East Brunswick Challenging Charter School

Tensions over the growing number of dual-language charter schools are playing out before various local boards around the state but, in East Brunswick, the battle has moved to a new venue.

The East Brunswick school board is suing to challenge the original state approval for the Hatikvah International Academy Charter School should not have given, and that the school has failed to meet the state's requirements for the school.

Hatikvah is one of a growing number of dual-language schools in the state that have met local opposition. In neighboring South Brunswick, hundreds turned out for a zoning board meeting to challenge an attempt to open a three-district Mandarin-English school seeking to open in a warehouse building there.

Hatikvah created a similar controversy when it opened in East Brunswick last year. While tensions over charters often die down once a school opens, it has grown in East Brunswick and now will play out in state court.

District officials filed documents in Appellate Court two weeks ago and hope to begin arguments in the spring regarding their lawsuit. According to school district attorney Matthew Giacobbe, the suit seeks to overturn former Education Commissioner Bret Schundler’s decision to approve the school because it did not meet enrollment requirements at the time. According to Giacobbe, state Department of Education regulations require that a charter school meet 90 percent of its expected enrollment by July 1 of the year it opens.

WHAT ROLE FOR CHARTER SCHOOLS?

This report is part of a joint project between NJSpotlight.com (an issues-oriented news site that focuses on policy, politics, and community) and Patch.com to provide both a statewide and local look at the politics of charter schools in many NJ communities, and the tensions that sometimes arise regarding their funding in the age of budget cutbacks.

Statewide: Charter schools in suburbia under debate
Gloucester: A home-schooler takes on the school board
Hoboken: Can the public schools compete, by getting better?
Livingston: How many Mandarin schools is too many?
Morristown, Morris Township & Morris Plains: Unity Charter may be a jewel, but it's one with costs
Princeton: 
Red Bank: 
South Brunswick: A debate or a shouting match?
Teaneck: Innovation or duplication?

Not only did the school not meet that requirement, it also did not meet the requirement by October 2010, according to documents the district received from the DOE, said Giacobbe.

As a result, the amount the district actually had to pay Hatikvah this year was reduced by the DOE by approximately $500,000. According to School Business Administrator Bernardo Giuliana, the district has budgeted $1.337 million, which includes transportation costs, to pay the school for 2010-11. However, that number was changed to $657,000 this year.

For the 2011-12 school year, the DOE is mandating that the district pay $1.423 million, not including approximately $115,000 for transportation costs. The district also will have to pay $51,120 for several students to attend other charter schools, said Giuliana.

According to Hatikvah Principal Naomi Drewitz, the school is at its maximum enrollment of 108 students and expects to enroll 44 new kindergarten students each year. The K-2 school plans to add a grade each year as current students move up. Next year the school will add a half-time music teacher and offer art classes taught in Hebrew.

She also said the school receives $916,000 from local taxes and $165,000 from the state. 

Giuliana has said that taxpayers are shouldering the burden for a charter school in which they had no say.

“This was not a school that the Board of Education was asked to endorse, approve or pass any type of resolution for. It was not something put forth to the community in any kind of referendum. It was an application made to the Commissioner of Education and it was approved by the Commissioner of Education,” he said during a March 24 school budget hearing.

During the same hearing, Giuliana said that money the district is required to give the school comes directly from the school budget, with no additional assistance from the state.

“There are no additional funds that come from the state to be allocated toward any charter school and often times it's reported that charter school funding comes from state aid, the state aid that would have followed those students. That’s not the entire story, because the funding of those students are based on costs of educating cost of students in this community.”

He said that when that “cost” is broken down for East Brunswick, 11 percent usually is funded by state aid, and 88 or 89 percent comes from local taxes.

“Those same ratios apply to the money paid out to a charter school. So most of the funds to pay for the charter school came from tax payer funds,” he said.

Drewitz said that despite funding issues, the relationship between Hatikvah and East Brunswick is basically a cordial one.

“We work with the East Brunswick Transportation Department in order to provide transportation for all of our East Brunswick students. We have a collegial relationship and speak regularly,” she said. 

LEARN MORE

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