Not so fast, Mr. Zuckerberg, Mayor Booker, and Governor Christie!

It appears that the Governor does not have the legal power to grant the mayor any power--let alone executive power--over the Newark Public Schools:

David G. Sciarra, the director of the Education Law Center, a Newark-based organization that represents poor urban schoolchildren in a lengthy equitable-funding lawsuit against the state, said that no New Jersey law permits a mayor to run schools, and that approval by the state legislature would be required for such a change. Nearly all the state's 600 school districts have elected school boards; a handful have boards appointed by mayors.

In addition, a 5-year-old law governing state intervention in struggling school districts vests authority over those districts in the governor's appointed state commissioner of education, not the governor or a mayor, say experts and current and former lawmakers.
"There is no provision for the mayor to have that kind of control. The [state] commissioner [of education] is really the one who is given that authority by the law," said Craig A. Stanley, a former Democratic state assemblyman who co-authored the 2005 law...

Paul L. Tractenberg, a Rutgers University law professor who is an expert on education law, called the Christie-Booker proposal "an effort to totally blur the lines" of authority over Newark schools.

"It's a basic, established principle of law that you can only delegate the authority you actually have, and I don't think the governor has the authority to operate the Newark schools," he said.

The response of Derrell J. Bradford, the executive director of Excellent Education for Everyone, co-founded by Booker?
"These people are punks."