NJ Education Report

The NJ Assembly Education Committee is hearing testimony today from DOE staffers about “wasteful spending” in NJ’s industry of private special education schools, which are funded largely through public school district tuition payments. The hearing, according to today’s Star Ledger, was instigated by a Star Ledger expose that focused on one particular offender, Somerset Hills School, a private for-profit school in Warren County that serves about 97 boys, ages 7-14, with behavioral disabilities, including histories of violent behavior, drug use, crime, and suicide attempts.

At this school (on which I’ve reported elsewhere) annual tuition is $118,500 per year, three directors and a principal are relatives, and two of these administrators earn the maximally-allowed salary of $225,734. The Ledger’s angle was the lack of oversight by the NJ Department of Education, which has acknowledged its inability to regulate these schools.