On schools front, Christie prefers the calm of Camden

Before Gov. Christie visited her first-grade classroom, Mary Stahl told the 6- and 7-year-olds how special the coming moment would be.

"Someday, you'll remember this day, the day the governor came to your classroom," she told the eager children, who paused their counting lesson to greet Christie.

If recent history is any indication, Christie may return sooner than they think. He visited Octavius V. Catto Family School earlier this year and returned Tuesday to celebrate back-to-school, and, more broadly, to juxtapose Camden's "cooperative spirit" with the situation in Newark, where students boycotted the first day of school in a city far more politically divided over changes to the school system.

"None of these changes are easy, and they certainly aren't without controversy," Christie said at a news conference in the school library Tuesday. "But . . . unlike other places in our state, this is a place that has truly come together to welcome partnership, to welcome change we all knew was necessary, because in this city, the interest of the children really comes first."

In Newark, Mayor Ras Baraka has called for the removal of state-appointed Superintendent Cami Anderson, criticizing most recently a universal-enrollment plan that was launched this school year.

Christie said the student boycott of the first day of school last week had "no basis" and was induced by "selfish adults."

Camden is politically a far different landscape, where Democratic Mayor Dana Redd, Christie, and the state-appointed superintendent, Paymon Rouhanifard, share education ideologies along with handshakes and hugs at news conferences and events.

The school board in Camden, which was stripped of its voting power when the state took over, is similarly supportive of the state. That's a far cry from Newark, where the relationship between Anderson and the board became so contentious this winter, Anderson stopped attending the board meetings. The Newark board has limited voting powers.

But Camden, which receives most of its budget from the state, has grassroots critics. A group of parents recently filed a lawsuit accusing state Education Commissioner David Hespe of failing to properly evaluate the financial drain that they say approving Mastery and Uncommon Renaissance schools would have on the district.

Christie said he doesn't consider a shift in enrollment from traditional public schools to Renaissance schools a bad thing.

"Renaissance and charter schools are public schools, and so what we're looking for is a public school system that serves the children," he said. "More options should be offered everywhere, given the king's ransom we're paying for education in this state."

In the spring, Camden students walked out after the district announced it would have to lay off 206 teachers to bridge a revenue gap.

Carmen Velez-Crespo went to the news conference to try to speak to Christie about vacancies in the district but wasn't allowed inside.

The mother of three - who is named as a plaintiff in the lawsuit against the state - was upset her first-grade son still didn't have a permanent teacher two weeks into school.

"It's awful. First grade is obviously their first learning year. We never received any letters telling us who his teacher was or what he needed for uniforms or supplies. We got nothing," Velez-Crespo said.

She said her son's class at Sharp Elementary had had different substitutes day to day and one morning a security guard supervised the room for the first hour. The vacancy was one of four at Sharp and one of 52 district-wide, down from 87 when the school year started.

(The district said on Tuesday that it had hired a first-grade teacher at Sharp Elementary that day.)

Rouhanifard met with parents at Sharp on Tuesday, before Christie's appearance at Catto, to discuss the staffing issue. He said the vacancies were not the result of the 206 teacher layoffs last year but of last-minute retirements and resignations, some as recently as this week.

"This is a year-over-year challenge, not a new phenomenon," Rouhanifard said. "We faced similar challenges at the start of last year with reassignments and retirements. We currently have offers out and we're working diligently to fill the vacancies."