Charter schools subject of bills
State legislators address nepotism, transparency
By: Mary Ann Koruth
NorthJersey.com
USA Today Network - New Jersey
..... New K-12 bills aimed at curbing inflated salaries and nepotism by improving transparency in the state's public charter schools are headed to Governor Phil Murphy for signing, coinciding with a state comptroller;s report that accuses a prominent South Jersey charter school of violating state laws.
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The school installed a private vendor to oversee its management without due process, with the school superintendent appointing herself as the vender's CEO and naming other family members to key leadership positions, the report said.
..... The new proposals address transparency, governance, athletics, budgets and salaries for top leadership, said Harry Lee, head of the state's charter school lobby, the New Jersey Public Charter School Association.
..... They also reward high-performing charter schools by making it easier for schools to consolidate, and introduces a 10-year-renewal clause, up from a five-year renewal, through the state Department of Education.
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"These bipartisan bills modernize New Jersey's 30-year-old charter school law by strengthening transparency, accountability and oversight, while continuing to support high-performing charter schools," said the bills' sponsor, state Senator Vin Gopal, D-Monmouth. "Public dollars deserve public accountability, and New Jersey's students and families deserve nothing less."
..... The comptroller's report targeted CAPS Greater Asbury Park Charter School. News reports detailed the charter school executive director's husband renting out school property and receiving cash for uniform sales that were not documented.
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School staff members called attention to corrupt practices for three years, ending in the board of trustees firing the executive director and her husband in 2024, the comptroller's report said.
..... The state has also identified other murky practices, such as school authorities installing CAPS Incorporated as its charter management association through a contract process that bypassed competitors and gave it "sweeping authority."
..... Several high-performing charter schools in Plainfield and Paterson, operate under the umbrella of CAPS, or College Achieve Public Schools.
..... While many charter schools in the state have been compliant with the law, there were outliers that made it necessary for legislators to ace and update the state's charter schools law, which dates back to 1995, Lee said.
..... "This bill provides consistency and will require more transparency around school leader contracts," Lee told
NorthJersey.com . "We have issued of a couple of school leader salaries that were out of control. This will absolutely clamp down on that.
..... "This also improves governance," Lee said. "So there's now new requirements for governance around qualifications, residency, where one-third of school trustees have to live or work in the district or region in which the charter school is located, as well as new training requirements."
Barring 'super teams'
..... The bill will also prevent the creation of "super teams" in high school athletics, after CAPS Greater Asbury Park faced allegations that it built a winning basketball team that won a state title with players recruited from all over the state, including Trenton and Irvington, who were motivated to transfer to CAPS to train under a reputed coach.
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If the bill becomes law, every charter school will also have to post all board of trustees meeting notices, meeting dates and the minutes of each meeting on the charter school's website in accordance with the provisions of the Open Public Meetings Act. A second bill prohibits charter schools from imposing further criteria that would narrow the pool of students already selected by lottery, bars them from advising or counseling enrolled students to leave the school, and lays out rules for interscholastic athletics participation.
..... The proposals have the support of two parties that have historically opposed each other - the powerful public school teachers' union, the New Jersey Education Association, and New Jersey Public Charter Schools Association.
..... Critics and many public school advocates have long accused charters of siphoning off public funds from public districts, while serving selective populations. The NJEA, which opposed them for years on the grounds that they adhered to fewer accountability measures views the new bills as a step toward addressing this.
..... Public charter, on the other hand are viewed by many as a solution for undeserved students, as evidenced in improved test scores and student performance in the state's six urban districts where most of the 85 schools are. an analysis of 2025 test scores on the New Jersey Student Learning Assessment showed that 71% of charter school students in six urban districts, Camden, Jersey City, Plainfield, Trenton, Paterson and Newark, were more likely to read at grade level and 65% more likely to do math at grade level compared with their district peers, the state charter association said.
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Charter schools enroll students through a free lottery entered by parents. The schools' chargers or "contracts," can be revoked at any time by the governor's office if they do not meet key benchmarks of student performance and fiscal and organizational sustainability. However, like pubic schools, charters are free of cost and are run primary using taxpayer money form sending school districts, based on the number of students the districts send.