More New Jersey Charter Malfeasance

You could make a good argument that one or even two school board members not following the law is an anomaly and not necessarily indicative of a systemic problem. But three or more? I'd say something's not right.

Here are the New Jersey school districts and charter schools that have three or more board members who did not complete a criminal background check in time and now have to vacate their positions. Remember, for all intents and purposes, a charter school in New Jersey is its own school district; I've underlined the charter schools on this list.

• Bergen Arts And Sciences Charter School, Bergen - 3 members
• West Wildwood, Cape May County - 3 members
• Adelaide L. Sandford Charer School, Essex - 3 members
• Arete Academy Charter School, Essex - 10 members
• Great Oaks Charter School, Essex - 5 members
• Newark Educators Comm Charter School, Essex - 3 members
• Peoples Preparatory Charter School, Essex - 4 members
• Dream Prep Academy Charter School, Hudson - 6 members
• East Newark, Hudson - 4 members
• Liberty Academy Charter School, Hudson - 4 members
• Central Jersey College Prep Charter School, Somerset - 4 members
• Central Jersey Arts Charter School, Union - 4 members
• Union Cty. Teams Charter School, Union - 3 members

Again: more than half of the school board officials removed from their positions yesterday serve on charter school boards, even though those charters constitute only 11% of the boards in New Jersey.

Now here's what's interesting to me: the good people of West Wildwood and East Newark will have the ability, come the next school board election, to make it known how they feel about a school board that allows so many members to evade the law. They can make a decision about whether their schools need new leadership. That extends beyond the members who lost their positions; they can ask the remaining members and the district administration how they could allow this to happen, and they can vote out school board members if they don't get a good answer.

The people who live in the cities and towns that pay for the charter schools, however, have no such remedy. Their tax dollars will continue to flow to schools that can't even get their trustees to follow the law, and they will have no say about the leadership of those schools.

I am, again, calling for a moratorium on all new charter schools until the Cerf report is released, but that's not nearly enough. There must be a higher level of accountability for New Jersey's charter schools - they must have to answer to the people who fund them.

All charter schools must be subject to local control.


ADDING: Chris Christie, with no trace of irony, says this:

Gov. Chris Christie today signed the first of what he hopes will be a series of education reforms: a measure giving private nonprofit companies the authority to build a total of 12 schools in Newark, Camden and Trenton.

"Just like charter schools that are already operating all over New Jersey," he said in the auditorium of Landing Square School in Camden, "these renaissance schools will be subject to strict accountability by the Department of Education in meeting the bottom line, which is improving student achievement." [emphasis mine]

So the renaissance schools will be just as "accountable" as all of these charters that broke the law?

Swell.