The Trenton Times published the following article on March 25, 2013. To read the full article, click here.

Trenton superintendent says privatizing Rivera Learning Community is off the table

By Erin Duffy/The Times of Trenton 
on March 24, 2013 at 7:40 AM, updated March 24, 2013 at 7:41 AM

TRENTON — While still insisting that a different approach is needed to reach students with emotional and behavioral problems at the district’s alternative middle school, Superintendent Francisco Duran said privatizing the school is now off the table.

As recently as two weeks ago, the district was considering privatizing Rivera Learning Community, outsourcing its educational program and day-to-day operations to a private vendor amid concerns that the district couldn’t provide all the services needed to serve a complex mix of students dealing with everything from anger problems to long-term suspensions to behavioral disabilities.

Mercer County’s alternative high school, Thomas J. Rubino Academy, is run by the private, for-profit Camelot Educational Services. Trenton’s own alternative high school, Daylight/Twilight, is run by the district.

A resolution to go out to bid for an outside company for Rivera appeared on the March 11 school board agenda but was pulled that night for further discussion.

Duran said on Friday the district has now dropped the idea to privatize the two-year-old school. “We’re not moving forward with that,” he said.

Asked why, Duran said only “there’s a lot of behind-the-scenes things,” and would not elaborate further.

Duran said the school will become a program, instead of a separate school, with students remaining enrolled at their home middle school. They’ll still attend classes daily at Rivera, which will move to the former Cadwalader Elementary School in September.

The move to privatize was the subject of some criticism at the March 11 board meeting, as one union official questioned why the district was tinkering with a school open for less than two years.

“When one person was here running it, it’s a success story,” said Naomi Johnson-Lafleur, president of the Trenton Education Association. “Then all of a sudden he leaves, so what happens in two months for you to even suggest you have a need to privatize?”

In presentations at past school board meetings, the school was touted as a making tangible progress, with increased levels of attendance from students who frequently skipped school before and a behavioral support team from Rutgers University helping staff. School board president Toby Sanders said he wasn’t as impressed.

“I never thought Rivera was doing great, but we gave them the benefit of the doubt because it was year one,” he said. “We are changing and shifting our strategies with responsiveness to the services the children are getting. We don’t continue to do the same thing when we know we aren’t getting optimal results. Middling results are not good enough.”

Opened in 2011 at the former Luis Munoz-Rivera Elementary School, Rivera Learning Community was devised for middle school students with behavioral or emotional problems, a way to remove kids who disrupt classes and monopolize their teachers’ time into a separate school with smaller class sizes and one-on-one attention.

The school has an enrollment of about 100, including a few special education students with behavioral disorders. Another 100 overflow middle-schoolers from crowded schools and the closed Emily Fisher Charter School are taught on the school’s second floor. In the 2011-2012 school year, Rivera’s budget was around $2.2 million, according to school documents.

The school was a pet project of former state fiscal monitor Mark Cowell, who left in January for the Camden school district.

Cowell said he thought the district needed to cull struggling or problem students — the chronically absent, the disruptive, the extreme introverts — from classes and give them individual attention they wouldn’t get in a busy classroom with 20-plus students.

Current Trenton fiscal monitor Emily Capella and Rivera principal William Tracy did not return calls for comment.

Duran, who took over as superintendent in July, said that while Rivera will remain in-district, a committee headed by him will still look to improve the school.

At the March 11 meeting, Duran said he wasn’t knocking the school’s staff. “I’m not discounting the work of the teachers and staff at that school,” he said. “This isn’t about blaming, this is about how do we make it better for our students?”

Contact Erin Duffy at (609) 989-5723 or eduffy@njtimes.com