Newark’s Early Childhood Office Beset By Departures

In Newark’s Office of Early Childhood, the Second Steps skills program teaches three and four year olds critical skills like how to manage their emotions and how to cope with feelings of disappointment and anger.

Lisa Gray, a social worker in the office, says that the leadership team in her department is sorely lacking in some of these essential skills.

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“Regrettably, the work environment in Newark’s Office of Early Childhood has become toxic. Some of the leadership staff has resulted to yelling, screaming, rolling their eyes, slamming doors, and disrespecting staff. And this is not uncommon,” Gray said during a May 2, 2024, Board of Education reorganization meeting. She asked the board and the community for support, saying that her office has tried to address issues with senior staff internally, without success.

During her public address, Gray, who has been a schools social worker for 19 years, said that staff members are leaving in droves, and that many of them cited “disrespect” from higher ups as the reason for their departures.

“We can't afford to ignore these issues any longer, and immediate action needs to be taken to restore a healthy and respectful work environment. Leadership staff must embody the values and the teachings and programs like Second Steps, prioritizing empathy, respect, and effective communication,” she said.

Action was apparently taken, as the head of that office, Yolanda Severe, was recently elevated to become Deputy Assistant Superintendent, at a salary of $220,000 per year. The average full time superintendent in New Jersey makes $193,671, according to Nj.com.

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The Newark Teachers Union (NTU) confirmed that during this school year three of their employees have resigned from the Office of Early Childhood, while 18 employees resigned during the previous school year. NTU does not have this data about staff departures from this office dating back further.

“Lisa Gray is a long-time member of the teachers’ union. She's a long-time dedicated employee for the district. If she says it, we believe it,” said John Abeigon, NTU president. “Now that she's made those comments public and to the board, we believe that the board should be given sufficient time to address the concerns that she's raised.”

While Gray is a current employee of the department, and unable to comment further on the record as a union member, there are others who have left the department who share her frustrations with the culture in the Office of Early Childhood.

Guadalupe Velazquez, who joined the Office in 2002, came up with Severe and said that the culture in the office totally changed under her guidance. As a union representative, Velazquez fielded complaints about threats from the office higher ups, including more strict enforcement of everything from clock in times to playing music in the office. Staff were asked to handle increasingly larger workloads with insufficient time, Velazquez said.

“When you're asking for so much, and not giving sufficient time for the work to be completed, that’s a problem. There were people taking work home every single day, people working on the weekends, people staying after work to work with teachers,” Velazquez said.

Career professionals with spotless records were suddenly seeing their evaluations becoming increasingly negative, according to Velazquez. For her personally, after 15 solid years of never having an issue on an evaluation, suddenly she was being marked as “ineffective” or “partially effective” and she knew others were seeing unexpected changes too.

When asked to comment about the public statements made as well as the staff reportedly leaving the office, the district’s spokesperson Nancy Deering declined to comment. Severe could not be reached for comment.

“This is not something that people took lightly. This is a career you’re talking about, people's livelihoods. It just became very, very bitter,” she said.

“I loved my job. I loved working with teachers. I had a very good reputation in the system of working with teachers. I was proud of never having to be called in, or reprimanded, or having a bad evaluation ever since I started my career in ‘95,” she continued.

Velazquez found out that she was being transferred out of the office, after a decades long career, by her coworkers, not the office’s executive director, director, or any of its supervisors.

After personal issues plagued her post-Covid, Velazquez fell behind in her work. She leaned on Severe, a one-time friend and confidante, who assured her she had time to catch up on her work and that everything would be alright. But when push came to shove, Velazquez was ousted without so much as any notice before August.

“Never got a phone call where my placement was going to be. Never got a phone call, ‘You're not coming back to the department.’ Never got a phone call, ‘Thank you for your service to Early Childhood, but you have been transferred.’ Nothing. I got a letter in August that I was being transferred to an elementary school,” Velazquez said.

For Velazquez, this office had once been like a family to her. Now she was being left out in the cold. She was transferred to an eighth grade class and eventually had to resign from her hospital bed after a series of strokes left her unable to work.

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