Lakewood Public Schools District Gets Outed by APP

The Asbury Park Press’s 11-page expose on Lakewood Public Schools, "Cheated,"  is (finally!) online.  For those playing catch-up, Lakewood is an unusual district: while 5,600 children attend the public schools, the district spends almost ¼ of its $130 million annual budget on transportation and special education costs for 22,000 children who attend Hasidic private day schools.  The School Board  -- 8 of 9 members belong to the Hasidic community -- defers on all matters to Board Attorney Michael Inzelbuch who, until he was fired last week, made about $500,000 per year. The Board also just fired its Superintendent, Lydia Silva, and has been through a multiple high school principals and business administrators in just the last few years. A new community group, Lakewood UNITE, has attempted to shed light on distressingly low performance among the all-minority kids who attend Lakewood Public Schools and Board member shenanigans.

Here's some of my previous coverage here, here, here, and here.

Here’s a few highlights from the Asbury Park Press series:

"Like magic, the Lakewood High School Class of 2010 disappeared in its freshman year… The October enrollment for that class in the 2006-07 school year stood at 328. The number of freshman dropouts reported by Lakewood that year: 328."
"A similar mistake — nearly the entire sophomore class disappeared on paper — yielded a nearly identical, low graduation rate for the Class of 2009... Michael Inzelbuch says “Let me make it clear. There are data entry concerns.”