text: “I saw that the Future Project could help tackle the climate and culture of the school and let me tackle academics,” Mills says, explaining what first enticed him to bring his current employer to Shabazz—and why he ultimately joined the Future Project team.
  His decision immediately produced widespread panic in the halls and classrooms of Shabazz. Would the school revert to its distressed, low-achieving former self?
  The departure also illuminates one of the most vexing, crucial questions in the education landscape: When a talented, transformative principal leaves, can a school sustain success?
  Cook was worried that the answer to that question was no, until she saw Holmes at work and realized how much he cares about the students at Shabazz, whose student body is 89 percent African American. Research has shown that when black students feel the faculty cares about them, they are more likely to experience academic success—one reason why Cook knew the school that had been transformed from one of the worst in the state under Mills was still in good hands.
  As New Jersey’s largest city, Newark has been engaged in a decades-long struggle to lift its schools, which suffered from the blight and upheaval that sank the city after the social unrest of the 1960s. Newark schools are still far from meeting student needs, even after a state takeover of the schools 21 years ago, a rapid expansion of charter schools in the city, and the widely chronicled $100 million investment by the Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
  Shabazz, formerly known as South Side, was once a revered Newark institution that boasted such alumni as Mayors Sharpe James (Newark) and Ed Koch (New York); the Grammy Award-winning singer Cissy Houston; and the billionaire Bernie Marcus, the co-founder of Home Depot. Students voted in 1971 to change the name to Malcolm X Shabazz because they wanted an image that reflected the community.
  But as Newark’s now-notorious South Ward descended into a poverty-stricken hub for crime and violence, so did the high school at its center. A 2009 report by the state of New Jersey concluded the students had taken over the building. Student enrollment was plummeting—the school now has fewer than 600 students, half of what it was in 2008—as parents moved their children to the charter schools popping up around the city.
  Violence, gangs, chaos, and failure had become so commonplace at Shabazz that the state—which now ran Newark schools—was considering shutting the school down when Mills, already a Shabazz vice principal, was elevated to principal in 2011.
  At the time, only 46 percent of students were proficient in language arts and just 19 percent in math, according to Mills. But Mills—leaning heavily on the tough-love disciplinary style of the school’s charismatic new football coach, Darnell Grant—took the building back.