NJ Education Report

“We got approval twice already. They are not likely to prevail,” she said. “We hope that the Hoboken Board of Education finally stops trying to harm a really good public school option for Hoboken families.”

That’s HoLa’s founder and board president Barbara Martinez on Education Commissioner David Hespe’s decision to deny the Hoboken Board of Education’s request for a stay on the dual-language charter school expansion.  HoLa had been approved to expand to 7th and 8th grade but the local School Board sued on the grounds that HoLa’s expansion would cause segregation and unsustainable fiscal strain.

The decision affects 21 6th graders who hope to continue at HoLa.  The School Board vows to continue to fight; it has already spend $50,000 in legal fees.

This Star-Ledger article provides Comm. Hespe’s denial of the stay and the School Board’s brief.

On another  financial  note, the total budgetary cost per pupil in Hoboken Public Schools is $22,199. Why so high? That’s because Hoboken, despite the city’s changing demographics — in 2000  median family income was $67,500 and in 2010 it was  $101,782 — is still considered one of N.J.’s needy districts, one of the original Abbotts. This is merely one example of how N.J.’s school funding formula is broken.

The cost per pupil at HoLa, by the way, is $12,864. While the school’s free/reduced lunch and special needs enrollment is certainly lower than the Hoboken Public Schools, it still sounds like a bargain to me.