What on Earth is going on in Newark schools?

Newark’s school district is coming under intense criticism in recent days because of a damning state audit report that found evidence school officials wasted taxpayer dollars and inflated enrollment numbers to win more state aid.

Even worse, some unnamed matters have been referred to the state’s criminal justice division.

If you haven’t read about the audit, here are some of the findings:

• The school district could have saved $18.7 million over two years by switching to the state’s health benefits program for public workers, but did not do so.
• It did not perform criminal background checks for as many as 10 employees and did not make sure updated background checks were performed for another 199 district workers.
• The district has spent $2.5 million to turn a district-owned property — one it agreed to sell in 2016 when it was under state control and then reacquired years later — into a museum, a project that “shows little progress.”
• It also spent $566,000 to build, equip, and operate a gym in an administrative building that is used by an average of seven people a day.

The audit is bad enough. The school district’s response is loony.

“The state audit report concludes that the district’s financial transactions were properly recorded in the accounting systems, were related to the district’s programs, and were reasonable,” the district said in a press release.

That is indeed the beginning of the audit’s conclusion. But the very next sentence adds that there are multiple areas that merit school officials’ attention, including the millions in spending to build a museum and hundreds of thousands for a barely used gym, and the audit also says, again, that certain matters were referred to the state’s division of criminal justice. This is not good news for New Jersey’s largest school district and it’s hardly a moment for school officials there to crow.

Assemblywoman Dawn Fantasia, a Sussex County Republican and charter school administrator, said she thinks the audit shows that the state needs to take the district over again. The state relinquished control in 2017 after 22 years.

The district’s superintendent, Roger Leòn, is “absolutely out of control,” she said.

“Not only am I pissed off to all hell because my school districts up in cowtown get the shaft, I’m pissed off because I’ve been working with kids in urban areas for 19 years. I’ve been in Paterson. I’ve been in Jersey City. I’ve been in Kearny. I’ve been in the city of Passaic. I’ve been in Garfield. That’s where our charter schools are. We even have a school in the Bronx. I have been working with this population of kids and families for 19 years. And this guy is a special kind of special to exploit what those kids and their families need and literally bleeding the state dry,” she said.

Why León will remain Newark’s superintendent for four more years is itself worth investigating. The city’s school board in September 2025 rejected a move to extend his contract after parents raised concerns about student achievement and more. The vote fell one short of the necessary tally to keep León past June 2028.

Then in October, a board member who had initially abstained from voting on the contract extension had a sudden change of heart, and the board’s president, Hasani Council, decided that meant that León’s contract had been extended after all, as reported by Chalkbeat Newark. The board didn’t even take another vote. Just, poof!, contract renewed to 2030.

“I don’t know what this spell is that this man has over this district, what deals he’s worked out,” Fantasia said.

At the time of the apparent contract renewal, I asked the state Department of Education whether it was legal for a school board to renew a superintendent’s contract without voting on it. Spokeswoman Diana Pasculli said, “The New Jersey Department of Education cannot publicly comment on local school board matters.” The state can indeed comment on local school board matters; it just won’t.

Assemblywoman Vicky Flynn, a Monmouth County Republican and former school board member, wants heads to roll. When I asked her whose, she said, “Everyone — Roger Leon and up.”

 “Where is the state? They allowed this to go on, too, they share some accountability. The county superintendent, where are they?” Flynn said.

I asked the county superintendent, Joseph Zarra, to comment and he referred me to the Department of Education, which provided me with a substance-free statement that says nothing about the audit’s conclusions.

“The Commissioner firmly believes every student deserves access to the opportunities, resources and support they need to succeed, and that an effective public education system delivers this with a focus on strong academic foundations alongside responsible stewardship of public investment. That commitment is guiding the Department’s statewide school funding outreach, which is bringing together stakeholders from across New Jersey to help advance a funding system that is more transparent, predictable, accountable and sustainable while putting students first,” said spokeswoman Cecilia Williams.

I didn’t ask about changes to the state’s funding formula, which has nothing to do with Newark’s current troubles. But I think this shows that the state’s reaction to all this is, at least for the time being, to stick their fingers in their ears.

Newark school district spokesman Paul Brubaker said the district’s critics are using the audit to “tell a story other than the truth.”

“The truth is that Newark Public Schools has done more with less, and we have the receipts to prove it. The district has earned local, state, and national recognition based on multiple measures of achievement and progress. Annual independent audits comprehensively examine our finances, which are in order. And when communities are in crisis, they deserve leadership from their elected officials — not abdication of duty, deflection of responsibility, and repetition of the same old bitter, twisted lies,” he said.

Brubaker said the district is reviewing the report’s recommendations.

Newark schools may be showing incremental improvement, but test scores are abysmal. State data shows the district’s English language arts proficiency rate is 34%. For math, it’s 22%. Those same numbers statewide are 53% and 42%. Just 11% of Newark students are deemed proficient on a science assessment, compared to 27% for the state. Sixty-seven percent of the district’s 11th graders are graduation-ready in language arts (statewide, the number is 81%) and 40% in math (59% statewide).

None of this is going to be helped by a district museum or a gym for its administrators. I don’t think a state takeover would help either, because it didn’t the last time. It might be helped by a state government more interested in examining the district’s failures and trying to correct them. I’m not sure we have one of those at the moment.

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