How to improve Newark City Schools

The largest player in community perception of Newark City Schools is the superintendent, as it should be. Under his leadership, with school board backing, city schools have morphed from a once-admirable community asset into something feared, a constant problem against which taxpayers must defend themselves.

On August 6 I called for the superintendent to be replaced and for the schools to stop bullying the community.

Neither has happened. Meanwhile I've delivered sermonettes here on "Ask not what your school district can do for you ..." and "Newark Schools: No more sucker punches, no more B.S." and"Keith, the invincible. Or not." and "Latest levy request is insolence"

Next week NCS is coming back at voters with yet another levy request, and if that doesn't pass, the promise is to bring it again.

Over and over property owners have decisively told Keith and Company that we are tapped out. There comes a point where self-survival kicks in and real-estate taxpayers reached it long ago. Still, NCS/Keith can't trim their professed "needs" enough to balance with the burden on homeowners already place, in addition to the healthy tax on citizens' income.

Moreover, I wouldn't be surprised if parents and other voters aren't wondering why they ever let NCS/Keith close our neighborhood schools in favor of new buildings out in the boonies without school busses and where few can get to by foot and parental auto traffic can be aggravating. This is an example of how NCS constituents are being served.

Another is the raise that Newark Schools staff employees received just after the defeat of the last levy request. You'd expect the schools to begin tightening belts, but in this instance they didn't.

Yet another is the subsequent raise given to teachers. You don't have to be very perceptive to recognize that these raises are not what citizens mandated when they overwhelmingly put down the schools' most recent request for more money: a genuinely frugal, cut-spending-to-the-bones management plan. Giving more raises was an act of defiance on the part of NCS/Keith.

I was dismayed - as must have been most taxpayers - to learn by what amount Keith Richards is overpaid. His $201,433 and 30 days vacation is an obscene extravagance for a community in which the average salary is about $29,000, according to SimplyHired.Com.

The Newark median earnings for men is $32,542/yr and for women $24,868. Median-wise they have a $566/mo mortgage payment, plus taxes and insurance. The average property tax in Newark is, according to Rates.Banks.com, already $1,321.539/yr, and Keith Richards - making $201,433 a year with 30 days vacation - is asking Average Joe go out to dinner one time fewer each month so he can pay more in property taxes "for the sake of the kids."

Keith Richards has already retired once, almost surely with an income that beats the Newark median by far. So it is that we who own property in Newark and we who live here and have an income are contributing as serfs (required by our taxpayer status) to pay for the enhancement of Keith Richards' lifetime estate.

Meanwhile, there should be a stable full of talented school managers willing to work for a lot less and be a lot more accommodating to the people who are paying the bills, managers who can balance income with expenditures. I say go find one, and do so quickly - because I really want to again become a supporter of our once-admirable city school district.