Bill A4351 is cosponsored by Diegnan and Assemblywoman Mila Jasey (who no longer represents urban families due to redistricting) and is supported by NJEA and, I'm guessing, Save My Schools-NJ too. (I’m in the final throes of Passover preparation or I’d check.)
If passed by the Legislature, this reactionary bill would bar all new charter authorizations for three years. It would also disallow currently-operating charter schools from expanding and serving some of the 20,000 children across the state who bide their time on waiting lists.
Charter schools often start out serving a small cohort of students, for example, children in grades kindergarten through second grade. As those second-graders become third-graders, the school adds a grade and becomes a K-3 school. The Diegnan/Jasey bill would forbid this organic growth and strand thousands of students and their families, betraying the promise made to them by the state.
For KIPP NJ, one of the state’s highest-performing charter groups, this bill would halt the expansion of three-quarters of their elementary schools and half of their middle school and high schools. According to KIPP’s accounting, the bill would disrupt the education of between 2,200-2,800 schoolchildren.
Here a statement from KIPP:
If this bill passes, it means for some of you that your child’s school may not be able to grow to full size. For others, it means the next KIPP NJ school they plan to attend may not be able to open. In one way or another, this bill would impact nearly every single one of our students.Your Legislature at work. Or at least Diegnan and Jasey. Parents are urged to call Assemblywoman Jasey (973-762-1886) or Assemblyman Diegnan (908-757-1677) and voice their concern about the charter moratorium bill, and ask them to pull the bill. Also, families can post their concerns to Twitter or Facebook followed by #handsoffourfuture.
Mila Jasey's policies are incoherent.
ReplyDeleteIn 2009 Jasey was the author of the bill that allowed private schools to covert to charter schools. When that bill became law and St. Phillips Academy in Newark became St Phillips Academy Charter School school districts across northeastern NJ had tens of thousands of dollars in additional charter school tuition to pay for students who had hitherto been educated at their parents' expense. South Orange-Maplewood's bill for the St. Phillips conversion was $200,000 in the first year alone, necessitating the elimination of three teaching positions.
Jasey's backing of Interdistrict Choice is also harmful financially to the majority of NJ districts, whose aid is lower than it would be otherwise due to the diversion of Equalization and Special Ed Aid into Choice Aid. If Interdistrict Choice's funding formula were properly followed (as Jasey wrote it), net sending districts would lose their state aid for students too. This would have a trivial impact on a high-resource district that gets little state aid anyway, but the negative impact on a low-resource/high-aid district would be large and identical to the financial loss that happens when students enroll in charter schools.
Jasey's new opposition to new charter schools is hard to square with other components of her record.