TapintoNewark’s journalists have done a masterful job documenting the money Newark Public Schools is spending on sketchy real estate deals and lawyers to defend them. Case in point: the State Street School, sold off in 2019 because it was unusable for children. Leon wants it back for  “complete renovation to bring it back online as a Student/Administrative Support Center.”  As of a couple of months ago, legal fees to reacquire the ramshackle building were estimated at a million dollars. 

Yet as litigation continues, Tapinto wants an updated number; no doubt, Newark resident and state taxpayers would like to know where their money is going too. The paper filed an Open Public Records request, the usual way to get information from a public entity. But NPS refused to honor the request, claiming the “information, if disclosed, would give an advantage to competitors is not a government record and is not disclosable.”

So Tapinto filed an appeal—and won. But what they received was so heavily redacted (see below) that there’s no way to determine how much city and state taxpayers are spending  to support and defend Leon’s crusade to expand the footprint of NPS, despite a bunch of half-empty buildings and no proof that enrollment will increase. 

At last week’s school board meeting, two Board members,  Crystal Williams and A’Dorian Murray-Thomas, asked Leon how much the district was spending on both acquisition of State Street School and legal fees. In response, Leon said, 

“There is an actual settlement agreement that the board voted on that actually explains all of that, so you actually have it,” he said. “I don’t have it in front of me right now.”

Even the school board doesn’t know the internal finances of the district? Something’s rotten in the city of Newark.