According to an article on NJ Spotlight, a resoluton that requires any new charter school be first approved by local voters passed with overwhelming support by the New Jersey Boards Association (NJSBA). Â
The vote of 115 delegates was 95 percent in favor of the resolution, which was proposed by the Princeton Regional Board of Education. The new charter school policy enables NJSBA to support proposals before the Legislature that would require a school district’s voters at the Annual School Election to approve the establishment of a charter school. In the school districts where voters do not act on the budget, the board of school estimate would provide the approval. The NJSBA website explains:
Charter schools are publicly funded institutions that operate under a contract (or charter) with the state and are governed by their own boards of trustees. The local board of education’s role in the charter application process is limited to making a recommendation of approval or denial to the state Department of Education.
Charter schools receive their funding through local school districts. For each resident student enrolled in a charter school, the school district must provide 90 percent of per pupil state equalization aid and local tax levy, as well as state categorical security aid, proportionate special education aid, and applicable federal funding.
The resolution makes the process for starting a charter school more difficult. Against the resolution is Acting Education Commissioner Chris Cerf who stated at a charter school forum hosted by NJ Spotlight, “If it were up to local municipalities, it would essentially kill charter schools.”
Currently, there are several charter schools going through the application process to get approval in Baristaville:
- Two Mandarin immersion schools are currently trying to get approval:  Hua Mei Charter School serving South Orange-Maplewood, West Orange, Livingston, Union and Millburn school districts and Hanyu International Academy serving students from Kindergarten through 5th grade in the Livingston, Millburn-Short Hills and West Orange school districts.
- Rita L. Owens Charter School to be located in Irvington would serve South Orange/Maplewood and other area students from 6th – 8th grade. The Charter School proposes to be a paperless school, relying on computer equipment and online content.
- Quest Academy to be located in Montclair and serve high school students.
Quest Academy has been denied three times, but is still in the fight. The group just submitted an application for the fourth time and have filed an appeal with the Supreme Court, Appellate Division to overturn the denial on the last application, because they charge  it was denied without good cause.
Tracey Williams, a founder of Quest Academy, spoke to Barista Kids about the groups’ latest efforts.
“These constant denials are unconstitutional and violate the rights of parents and families who want more educational choices in the town of Montclair. We have taken this two-pronged approach because we agree with the NJ Department of Education’s CAPPA Team when they said that Montclair High School does not meet the needs of all of its students.”
Williams went on, “Based upon the scores found in the 2010 New Jersey School Report Card, the achievement gap at Montclair High School is staggering in math, well below the 74% State benchmark for some students with 69% Special Education, 47% African American, and 64% of the Economically Disadvantaged students failing to score, at least, proficient. While we do not know precisely why this is happening, I think that it is hard to say that Montclair is a community that values diversity when all of our students are not doing well academically. With that said, we continue to work towards increasing educational options for our students because all kids deserve a school that he or she can flourish in.”
Quest Academy invites the public to view the latest submitted application in its entirety here. Stated in the application, some goals of Quest Academy will be:
- To maintain a rigorous, standards-based, technology and art themed academic program that will raise achievement for all students
- To enable students to satisfy 90% of the core curriculum content standards in every course offered
- To narrow the achievement gap
A question and a comment.
Q: If a student is enrolled who lives outside of Montclair, does that sending district pony up the tuition, or does it still come from Montclair’s budget?
C: I looked at the application, and just browsing it is enough to turn me off. The spelling and grammatical errors that I found just through skimming don’t give me a lot of confidence. It feels like there are different authors for the various sections, but there should have been more attention to detail (such as proofreading). Now I know I tend to be overly harsh with these sorts of things, and have been known to toss resumes with these errors directly into the garbage… but really??!
Kay,
The home district of the student would pay the tuition and pay for transportation costs.
Thanks Georgette… So it is entirely possible that Quest may enroll say, a total of 200 students, and maybe only 25 of them come from Montclair…so funding for the remaining 175 students comes from the sending district. (That’s assuming that there aren’t 200 families in Montclair lining up for a seat.) Financial consequence to school budget could be relatively minimal – right?
Next question – how does this fold in with the new voucher plan proposed by Christie which will be “funded by corporations” (remember, those “corporate donations” will be deducted from their corporate tax bills, which means NJ’s tax revenue will go down, which ultimately means I am paying for the vouchers). Or is that program different from the usual I-want-to-open-a-Charter-School thing?