What began as a high-profile, bipartisan effort to transform the public school system in Newark, New Jersey, with the help of a $100 million challenge grant from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has become mired in disputes over school closings, teacher layoffs, and lack of community input, the New Yorker reports.

In the almost four years since then-Newark mayor Cory A. Booker, New Jersey governor Chris Christie, and Zuckerberg unveiled their plans, Newark school officials have hired fifty new principals, added four new high schools, signed a teachers' contract that ties pay to performance, persuaded a majority of charter schools in the city to serve their share of the most at-risk students, and consolidated the dozen lowest-performing K-8 schools in the city into eight "renew schools," most of which have won strong support from parents.

But problems in the troubled system persist and frustration on the part of school officials, teachers, and parents is growing. Implementation of the teacher contract, for instance, has been stalled due to a fight between Superintendent Cami Anderson and the unions, including a dispute over the role of teacher performance in layoffs. Meanwhile, Anderson's sweeping One Newark plan, which calls for children to be assigned across fifty-five district schools and sixteen participating charter schools according to their families' preference  — even as it recommends the closing, relocation, repurposing, or redesign of more than a third of the city's schools — has met with widespread resistance. Following Booker's recent election to the U.S. Senate, this week's mayoral election was widely seen as a referendum on Anderson's plan, with Ras Baraka, the principal of Central High School and a city councilman, vowing to "take back Newark" from the control of outsiders. His efforts may be made easier by the fact that many who supported the original reform goals have grown unhappy with Anderson's reluctance to green-light charter school expansion in the city.

Another major issue involves the private funds contributed by Zuckerberg and others, only a portion of which have benefited students, the New Yorker reports. For example, the teachers' contract included $31 million in back pay demanded by the union for the two years that teachers went without raises, while, thanks to existing protections, teachers with seniority had to be kept on at full pay in situations in which a school was closed. In addition, more than $20 million has been doled out to consulting firms, including one founded by Christopher Cerf, who subsequently was appointed state education commissioner by Christie. Indeed, by March 2013, the district was facing a $57 million budget shortfall, forcing Anderson to cut more than $18 million from school budgets and to lay off more than two hundred attendance counselors, clerical workers, and janitors — cuts decried by school employees' unions, community leaders, and parents.

While Anderson told the New Yorker that she understands the need to direct public-education funds to the children who need it most, she, Cerf, Booker, and the venture philanthropists involved in the reform efforts have yet to engage Newark residents in a two-way dialogue about exactly how much money the district has, where it is going, and what students aren't getting as a result.

"Education reform...comes across as colonial to people who've been here for decades," said Shavar Jeffries, Baraka's opponent in the mayoral election and a member of the school advisory board who initially supported most of Anderson's agenda but voted against her 2013 budget. "It's very missionary, imposed, done to people rather than in cooperation with people....This is a democracy. A majority of people support these ideas. You have to build coalitions and educate and advocate."