newjerseynewsroom.com

BY JOE TYRRELL

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

A state senator said his concerns about educational spending and policies go beyond acting Education Commissioner Christopher Cerf to the "wealth relationships" behind proposed changes to Newark schools.

A day after exercising senatorial courtesy to block Cerf's appointment from becoming permanent, state Sen. Ron Rice (D-Essex) called the attention given the legislative maneuver "a distraction from the real issues."

Decisions are being made behind closed doors, and money changing hands privately, to further policies "that could be a real detriment to the taxpayers and to our schools," Rice said.

"It's all about the big-money interests, the hedge funds, who's serving on who else's boards, contracts being given out and (Mayor) Cory Booker in the middle of it all," Rice said.

Cerf has been under a cloud since the release last month of a secretively prepared report that recommended sweeping reconfigurations of Newark public schools, including the closure of some and the merger of others with privately run charter schools.

The report was written by a firm, Global Education Advisors, started in May by Cerf and based in his Montclair home. He has maintained that he severed connections in early December, shortly before accepting the commissioner's post from Gov. Chris Christie as announced on Dec. 20.

Booker eventually disclosed that the $500,000 paid to GEA came from the Broad Foundation of Los Angeles, and said he obtained the money.

Cerf is the former head of Edison Schools Inc., the nation's largest school management firm, which is 2002 settled with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which found it had inflated its revenues. The firm, its top executives, bankers and accountants later reached settlements with investors.

After leaving Edison, Cerf completed a 10-month Broad management course. So it is unclear the extent to which involvement by Booker, who has no authority over the Newark school district, was needed to secure the grant to GEA.

Even after Cerf's departure, GEA is run by his associate Rajeev Bajaj, who is also president of Sangari Global Education, where Cerf was an executive before taking the state post. That followed a 2004-9 stint as deputy schools chancellor in New York City under Joel Klein.

Booker identified Cerf as a mayoral consultant on the schools last year. In an e-mail interview with Robert Braun in The Star-Ledger, Cerf characterized his work for GEA on Newark schools as "limited to doing a 'diagnostic' that would serve as a fact basis for others, including the new superintendent," a job held on an interim basis by Deborah Terrell. The full interview is available here: http://blog.nj.com/njv_bob_braun/2011/02/new_jersey_education_chief_cer.html

Last month, Rice tried to get Cerf to appear before his Joint Committee on Public Schools, but the acting commissioner was a no-show. Rice said Cerf had lied to him by denying knowing Booker, a charge reported by PolitickerNJ here: http://www.politickernj.com/45154/rice-dug-against-cerf-unless-acting-education-commish-goes-his-committee

While Booker has said the school reorganizations will take effect in September, the plan requires approval from Cerf, who said he sees no conflict-of-interest in ruling on it.

"I'm surprised to read that Gov. Christie said objections to this are just politics," Rice said. "When he was U.S. Attorney, if you brought this sort of thing to him... he would take a look at it, you could rely on him to investigate. But now, I don't know if he's interested."

With a $100 million donation from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, and millions more being raised by Booker, Rice said the GEA contract is just a small piece of the money flowing into Newark without transparency or accountability.

"These are the sort of things that are starting to upset the taxpayers here," he said.

In response to publicity about the GEA contract and report, Booker promised greater transparency in the future, and released a list of donors. But one item immediately attracted attention because the money is not ticketed for Newark schools.

The biggest player in the school reform/privatization movement, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gave $3 million to the NewSchools Venture Fund, where a co-founder, venture capitalist John Doerr, is also on the donors list.

Rice, who lost to Booker in the 2006 mayor's race, acknowledged the two have a testy relationship and said he has not gotten anywhere asking questions of the administration.

"He doesn't talk to me much... and then it's just a lot of rhetoric," Rice said.

He pointed out that many of the same names and organizations turn up in school "reform" efforts and contracts around Newark, New Jersey and the country. They include a limited number of major players, like the Broad Foundation, established in 1999 by construction and finance magnate Eli Broad and his wife, he said.

In the absence of public meetings and contracts with the sort of financial disclosures required in the public schools, "there needs to be some entity that's overseeing the money and folks coming into New Jersey" and their connections to public officials, Rice said.

Neither Christie, Booker nor Cerf responded to requests for comment, as Rice predicted.

"It's like certain people have been placed in protective compartments," he said. "You can't ask questions of them, and you can't ask questions about them."

Joe Tyrrell may be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it