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Article Index"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."
