By Walter Elliott
NEWARK – The controversy over a prominent charter school network offering a sitting Newark Public Schools Board of Education member a seat on their board may spill into NPS’ scheduled Oct. 28 public meeting.
KIPP, on one of its Oct. 13 Tweets, announced that they are welcoming A’Dorian Murray-Thomas “to the KIPP Board.”
The KIPP Tweet lists Murray-Thomas as the founder of “SHE Wins NJ, a President Obama White House Champion of Change and the youngest woman ever elected to @NPSvoices.”
The above highlights on Murray-Thomas’ resume are accurate. She founded SHE Wins, Inc. to prepare Newark girls to attend college and become civic leaders. President Obama had named her among his 2016 11 “Champions of Change for College Opportunity.”
The White House and NPS websites have listed some of Murray-Thomas’ additional accomplishments. They include advocating for Rutgers Abbott Leadership Institute’s Youth Medium Symposium to receive a $100,000 grant from State Farm while she was that insurance company’s education committee chairwoman.
Murray-Thomas was 23 when she was elected to the NPS board on April 20, 2019. A majority of participating city voters gave her a candidate-high 4,935 votes, leading a “Moving Newark Schools Forward” team sweep. Her current term expires May 1, 2022.
KIPP, however, has selected Murray-Thomas for one of 17 seats on their KIPP Foundation Board of Directors. The non-profit foundation, according to its website, “trains and develops outstanding educators to lead KIPP schools.”
Foundation board members serve three-year terms. They are serving as volunteers – except that KIPP pays their lodging and meeting expenses and are “encouraged” to make a financial contribution to KIPP.
Prospective foundation board members are to first apply for the position.
The Newark-headquartered KIPP: New Jersey approached Murray-Thomas in part because its foundation’s directors have to be its schools’ alumni. She attended and had been promoted from KIPP: TEAM Academy middle school in the South Ward on her way to Gill, Mass.’ Northfield Mt. Hermon School and Swarthmore (Pa.) College.
Murray-Thomas, on Oct. 18, said she has not starter serving on the New York City-based foundation. She added that being on that board would not be a conflict of interest because the foundation is not involved in school-level operations or contracts.
The NBOE’s bylaws state that members should not take paid or volunteer positions that “might reasonably be expected to prejudice” their official positions. Its bylaws add that members should avoid actions that could lead to questioning “the integrity of any board decision.”
Public school advocate Yolanda Johnson said Murray-Thomas should choose one or the other board but not serve both. UFT teachers union president John Abeigon quoted Mathew 6:24, “No one can serve two masters,” in his Facebook response.
The KIPP Foundation board, should Murray-Thomas, would be molding teachers for the nation’s largest non-profit charter school network. It and KIPP corporate serves 120,000 students in 20 states and Washington, DC.
KIPP: New Jersey, at 14 schools and 5,000 students, operates Newark’s largest charter school network. (It also runs four schools in Camden.)
NPS, the state’s largest public school district, includes 40,000 students among 64 schools.
NPS and KIPP: New Jersey are currently in court over the disposition of the former Maple Avenue Elementary School building. The former is trying to get the building back after it was sold to a developer who intended to convert it into an apartment building.
That developer, however, sold the building to KIPP. KIPP moved its SEEK Academy into the Maple Avenue building Sept. 1.
NPS was among the plaintiffs and KIPP among the respondents in a case over charter school expansion brought before the N,J, Supreme Court in April. The plaintiff had asserted that allowing the charter schools to continue its 2016-21 classroom expansion would further segregation at public school expense.
The state’s high court ruled June 21 that the charters may continue its New Jersey Department of Education-promised expansion. The NJ Supreme Court will allow public districts to oppose future charter expansion by attempting to prove how it would harm their school budgets.
