A long-standing passion for Camden and its schools
Growing up at Broad and Tasker in South Philly, Barbara Coscarello heard all the Camden jokes. Like the one about the contest offering a first prize of a one-week vacation in Camden, with two weeks as second prize.
Growing up at Broad and Tasker in South Philly, Barbara Coscarello heard all the Camden jokes.
Like the one about the contest offering a first prize of a one-week vacation in Camden, with two weeks as second prize.
But in 1986, then-Mayor Randy Primas hired her as his administration's economic development director, and Coscarello was required to move to . . . Camden.
"I saw a lot of challenges," she recalls. "A lot of opportunities, too."
Coscarello left the Primas administration to head up a nonprofit community development agency in North Philadelphia in 1989.
She could have left Camden, too. But she stayed. And the city is still her home.
"Why move? I love my house in Fairview," says Coscarello, who stepped down Aug. 20 after six years as an appointed member of the city's advisory board of education.
Early in her tenure, she chaired the board's finance committee, and also served on the board of directors of the New Jersey School Boards Association.
"People keep asking: 'Why did you jump ship? Is your health OK?' " she says. "My health is fine. I'm just trying to build up my economic development consulting business with nonprofits and small companies. I'd been putting it on a back burner for too long."
I caught up with Coscarello Saturday at The Treehouse coffee shop in Audubon, before she left to volunteer at the annual Hearts and Hands Art Festival at Sacred Heart Church in Camden's Waterfront South section.
"I've made a lot of friends in Camden," she says. "I believe in affordable, integrated communities, and that's what we have in Fairview. We have a lovely mix."
In the 30 years I've known Coscarello, she's consistently spoken her mind. And our coffee hour is no exception, particularly when she talks about public education in Camden.
She suggests that boarding schools should be created to offer another option for families.
"We've got to take some kids out of their environment altogether. If a mother says, 'I can't do anything with my son,' then we need to provide him an alternative form of education. It will work."
Coscarello doesn't buy the argument that the public school system in Camden is not being reformed so much as dismantled, with the traditional role of citizens superseded by corporate interests.
"The law says our students are entitled to a complete education. It doesn't say how," she says, adding, "I don't argue with the market, and the market is saying, 'We don't want [existing district schools].'
"People make choices. Talk to the parents of the charter and Renaissance schools in Camden," Coscarello says. "And if parents choose [traditional] district schools, we have to figure out a way to also get those parents involved in the education of their children."
Initially skeptical about the state's appointment of city schools superintendent Paymon Rouhanifard, Coscarello has become something of a fan. She credits Rouhanifard with being attentive and responsive to the concerns of residents and board members alike.
Coscarello also is a supporter of Mayor Dana L. Redd, a neighbor on her block in Fairview and a reason, she says, why developers are beginning to focus on Camden.
"Businesses are always interested in stable leadership, and I think we have that," says Coscarello, who also cites public safety improvements.
"I certainly see more police around," she adds. "They're making a yeoman's effort to be more sensitive to community issues than I've ever seen."
During her tenure with the Primas administration, Coscarello set up the Cooperative Business Assistance Corporation to provide funding and technical assistance to start-ups and existing small businesses in the city. The program has since been expanded regionally.
She also says job training, in the school district's vocational classes and elsewhere, should be oriented toward specific jobs in the coming new developments on the Camden waterfront, such as Holtec, or in the city's expanding health-care sector.
Camden, so long the butt of jokes, really does make economic sense for people, Coscarello says.
"Real estate in the city is a bargain," she notes. "Where else can you get these prices, and be as convenient to everything we're convenient to?
"Camden works for me."
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