Camden School Choice Advocates and Detractors "as a board member, I'm lied to all the time"
Laura Waters:
At last night's NJ Spotlight Roundtable entitled "Camden Schools and the Future of Urban Education in New Jersey, Camden School Board Member Sean Brown (a last-minute replacement for Asst. Superintendent Patricia Kenny) related this story to a large and boisterous audience at the Camden-Rutgers Campus Center.
In August 2011, Mr. Brown paid an unannounced visit to the Camden Public Schools' Central Office, about two weeks before school started. In a back room he discovered "at least a hundred boxes of smart boards." Smart boards are interactive white boards, popular in classrooms, that retail for about $5,000. Disturbed by the sight, he took a picture and texted it to then-Superintendent Bessie LeFra Young and his fellow school board members.
The response? He was reprimanded for paying the unexpected visit and told that Security and Maintenance shouldn't have let him in.
The following week he repeated his visit. With school due to start in one week, the smart boards were still in their original boxes. As an aside, he remarked, "At last night's NJ Spotlight Roundtable entitled "Camden Schools and the Future of Urban Education in New Jersey, Camden School Board Member Sean Brown (a last-minute replacement for Asst. Superintendent Patricia Kenny) related this story to a large and boisterous audience at the Camden-Rutgers Campus Center.
In August 2011, Mr. Brown paid an unannounced visit to the Camden Public Schools' Central Office, about two weeks before school started. In a back room he discovered "at least a hundred boxes of smart boards." Smart boards are interactive white boards, popular in classrooms, that retail for about $5,000. Disturbed by the sight, he took a picture and texted it to then-Superintendent Bessie LeFra Young and his fellow school board members.
The response? He was reprimanded for paying the unexpected visit and told that Security and Maintenance shouldn't have let him in.
The following week he repeated his visit. With school due to start in one week, the smart boards were still in their original boxes. As an aside, he remarked, "as a board member, I'm lied to all the time."
Posted by Jim Zellmer at April 3, 2013 4:03 AM
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