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BY SHARON McCLOSKEY and JOE TYRRELL

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

SPECIAL REPORT: SECOND OF THREE PARTS

Glen Pinder arrived at Newark's Lady Liberty Academy Charter School in 2009, wreathed in publicity from his brief tenure with the Harlem Children's Zone.

There, despite his own occasional misgivings, Pinder had succeeded in improving test scores at a small middle school serving impoverished students. The venture was part of education activist Geoffrey Canada's ambitious effort to transform academic opportunities for Harlem children.

Pinder faced familiar challenges in Newark. Lady Liberty served the same poor, urban neighborhood Pinder had seen in Harlem and while growing up in Georgia. He also faced a similar deadline. In New York, it had been improving test scores. In Newark, it was more than that. He first had to get the school's charter renewed.

Lady Liberty was already an eight-year experiment when Pinder arrived. It had struggled in its early years, but seemed to have turned the corner by the 2007-2008 school year. Student scores on standardized state tests, though still below desirable proficiency numbers, were on the rise. But then its principal left for another school.

SPECIAL REPORT:

New Jersey's Charter School experiment: Inside Newark's Lady Liberty Academy

With the backing of Mayor Cory Booker, the bankroll of the Newark Charter School Fund, and the support of the two or three board members active at the time, Pinder wasted no time putting his imprint on the Newark school.

In their haste to install the new regime, though, Pinder and the board may have skirted their obligations under the state's charter school law and other statutes.

And in their quest to effectuate their distinct educational philosophy, Pinder and the board may have overlooked much of the good that was already underway at Lady Liberty.

Cleaning House

During the summer of 2009, school officials hired consultants to revamp the curriculum and develop strategies to adjust expectations and student behavior.

The school purchased new science equipment to fit out labs, and smart boards for classrooms. Electricians and other contractors worked on the building itself, rewiring and retrofitting space for offices.

Certainly the run-down former parochial school needed the work, and perhaps curricula and policies needed tweaking, but at what price? That was hard to determine, since the school rebuffed most requests for information under the state Open Public Records Act about the nature and costs of these improvements.

Minutes of board meetings – when they exist – lack information about the school's expenditures during this period. They do not reflect any approval of contracts; nor do they indicate compliance with the state public contracts law requiring public bids on jobs of $25,000.

The school's board was no more forthcoming in responding to OPRA requests, being unable to document advertisements for bids and contracts.

Even Glen Pinder's contract as principal was unavailable, despite repeated requests. (Lady Liberty officials finally provided one in June 2010, dated May 22, 2009. For a three-year term beginning July 13, 2009, it shows a $165,000 base salary, plus a $30,000 signing bonus, plus $10,000 annual retention bonuses.)

In some ways, Pinder took charge quickly. Lady Liberty's remaining administration was quickly phased out, replaced by a small but well-paid core group – colleagues of Pinder's from New York – earning over $600,000.

After an audit turned up a misuse of federal Title I educational funding for disadvantaged students, Pinder took over supervision of that program himself.

He brought in new teachers and consultants, clearing up some past problems. The state charter schools office had discovered credential problems with other employees. One teacher was indicted on a charge of working three years with a forged teaching certificate.

Pinder knew that some of his changes would not be welcome. What he did not expect, though, was that he would be locked in protracted disputes with teachers, including an enthusiastic newcomer to the school.

Lean on Me

Glen Pinder sat at the two folding tables along the window side of the classroom at Lady Liberty, gathered with the school elders for the monthly school board meeting. It was 8 a.m. on a weekday, a time certain to keep parents, teachers and other members of the public away.

The festive air of the approaching holidays was distinctly absent from the room, since in addition to the usual litany of reports from the director and budgets from the business administrator, today's agenda included one particularly pressing matter: the trial of one errant kindergarten teacher, Kim Kurus. The offense: allowing her students to color during class time.

A single mother with two children, Kurus sat facing the board, nervously fingering the folders she'd gathered to refute the charges, pages of one-inch ruled composition paper with letters of the alphabet neatly penciled between the straight and dotted lines.

By now, Pinder had been the school's executive director for six months. Some loved his brash, take-no-prisoners swagger that went along with his imposing frame.

"I'd call him a modern day Joe Clark," said Michaela Murray-Nolan, director of the after-school program, in a nod to the bat-wielding Paterson, N.J., school principal chronicled in the movie "Lean on Me."

Others were less impressed.

"He's a bully," said teacher Susan Gamba, who would soon be on the chopping block herself.

Long-time board President Raymond Codey, representing the school's founder, New Community Corp., moved methodically through the agenda, peppering the others with questions as needed.

But when he reached the Kurus matter, he handed it over to Glen Pinder.

"Often times when I stopped in the classroom, I noticed that the children were just coloring," Pinder began. He wanted Kurus fired.

"Untrue," answered Kurus. "They were writing."

Kurus suspected that the deck was stacked against her here. In his quest to right the Lady Liberty ship, Pinder had announced to all the teachers back in September that their jobs had been posted as open and available on the NJHire jobs website, and the resumes were streaming in.

The board members had questions. First up, Anthony Thomas, a federal public defender.

"I couldn't help but notice, Ms. Kurus," he said, "that when you referred to Mr. Pinder you kept saying ‘he' and not ‘Mr. Pinder,' and that bothers me." This caused others in the room to sit up straight, fix their ties and nod their heads in agreement. Ms. Kurus apologized – and from that point all addressed the school leader formally.

De'Shawn Wright, a partner with the Newark Charter School Fund and the newest member of the board, followed. The Fund was the war chest being amassed to fix broken schools in Newark, with money from Bill Gates and friends. These donors knew Glen Pinder had to make his numbers – in No Child Left Behind parlance, that meant getting his students to 90 percent proficiency levels on the state standardized tests by 2012.

If not, the school risked the loss of some federal funding and faced the embarrassment of once again being labeled "in need of improvement."

"I sense a certain amount of animosity, an unwillingness to get with the program, and that troubles me," Wright said to Kurus.

Wright had spent several years in New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's schools office, and then crossed the river to serve as chief policy advisor to Newark Mayor Cory Booker. A little under two years ago, he left the mayor's office for a position with the fund. Now that he and the fund's partners had bet serious dollars on Glen Pinder turning around Lady Liberty, his own reputation was on the line.

All heads turned back to Codey, the poker-faced board president, who looked again to Mr. Pinder.

"I stand by my recommendation," said Pinder. "Ms. Kurus should be terminated."

For a moment, the still silence of a looming execution filled the room.

"Wait a minute," came a voice from the far end of the board table, breaking the tension. All eyes then turned to Kaylin Dines, a board member who had breezed in mid-meeting and was rifling through the folder placed before her, looking somewhat perplexed.

"I'm a little uncomfortable making this decision right now," she continued. "I haven't seen anything. I'd like to see Mr. Pinder's written evaluations and recommendation. And I'd like to see what Ms. Kurus brought with her."

Others at the table turned their heads from one to another, while those in the galley sat transfixed on Dines. The second hand clicked loudly on the wall clock.

"Of course," Codey finally jumped in. "We can take some time. Christmas is coming."

And with that, Mr. Codey suspended a verdict until the next meeting and directed Ms. Kurus, and all those gathered in her defense, to come prepared.

Accidental Antagonists

"I became a teacher by accident," Glen Pinder recalled in his office. But he identified with his small charges at Lady Liberty.

From a humble background, Pinder earned a political science degree. But that only sent him bouncing through varied jobs around his native Georgia.

Then, he heard Atlanta had openings for substitute teachers.

"I was really good with kids," said Pinder, reflecting on experiences he had as a camp counselor. He took to the classroom, felt he was benefiting the community and got his teaching certification. But opportunity quickly called elsewhere.

"A Kuwaiti school wanted its students to have an American curriculum, but also Islamic studies, so it was fairly conservative," he said.

Pinder would spend the next three years there, his longest tenure at any school. But he was also working on his master's degree, and while taking a course in Spain, he had a conversation with a fellow American that changed his perspective.

He remembered that he started working in education to help his own community.

"Working in Kuwait, you're not really doing that," Pinder said.

So he returned to the United States and moved quickly through a series of jobs, including several in New Jersey, working his way upward into positions of greater responsibility. Along the way, Pinder went through the principal-training program of the vaunted and no-nonsense Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP).

After a brief tenure as principal of a Red Bank elementary school, Pinder joined what may be the apex of the urban charter school effort, parachuting in as the new principal of a middle school principal in the Harlem Children's Zone in June 2006.

As Paul Tough wrote in "Whatever It Takes," Pinder asked what kind of job security he would have and was told none. He took the job anyway.

Once there, Pinder took on what he deemed to be a big problem -- student behavior. Early on, he held an all-day discipline seminar for teachers. And he shocked the students with an outburst, laying down the law to the troublesome eighth-grade class. But the bigger job was preparing for statewide tests with little time.

The initial test results were not good, and the middle school program was cut back. By Tough's account, Pinder blamed the students, calling the cutbacks a way to "eliminate the riffraff" from the school.

But as more results trickled in, the picture looked better. By the time the eighth grade math scores were completed, Pinder's class beat the state and city averages. HCZ decided to rework the middle school anyway, but Pinder's work caught the attention of Newark's mayor and the Charter School Fund.

"I was really excited when Glen Pinder was hired," said Kurus. "I had done my research, read about the Harlem Children's Zone, and when Mr. Pinder said he was excited to work with everybody, I thought it was a great opportunity."

Kurus was new to Lady Liberty herself, joining the staff after a kindergarten teacher resigned in February 2009. She was in the process of obtaining a master's degree in education, putting herself through night school while teaching during the day.

Pinder's accusations about her students coloring in class and looking up answers to questions puzzled Kurus. After all, her students were only 5-years-old.

"He doesn't understand that that's how children that age learn," Kurus said. "They don't know all the answers, they get things wrong and they go over the right answers and we talk about them and they learn them. He thought they were cheating."

But Pinder was under the gun. He had pledged to improve students' test scores, and that hurdle loomed even as Lady Liberty sought to renew its charter. Coloring simply did not fit with the program.

Kurus's optimism about the new administration was short-lived. Like some other teachers, she became dismayed when Lady Liberty started the fall semester without an English language arts curriculum. Teachers said they were left to devise their own courses, following plans they believed met state standards.

Curriculum was the province of Beatrice Samson, of one of the six-figure-salaried assistants Pinder brought from New York. But teachers said Samson had not issued the English curriculum or responded to their plans.

"Ms. Samson was supposed to review our lesson plans and provide feedback," Kurus said. "She never commented on any of them."

Kurus complained about this to Pinder. "He just said, ‘She's giving them back.' I told him she wasn't, but he just repeated that she was."

For some teachers, Samson became an irritant. They contended that she was not fulfilling her curriculum duties, but was instead conducting teacher evaluations even though she was not certified in New Jersey.

Union Blues

Some of the staff was quickly growing disenchanted with the new administration. For Kim Kurus, things began to go wrong on Nov. 9.

"Mr. Pinder brought me back into his office and asked me how the meeting went," she said. "At the time, I had no idea what he was talking about and asked him. He said, 'Don't play dumb.'"

She left puzzled, knowing Pinder was miffed. Two days later, she learned her first in-class observation and evaluation, scheduled for December, had been moved up to the following Friday.

Other teachers said Pinder asked about a meeting among teachers to circulate a petition calling for his ouster, but said that never happened.

"The petition was something Glen Pinder made up," Gamba said. "A couple of us wanted to talk about bringing in a union, for our protection. We called that meeting to see who else was interested."

"This is the first I'm hearing anything about a union," Pinder said months later.

Some, though not all, charter school advocates see the lack of unionized staff as one advantage over other schools supported by public tax dollars.

But if nipping organizational activity in the bud is part of Pinder's brief at Lady Liberty, it is not one that is publicly enunciated. Caution about legal matters constrains him from commenting on specific personnel issues, putting him at a disadvantage in responding to teacher comments on the issue.

School board attorney Morton Goldfein said there is no need for Lady Liberty to enunciate its policy on organizing activities. If teachers want to join a union, he said, "under the law, they're entitled to do so."