NJ Education Report

The NJ Department of Education just announced the final approval of six new charter schools, all in high-poverty areas. Two are in Camden: Camden Community Charter School and Hope Community Charter School. Compass Academy Charter School will serve children in  Millville, Vineland, and Pittsgrove,  Global Charter School will serve kids in Jersey City, and  Philip’s Academy Charter School will draw enrollment from Newark, Irvington, and East Orange. All will open this September.

Ted Sherman at the Star Ledger continues his investigation of school lunch fraud. (See here for previous NJLB coverage.) An article earlier this week reported “widespread fraud” among district employees and school board members who “lied about their income so their kids could eat for free.” Today he reports that the State Controller acknowledged that much of the fraud could have been detected if “districts had checked the pay records of their own employees.”:

The investigation by the comptroller, which focused on public employees, uncovered more than 100 people who falsified their income so their kids could eat in school for free. Among those caught were 40 employees in 15 school districts — whose salaries could have been easily checked — as well as six school board members in Pleasantville, Newark and Paterson.

Here’s the Star-Ledger Editorial Board’s view of the matter:

The poster child for the shamelessness of it all is an unnamed member of the Pleasantville school board who allegedly underreported her household income on her school lunch application by an average of approximately $59,000 for each of the three years the auditors reviewed.
Her logic was impeccable: She told investigators she did not include her own income on the applications because she was not the person receiving the free lunch.
And she added this little fillip: Her income “is none of (the school district’s) damn business.”

Also see coverage from NJ Spotlight, Asbury Park Press,.and the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Barbara Keshishian, outgoing President of NJ Education Association, argues that teachers’ ability to differentiate instruction among students renders data-driven teacher evaluations irrelevant.

A Washington  Township superintendent is taking a $20K pay cut because of NJ’s superintendent salary cap. “As both a father and an educator, I can only declare the cap to be penny-wise and pound-foolish,” Jeffrey Mohre said. “Our children deserve better.”

The South Jersey Times Editorial Board reviews two recent tenure cases.

NJ Spotlight reviews Gov. Christie’s veto of Senate Bill 2163, which would have given non-teaching staff in NJ’s public schools the right to binding arbitration, which is sort of like tenure protection. The bill was supported by NJEA and not supported by NJ School Boards Association. Here’s NJSBA’s press release celebrating the veto.