Social Justice Activist Leads New Education Foundation in Newark – TAPinto.net
NEWARK, NJ – Growing up in Sussex County, Kyle Rosenkrans always knew he was going to college because of his mother.
She attended college for one semester but returned home to find a job when the family couldn’t afford the tuition. She wanted a different life for her son, one she decided education could provide, and used what she learned to help her son.
With support from his mother throughout the process, Rosenkrans became the first in his family to graduate from college. Now he’s taking on her push to help others by leveraging lessons learned in Newark to improve K-12 public school systems in New Jersey so all students have a chance to do the same.
“I saw a system of well-intentioned people, some not, that does not work well for children. For decades, systems have intentionally and unintentionally failed people in this country and this city,” said Rosenkrans, founder and executive director of New Jersey’s Children Foundation. “Education is the cause I’ve gravitated towards because it feels special to me and my family. It was a consistent thread of what my family wanted me to do and giving back.”
New Jersey’s Children Foundation will focus on citywide performance, district-charter collaboration, and fair funding for all public schools. The organization also invests in grassroots advocacy, like Project Ready’s 1,000 votes by mail registrations campaign for Newark school board elections, to galvanize more people to talk about education.
The team plans to publish a report that surveys current standing of the Newark Public Schools district as it inches toward full local control in February 2020. Rosenkrans said they will share the report and other data on social media for public access but most importantly to promote fact-based discussion about what’s working and what’s not as the impetus for developing solutions.
Black students in Newark are four times more likely to attend a quality school now than they were 13 years ago and Newark’s public school system significantly improved over other high-poverty charter school districts in the state, Rosenkrans wrote in a recent op-ed. Charter schools enhance this progress and Newark has transcended divisive education politics that exists in much of the country, he wrote.
“We’re still too far away. There are exciting pockets of excellence throughout the district,” said Rosenkrans, mentioning how improvement can be replicated and brought to scale faster if people did simple things like talking to folks across their sector. He wants NJCF to continue tamping down friction particularly between district and charter schools that hurt students most. “Adults have to set up systems for them to thrive. My organization is unapologetically agnostic about who’s providing them so long as the system is strong,” he said.
Rosenkrans started his career as a lead education attorney at Essex-Newark Legal Services for three years, two years as a visiting professor at Seton Hall Law School’s Center for Social Justice, and several years as CEO of charter school association in New York and Connecticut. Most recently, he was an executive at KIPP New Jersey for the past two years and helped the charter management organization raise millions of dollars.
During his time at Essex-Newark Legal Services, he accompanied families with children who have special educational needs to Individual Education Plan (IEP) meetings where he recalled professionals complaining profusely about behavioral issues, yet become tongue-tied when he demanded specific reasons for a student’s classification. The experience left an indelible mark on him.
“I learned about the experiences of parents and children in Newark Public Schools first hand,” he said citing how many of his clients were disproportionately misclassified with learning disabilities. “It was indicative of a system in far too many cases is not focused on uplifting children. That just felt wrong.”
Rosenkrans worked on several social justice causes that frequently intersected. He worked to address inequalities in affordable housing and represented hundreds of families, many of whom had children that were unlawfully denied entry to a school because they were unable to provide the required paperwork.
He also worked with a team of researchers that canvassed the Clinton Hill neighborhood in the South Ward, counting vacant properties from the start of Bergen street to the other side of the city, that became havens for crime and relics of perpetual divestment. These “zombie” foreclosures were the focus of recent legislation that was signed into law by Gov. Murphy.
As he leads the New Jersey Children’s Foundation, Rosenkrans is intentional about being solutions-oriented and disregarding negative energy that is inevitable in the work. “Education is a field rife with problems that need our best people to solve them,” he said. “I just want to be one of the people who helped.”