Booker Seeks Vouchers, Says He Could Best Bloomberg on Schools

The mayor of Newark, Cory Booker, says he could turn around his city's struggling schools in half the time it has taken Mayor Bloomberg to make improvements in New York City's schools — if voters grant him mayoral control.

Merit pay for teachers, vouchers, more charter schools and New York City-style empowerment for principals are also on Mr. Booker's schools agenda, which he disclosed to The New York Sun in an interview last week. In the interview he also declared his aspirations to take over Newark's schools as Mayor Bloomberg has done in New York City. He said he would then follow the example of Chancellor Joel Klein, one of his heroes when it comes to education, by slimming down the bureaucracy and devolving more power and money to individual schools.

"Joel is a great model. I just believe, very optimistically, that Joel Klein is dealing with a million kids, and we're dealing with 44,000," Mr. Booker said. "So we're going to be able to show a difference a lot earlier."

Education has been on the back burner during Mr. Booker's first seven months in office. The mayor has focused instead on quelling the city's relentless crime and violence, although he has expressed support for vouchers and charter schools in the past. The interview came four days after Mr. Booker's first "State of the City" address in which his remarks on education touched mainly on his efforts to obtain more school construction funding and the creation of two college scholarship funds for Newark students.

Part of the reason for his relative silence is because for now, he is powerless when it comes to the city's school system, the executive director of the Rutgers University Institute on Education, Law and Policy, Brenda Liss, said. The state education department has run Newark's school district since 1995, when it determined that Newark was both unable and unwilling to enact reforms.

"It's because he understands he doesn't have any authority to make major changes," Ms. Liss said. "Any changes that he's going to make in the schools are not going to have an overnight effect … His focus on crime is much more urgent, there's a short-term component that he can't hope to have in the schools."

That could soon change. Mr. Booker said he believes the state could return the schools to local control, at least partially, within three years. The vice chairperson of Newark's school advisory board, Richard Cammarieri, said he believes it could happen as soon as this year, and a state education department spokesman, Jon Zlock, didn't dispute that time frame.

Even if the state does return control of the schools to the city, overhauling the Newark schools could become a more daunting task for Mr. Booker than his struggle to tamp down the city's homicide rate.

Under state law, if the state education department determines that Newark is ready for local control, Newarkers would still have to wait a year before they would vote in a referendum on what sort of school governance they want. Normally in New Jersey, school districts either have an elected school board or a school board appointed by the mayor. Currently, Newark has an elected board that serves an advisory function.

"Unless the local district decides to revert to an appointed school board, the mayor has no power over the school district," Mr. Cammarieri said. "I don't see what the mayor can possibly do."

If Mr. Booker fails in convincing Newarkers to let him appoint school board members or abolish the school board altogether in favor of mayoral control (something that would probably also require passing legislation at the state level), he said he is determined to find other ways to exert influence over the school system.

"I have to," he said, acknowledging that part of his urgency to get control of the schools is a sense that his efforts to combat crime may not succeed if they aren't coupled with improvements in the schools.

"I feel like I have my back against the wall," he said. "If I can't get de jure control of the schools, I'm going to find a way to get de facto influence over them."

One way, he said, is to lobby at the state level for pieces of his plan that require state authorization. Right now a bill for a private school tax credit is making its way through the legislature, and the state's cap on the number of charter schools is nowhere near being reached. He has said he is working on encouraging well-known, successful charter schools such as the Knowledge is Power Program and Uncommon Schools to establish a concentration of school franchises in Newark.

Also, the current schools superintendent announced she is stepping down in 2008, giving Mr. Booker a chance to influence the state's decision to appoint her successor.

The other way to win de facto control, he said, is to "partner with a larger coalition in Newark" in order to push through his ideas. But many in Newark, including some Booker supporters, suggest that won't be that easy.

In addition, the mayor's relationship with the Newark Teachers Union is off to a bad start, exacerbating the already difficult task of convincing the union to implement a merit pay system that would give teachers financial rewards for better student performance. This month the union sponsored a series of provocative billboards along the highways leading into the city that say: "Help Wanted, Stop the Killings in Newark Now!" Last week the ads also started appearing on the sides of buses and inside commuter trains.

"If the mayor thinks he can walk into Newark, be here for seven months, and control every aspect of education, he's wrong. He's very wrong," the president of the union, Joseph Del Grosso, said, adding that he was frustrated that the mayor, a lawyer, had yet to visit the union's headquarters across the street from City Hall to meet with the union. "We have our own plans and we're the educators."

He said the union would resist a Bloomberg model of reform, suggesting that Mr. Booker learn a lesson from some of the difficulties Mr. Klein, who like Mr. Booker is a lawyer, has faced in selling his plans to overhaul the schools in New York City. Last week a coalition of elected officials, parents and teachers called on Mr. Klein to halt the reorganization of the schools because they said he was ignoring their concerns.

Ronald C. Rice, a Newark Municipal Council Member and the son of Mr. Booker's opponent in the mayoral race, predicted that the council and other Newarkers would be supportive of some of the mayor's plans. But, he said, "A partnership is really the only way it's going to work, instead of pointing guns and trying to take each other out."

The dean of Milano The New School for Management and Urban Policy, Fred Hochberg, who hosted Mr. Booker in Manhattan as a part of a lecture series last week, said Mr. Booker could succeed if he takes advantage of the "political tail wind" following his overwhelming electoral victory.

"Somebody like Booker has a better chance," he said.

The founder of one of Newark's charter schools and an influential community leader, Stephen Adubato, is also optimistic about the possibilities for turning around the city's schools, although he was also wary of Mr. Booker's aspirations of mayoral control.

"It's a very hopeful time right now for all of us, we have a new start. We wondered if we could do it, now I think we can," he said, but added, "It's not the mayor. It's the council, and the mayor, and the people of Newark. It's not one person."