Those attending the coming Newark Public Schools Advisory Board meetings and related public functions can anticipate some stormy sessions from Feb. 21 through June 30.

Parent advocacy and community groups are likely to hold emergency sessions prior to the NPSAB's Feb. 21 business meeting scheduled for 5:30 p.m. here at 2 Spruce St.

The Abbott Leadership Institute, for example, has set aside its scheduled 10 a.m. Feb. 11 agenda at Rutgers' Conklin Hall Room No. 100 for "An Alternative to School Closings." The Secondary Parents Council had held its emergency meeting 6 p.m. Feb. 7 at New Light Missionary Baptist Church, 14th A

New Light Baptist Pastor Sean Evans welcomed some 60 men, women and children to the West Side Park neighborhood sanctuary. The gathering, including people from Burnet and Miller Street schools and Barringer NAF 9th Grade Academy, resolved to have four informational and motivational committees formed on or before their next session back at New Light 7 p.m. Feb. 14.

 

The additional meetings are in response to an attempted meeting between State District Schools Superintendent Cami Anderson and parents at Rutgers Paul Robeson Student Center 5:30 p.m. Feb. 3. What was originally scheduled as another "Meet the Superintendent" session was advertised through a handbill a "Local Talk" deliver received at West Side High School at about 5:30 p.m. Feb. 2.

That was about the same time, however, that a daily publication received a list of seven schools - running from Pre-Kindergarten through Ninth Grade - that the district intends to close after June 30.

The superintendent meet ended with Anderson leaving the Essex Room stage to audience hoots and shouts before 6:10 p.m.

Anderson has meanwhile been said to be holding meetings with parents of the affected schools either at 2 Cedar St. or on those schools' properties. Thirteenth Avenue School PTA President Lyndon Brown, in Feb. 6-7 e-mails to "Local Talk," said that his school's parents were to meet with Anderson about "taking in some of MKL School's students," at 2 Cedar St. 6 p.m. Feb. 7.

That appointment time was simultaneous with a Secondary Parents Council's emergency session. Brown was also concerned about space, given that one floor of Thirteenth Avenue has been given over to North Star Academy's Fairmount Elementary school this school year.

What Anderson was trying to explain - and what parents and other community members have been reacting to - was of what would take the place of the seven Newark public schools when the 2012-13 academic year starts Sept. 4.

It is to the understanding of "Local Talk" that the following seven schools are to close after June 30: Burnet Street, Dayton Street, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Eighteenth Avenue and Miller Street schools plus the Barringer 9 Success and the West Side NAF academies. The first five schools instruct students from Pre-K through Eighth grades and the latter two are the respective Barringer and West Side high schools' ninth grades in separate buildings.

These seven schools have been targeted for shut downs largely on federal No Child Left Behind data, including New Jersey Department of Education's statewide test results. The seven are among those who have had failed to make NCLB's annual yearly progress category for five to nine years in a row.

District administrators have also targeted these schools for pronounced declining enrollment. The district's enrollment has fallen under the 40,000-student mark last school year. That trend may affect future school funding since state aid, which makes up about 80 percent of the $935 million annual budget, has been based on per-pupil tuition since 2009-10.

Barringer 9 and West Side NAF are to be returned to their respective high school buildings.

Two of the PreK-8 schools will be replaced with two middle or junior high schools. Those two Seventh-Eighth Grade schools - Eagle and Young Women's Leadership academies - will have same-gender student bodies.

The remaining students displaced by the seven schools' closing will be transferred or promoted to adjacent elementary, middle or high schools. Some of these pupils may have access to several new magnet high schools.

Further plan details, besides that "existing school buildings will be used," are less clear as of 3 p.m. Feb. 7.

What and how Barringer 9 and West Side NAF's sites - previously the Morton and Summer street schools - will be used remains one of the open questions.

Lady Liberty Academy Charter School, under NJDoE's urgent request, was to move into part of Dayton Street School. Lady Liberty, under state academic watch, was instead moved from 23 Pennsylvania Ave. in the Lincoln Park neighborhood to another Archdiocese of Newark building - the former Holy Cross School in Harrison - Sept. 1.

The Burnet Street School was subject to be moved and its building renovated or replaced as part of the Broad Street Station redevelopment zone. That zone - from Broadway and Seventh Avenue west to Nesbitt Street and south into University Heights and downtown - includes the James Street Commons which this school is part of.

Burnet, this school year, has been housing the new Great Oaks Academy Charter School on one of its four floors. There has been no indication on Great Oaks' Website on whether it will also vacate the building or have it all.

The William H. Brown Academy of the Arts, originally known as the Bergen Street School, meanwhile remains vacant for nearly three years. Some of its Seventh and Eighth graders are part of a pilot arts program in Arts High School; most of its other students are in the Belmont-Runyon School.

It is also not known where any of the public charter schools will take up partial or full space in the seven-to-be-vacated buildings. Newark Prep and Paulo Freire charter schools, which were approved Jan. 20 to open Sept. 4.

There is also the Sakia Gunn High and one other school whose opening the Anderson administration had deferred for a full school year. The Gunn school, modeled after the Harvey Milk school in New York City, would provide a safer environment for LGBTQ youth.

The NPSAB's regular meeting has been meanwhile set for the West Side School Auditorium 6 p.m. Feb. 28. Public speakers are urged to register in writing to 2 Cedar St. at least five business days in advance for three or five minutes' maximum speakin