Newark students head back to class amid boycott, protests

NEWARK (WABC) -- It is the first day of school for millions of students across the region, and many of them are experiencing changes this year.

And the changes in New Jersey's largest city are leading to anger, even as the Newark schools superintendent urges parents not to take place in a proposed boycott Thursday.

The controversy is over the overhaul plan called One Newark, which gets its official debut as 43,000 students return to class. And hundreds of parents lined up to protest the system Thursday morning, upset over the plan, which comes with sweeping changes. And number one is enrollment.

The city is changing to an open enrollment system, where kids are no longer go to the facility in their neighborhood. That means big changes in transportation, as well.

It is all part of an effort to turn around the struggling school system after 20 years under state control. The plan was met with strong resistance from parents.

Last month, the district's enrollment office ran into massive problems with understaffing.

Anger has gotten so intense that some parents boycotted the start of the school year by not allowing their children to head back to class.

City leaders discouraged that, and it is unclear how many participated and for how long they plan to. What is clear is that parental anger and frustration is running high.

"The whole summer, you get a letter now, oh, we are not opening back, you have to find enrollment for your child," one parent said. "I thin that's is crazy."

"They changed my son's school," another said. "He doesn't have to go to the current school. And it's one and a half miles from home. And I have no transportation, and they don't do nothing."

Superintendent Cami Anderson, who was appointed by the state to run Newark's schools, is defending the changes she is trying to implement and discouraging families from participating in the boycott.

She told The Associated Press in an interview that missing class hurts students, and that she will find other ways to hear concerns from parents over changes in the way students are enrolled and other educational issues.

"This is not a time to let politics get in the way of kids getting to school and getting to work," she said.

Her plan relies heavily on taxpayer-funded charter schools as part of achieving the goal of having all the city's schools be considered excellent. She said that only 20 of the 100 publicly funded schools now qualify as even good. But she also said the district has made progress, pointing to rising high school graduation rates and high school test passage rates, as well as an increase in enrollment this year.

Newark's schools have become a flashpoint in a national debate over how to restore urban schools.

Some critics of charter schools see them as syphoning off needed money and the best students from traditional schools, sometimes for the benefit of for-profit management firms.

In Newark, the fate of education has received attention.

In 2010, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg pledged $100 million to help public education in the city, a gift arranged by then-Mayor Cory Booker and Gov. Chris Christie and announced on Oprah Winfrey's talk show. Some of the efforts from his grant have a role in the One Newark plan.

In this year's mayoral election, both candidates called for a return to local control for the schools. The winner, Ras Baraka, who took office in July, is a former high school principal who has been critical of the One Newark plan.

And in July, the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights began investigating whether the One Newark plan discriminates against black students. The probe came in response to a complaint filed in May against the plan, saying that black students make up just half of the district's pupils but nearly nine-tenths of those who will switch schools under the new plan.

The dispute grew last week, when the district opened a one-stop enrollment office. More parents showed up than expected and hundreds were turned away in the first day. A state senator held a hearing Tuesday during which parents railed against the changes.

Acting state Education Commissioner David Hespe said Wednesday that the problems were addressed quickly and some parents might be confusing the issues that normally come with the start of the school year with One Newark-specific problems.

Hespe said Anderson's plans still have the support of the Republican governor's administration.

"What the superintendent is doing is absolutely necessary and crucial," he told The Associated Press.