the state seized control of the Newark district, just as money was beginning to flow.
    Money had always been at the center of struggles for control of the Newark schools. “That’s the prize that every mayor has been trying to get back control of,” said Junius Williams, a longtime education activist who came to Newark in 1967, just out of Yale Law School. When a reform mayor was elected in the 1950s on a pledge to purge city hall of corruption, purveyors of patronage simply relocated to the school district. In the early 1980s, with Gibson in the mayor’s office, a grassroots campaign of parents, teachers, and many political organizations came together to wrest control of the schools from the mayor and give it to an elected school board. The shift was touted as a victory for democracy, but school board elections were held when there were no other races on the ballot, and turnout was minimal. The board came under the control of those who got the most followers to the polls—unions and the city’s most powerful political boss. For decades, education seemed incidental to the purpose of the school district.
    â€œThe Newark schools are like a candy store that’s a front for a gambling operation,” Ross Danis, president of the nonprofit Newark Trust for Education, said. “When a threat materializes, everyone takes his position and sells candy. When it recedes, they go back to gambling.”
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    Early in the summer of 2010, months after their nighttime ride, Booker presented Christie with a proposal, stamped “Confidential Draft,” titled “Newark Public Schools—A Reform Plan.” It called for imposing reform from the top down, warning that a more open political process could be taken captive by unions and machine politicians. “Real change has casualties and those who prospered under the pre-existing order will fight loudly and viciously,” the proposal said. Seeking consensus would undercut real reform. One of the goals was to “make Newark the charter school capital of the nation.” The plan called for an “infusion of philanthropic support” to recruit teachers and principals through national school-reform organizations, buildsophisticated data and accountability systems, and weaken tenure and seniority protections. Philanthropy, unlike government funding, required no public review of priorities or spending. Christie