NJ Education Report

Who is left holding the bag? Black and Latino families who get ripped out of the schools that they love.

That’s Harry Lee, Executive Director of the New Jersey Public Charter School Association, explaining the impact of the Murphy Administration’s four-years-long assault on schools that almost exclusively serve low-income students of color. Tina Kelley in yesterday’s Star-Ledger nails it, relating how low-income families in Newark, Trenton, Paterson, Franklin, New Brunswick, and Kearny had the rug ripped out from under them at the last minute because the state Department of Education inexplicably reversed previously-approved expansions to public charter schools or closed them altogether.

As Kelley points out, there are 700-800 students affected by the denied expanions. In addition, there are an additional 700 kids enrolled at Newark’s newly-shuttered University Heights Charter School who found out in June they had nowhere to go in July for their summer programming, or in September for their new school year. Another 209  students have been shut out of their charter, Environment Community Opportunity in Camden.

But that’s the way it rolls in the Murphy Administration’s Department of Education, where 25% of staff positions at the Charter and Renaissance School Office are vacant. The head of the Charter School Office, by the way, reports to Interim Executive Director, Division of Field Support and Service Robert Gregory, a temporary replacement while the DOE does a  search. Don’t blame Gregory: he is a placeholder with a full plate because he also oversees (on an interim basis, of course) the DOE offices of Recruitment, Preparation, and Certification; the office of Fiscal Accountability and Compliance; the county offices of Education and Professional Learning; the Office of Learning, Intervention, and Support; and the Office of Interdistrict School Choice Programs and Non-Public Schools. Phew! Yet the DOE doesn’t even list him on its website as head of his Division and the head of the Division of Administrative Services is also blank.

Hence, as Lee says “deadlines are being blown and documentation is nonexistent. Who is left holding the bag? Black and Latino families who get ripped out of the schools that they love.” (Lee’s description of the DOE’s incompetence is verified by the former head of the Charter School Office, who says ” these collective decisions are causing chaos for hundreds of families from New Jersey’s lowest-income ZIP codes who will lose their schools.”)

Kelley asked the DOE to comment on the Murphy Administration’s haphazard charter school oversight and approval process, one that omits explanations why a particular school is denied an expansion or closed altogether, one that doesn’t respond to queries or consider new data.

Department of Education spokesman Michael Yaple said when a charter is closed, “the school works with the county superintendent and staff from the district and Department of Education to ensure a smooth transition for students, providing dates and times to enroll in another school. Schools unable to expand —due to low academic performance, financial difficulties, or organizational problems, among other factors— are to work with the Department of Education, the local board of education, and other schools to ensure students enroll in new schools.”

Except that’s not happening. The schools that were supposed to be allowed to expand had high academic performance and fiscal/organizational stability. There is no “smooth transition” at, say, Achievers Early College Prep Charter School, which was denied an expansion to 10th grade, long-planned and paid for, late this school year, leaving 90 9th-graders educationally homeless. (See here for a full description of the DOE’s disjointed, dysfunctional, data-free evaluation of Achievers Early that so troubled one Charter School Office staff member that he resigned, saying he “couldn’t ethically participate.”) Or at Trenton’s high-performing, top-rated (by the same DOE!) Paul Robeson Charter School, where a long-planned expansion to K-2nd grade is now kaput. Or at Philip’s Academy Charter School and North Star Academy in Newark, Central Jersey College Prep in Franklin Township (which was supposed to expand to New Brunswick), Hudson Arts and Science in Kearny, and Community Charter School of Paterson.

It’s all so arbitrary. Why does Murphy care? Since 2018 his administration has approved one new charter school and denied expansions to 70% of those who requested one since 2018. His track record with anti-choice folk is solid! His bona fides with NJEA leaders are gold! Why would he or his entourage care about small expansions to popular, high-performing public charters?

It’s a mystery that 800+ families would like to solve.