Zuckerberg Money for Newark Schools Has Stipulations

NJ Spotlight recently reported on a few of the conditions and limitations that have been placed on the $100 million gift bestowed upon the Newark public school system by Facebook entrepreneur Mark Zuckerberg.

Documents, obtained through an Open Public Records Act request filed by the Education Law Center, a Newark-based educational advocacy group, detail the restrictions imposed by the Foundation for Newark’s Future (FNF), which is funded through the Zuckerberg gift.

Among the conditions, the FNF reserves the right to “suspend payments” if the district were to hire leadership not supported by the foundation - including the superintendent, a job now held by Cami Anderson.

With the Newark public schools under state control -- as they have been since 1995 -- elected school advisory board members now have no power to hire and fire the superintendent. The advisory board is currently trying to win back the right to name the district’s top official through the courts.

But with the foundation reserving the right to withhold Zuckerberg funds the schools advisory board may still find its hands tied even if the state is forced by the courts to cede its right to name the next superintendent.  

“I found a number of things questionable and in some cases extremely disturbing,” Antoinette Baskerville-Richardson, the president of the schools advisory board, told NJ Spotlight. “This gives an unprecedented amount of leverage to an independent organization. That’s the most egregious thing to me.”