Dr. Walter C. Farrell, Jr., PhD, M.S.P.H.

The Cartel is hell bent on making New Jersey’s capitol city a shining example of public school privatization with an African American mayor at the helm. The achievement of this objective will have an even greater impact statewide and nationally

There appears to be a crisis in educational values in that students in majority-minority, as well as majority, low-income New Jersey school districts are viewed as expendable and not deserving of the necessary resources to avoid being pushed into the school-to-prison pipeline.

Newark and Camden have a near majority of its predominantly African American and Hispanic student populations enrolled in corporate charter schools, and the numbers are increasing rapidly on an annual basis.

Trenton residents raised a firestorm of protest: vigorously complaining about the lack of transparency in the search process; protesting the proposed layoffs of more than 100 special needs population personnel; opposing the continuing Broad influence in the Trenton Public Schools (TPS); and criticizing the Mayor’s double-cross after he ran on a pro-public education platform.

Broad’s objectives are to: demonize teachers and their unions; promote virtual and bricks and mortar charter schools; run public schools through a corporate business model; reduce the number of union jobs in school districts; privatize school services; promote high stakes testing; and push as much money into the private sector as possible.

These are perilous times for K-12 educators across America as the Cartel is geared up to eradicate public education.

To date, the Cartel has been unable to wrest control of the Montclair Public Schools from its citizens and teachers. However, Montclair residents must remain vigilant as its current interim superintendent, Dr. Ronald Bolnadi, a staunch supporter of public education, will leave soon.

There are strong relationships between long-term lead poisoning (oftentimes unacknowledged and/or denied) and standardized testing outcomes in poverty-ridden school districts where the majority of students are African American and Hispanic or members of other racial minority groups.

Beginning in the 1990s, lead poisoning became intertwined with education reform initiatives as the Cartel of corporate and foundation leaders, and their surrogates, came to realize that the prevalence of lead poisoning in school children in under-funded and under-performing urban schools could be part of their strategy to promote private-sector alternatives to public schools—