The South Brunswick Township Council has passed a resolution supporting Senate bill S-2243, which would require voter approval of charter school applications.
Arally held prior to the meeting on June 21 had special significance in South Brunswick because the town is the potential location of the Princeton International Academy Charter School, an English-Mandarin immersion school that, although temporarily prevented from moving into the township, is looking to establish a permanent location in South Brunswick in order to service not only the township but also the West Windsor-Plainsboro and Princeton school districts.
Prior to approval of the resolution, the nonprofit bipartisan group Save Our Schools rallied in support of S-2243 as well as Assembly bill A-3356, which would ensure that charter schools have financial and educational transparency and accountability as well as demographically representing their communities.
The South Brunswick rally was one of three, with the others taking place simultaneously in Highland Park and Millburn.
“Tonight we’re coming together to send a very loud message to our representatives in Trenton,” South Brunswick rally organizer Lisa Greico-Rodgers said to the 40-plus attendees.
In order to show support, multiple officials spoke in favor of the bills.
Julia Sass Rubin, of Save Our Schools, began the rally, calling for people to become involved in chants, despite the heat and humidity weighing down the crowd.
“Right now, the decision to approve a new charter school is made entirely by the state’s Commissioner of Education. Local community wishes do not matter. This is a great example of our broken charter school law,” she proclaimed over cheers from the audience.
She continued, “We are the only state in the country that gives local communities no control over the opening of new charter schools, sets no limit on the absolute number of charter schools, yet requires local communities to pay for those schools with money that comes out of our existing school budgets. This is wrong.” South Brunswick Councilman Joe Camarota, who is a 16th District candidate for the Assembly, said the bills come down to one major issue that reverberated in the people he talked to, as well as in his own view.
“All I hear back is ‘accountability,’ ‘accountability,’ ” he said. With officials needing voter approval on all levels, Camarota called for the same for charter schools.
“Charter schools have a role and purpose, and there are some very good ones. However, who determines that?” he asked. “That’s determined in towns like South Brunswick [and] Princeton. That’s why it has to be subjected to voter approval. That’s why the bill has to be passed.”
With around 70 percent of the local taxes going toward education, Camarota asked, “Why shouldn’t we have a right to say what happens and how it happens?”
State Sen. Shirley Turner spoke next, highlighting the plight of public education across the state.
“These are very, very challenging times,” she said. “Don’t kid yourself. Public education is under siege. There is a movement not just in the state of New Jersey but across the country to undermine our public system of education, and public education is what has brought us to where we are today.”
Turner, who voted against the original charter school pilot program, talked about the origins of the issues related to charter schools in the state.
“It’s patently clear that the charter movement started by telling everybody in the suburbs that ‘We’re just starting charter schools in those underperforming districts, those urban areas,’ ” Turner said. “Where are those charter schools headed now? There’s one headed to your community.”
She voted no originally, she said, because she “saw what was happening” and where the legislation would lead the state.
On the issue of transparency and accountability, Turner hearkened back to Revolutionary times. Without the ability to vote on charter schools, she said, “It is nothing more than taxation without representation.”
“You have nothing to say about these schools once they’re in existence; you have to support them financially, and they have no accountability,” she added.
Inside the council meeting, the sentiments ran in the same vein.
“I don’t know much about education, but I do know a little bit about democracy, and I think that whether the town opts for charter schools or not it should be put to a vote,” Councilman Charlie Carley said.
“Its very important that the citizens are heard about this — it’s their money, too,” Councilman John O’Sullivan said.
Mayor Frank Gambatese agreed. He called the bill “totally appropriate” and “long overdue.”
“It’s wrong for the people to have to vote on the school budget and then see money removed from that budget and sent outside the district,” Gambatese said.
In response to the rallies, the New Jersey Charter Schools Association released a statement from its CEO and president, Carlos Perez, that called the legislation “bad public policy.”
“Requiring a referendum on charter schools is not only bad public policy, it undermines the entire premise of a charter school. It’s a reaction to a challenge of the status quo by the entrenched education establishment to stop the thriving charter school movement in New Jersey in its tracks,” Perez wrote.
Perez continued, calling charter schools “unique public schools” that provide education to all students “regardless of address.”
“New Jersey’s charter school law was never intended to exclude children in the suburbs,” Perez wrote. Instead, the schools would “fill a void in the traditional public school curriculum” by meeting specific needs, such as more intense math, science or language classes.
Innovation, too, is important to charter schools. Giving teachers the ability to innovate and experiment, Perez wrote, allows charter schools to “raise the bar even higher in districts where the bar is already set high.”