The Newark School District Audit Did Not Find ‘Nothing’
October 13, 2026Newark Wants an Extra Half Billion. Here Is What Should Happen Instead.
Today the New Jersey Local Finance Board will consider a request from Newark Public Schools to hand over $498 million for a lease agreement to build an elementary school. The lease would last for 30 years and at the end of the term NPS wouldn’t own the building.
This is what the Superintendent Roger Leon and the Newark School Board call “fiscal management” as they run through $1.4 billion a year of state taxpayer money. For reference, see the recent audit that flagged constructing an adults-only $566,000 gym with a $60K/year full-time trainer without board approval or competitive bidding (used by seven Central Office staff members a day); overstating enrollment to garner more state aid; paying twice as much as the state average in legal fees per student; passing up $18.7 million in potential savings in 2024 and 2025 by failing to join the school employees’ health benefits plan, and other examples of, in the most generous terms, incompetence, indifference, or arrogance. (The district responded with a press release entitled “Newark Public Schools Comes Through State Audit with Flying Colors.”)
Yet no one will be held responsible. As Julie O’Connor reports in NJ Spotlight, State Auditor David Kaschak sniffed, “Whether there’s a consequence, that’s out of my realm” and he’ll check back in 2028.
It’s hard to imagine there will be any fiscal consequences for Newark even as other districts cut staff, programs, athletics, etc.. But I want to talk about the academic consequences for the children who attend a district that glides through a state system heavy on compliance and low on what actually happens in classrooms. While a small percentage of NPS students attend high-performing magnet high schools with competitive admissions (high test scores, admissions tests, and GPAs), the bulk of their peers end up in low-performing schools where they don’t learn basic reading and writing skills.
And there is no consequence.
One example is Camden Street School, not the best or the worst in the district, which serves about 600 K-8 students in the Central Ward., a typical elementary school without a disproportionate number of multilingual learners or students with disabilities.
According to the most recent NJ Department of Education data, 13% of Camden Street third graders can read at grade level and 11% in fourth grade. Sixteen percent of third grade students are proficient in math and 4% reach proficiency in fourth grade.
This is six years into Leon’s grand vision for the district called The Next Decade: 2020-30 Strategic Plan that proclaims NPS will implement “new kindergarten through 12th-grade language arts literacy and mathematics curricula, along with new textbooks.” Specific to Camden Street, a press release proclaims,
“In an incredible move that aligns with The Next Decade: 2020-30 Strategic Plan, Camden Street School has made literacy their top priority. With a strong focus on supporting students, especially early readers and English Language Learners, this school is going above and beyond to ensure success for all.”
Sure, as long as you ignore the hard fact that one in ten students can’t read.
If Camden Street School were a public charter school, obliged to adhere to strict accountability standards and held responsible for student learning, the state would have shut it down long ago.
But no one holds NPS responsible. NPS’s official response to the audit — to taking any responsibility for student learning in general—was this:
“To the extent that the report recommends that the district ensure that its activities are ‘aligned with the instructional program’ and that they ‘prioritize student needs,’” the district responded, “we respectfully submit that these recommendations are beyond the scope of the auditors’ authority and extremely presumptuous.”
What does Gov. Sherrill’s office or the Department of Education have to say about Newark’s audit?
“Sherrill’s office has not issued any response at all. The governor’s office instead referred NJ Spotlight to the state Department of Education, which declined to answer whether Newark has met the criteria for a state monitor or if it would intervene. ‘The Department continues to exercise its oversight responsibility for all school districts consistent with state law,’ read a brief statement.”
Meanwhile, the children at Camden Street School don’t learn how to read or do math. And it’s not just Camden Street. Reports TAPinto’s Therese Jacobs, “only 3.5% of third graders at Dr. E. Alma Flagg School in the Central Ward passed the state’s English language arts exam in 2025. Only about 10% of third graders were reading on grade level at Franklin Elementary, Rafael Hernandez, Nelson Mandela and Quitman Street School last year.”
Now, there are schools right near Camden Street School, enrolling similar socio-economic populations where student learning leaps beyond the illiteracy and innumeracy rates down the block. They aren’t competitive magnets but free public charter schools where students are admitted through lotteries weighted to increase the proportion of students with disabilities and multilingual learners. (They have less money to spend per pupil and have to fund their own buildings.) At Marion P. Thomas Charter School, for instance, 1 and a half miles from Camden Street, 42% of third graders read at or above grade level and 32% meet or exceed expectations in math. At Strive Academy, part of the KIPP charter network and less than a mile from Camden Street, 36% of third-graders read at or above grade level and 40% do in math.
This is because NJ public charter schools are held accountable for student learning. If not, they are shut down. Yet Camden Street School will endure, even as its students are failed by a system that prioritizes adults going to a private gym over preparing children for what comes next.
Here’s an idea: How about allowing Marion P. Thomas and other high-performing charters to expand enough to accommodate Camden Street students? I know, it would never happen, given Roger Leon’s animus towards public school choice and his crusade to take down charter schools.
Crazy question: What would be better for kids?
