Dr. Brian Osborne sent the following letter to N.J. Department of Education Acting Commissioner Christopher Cerf on December 8, 2011, on behalf of the South Orange-Maplewood Board of Education. The letter concerns the October 2011 New Jersey Charter School Application for Hua Mei Charter School which would be located in Maplewood and draw primarily from West Orange School District and South Orange-Maplewood School District. NJ Spotlight reports that Hua Mei has made the first cut in the process; a final decision will be rendered on January 17.

Dear Acting Commissioner Cerf:

The South Orange-Maplewood Board of Education received a second application on behalf of a proposed charter school, the Hua Mei Charter School. If the application is granted in January, the Hua Mei Charter School would open its doors in September 2012. The proposal would establish a K-5 school to serve students in Maplewood, South Orange and West Orange, in a “Mandarin Immersion” setting. 

The South Orange-Maplewood Board of Education has considered the application, and in accordance with N.J.S.A. 18A:36-4, it is the recommendation of the Board of Education of the South Orange – Maplewood School District that you reject the application of the Hua Mei Charter School. The Board bases its recommendation on the following reasons:

    •     The language of the “Charter School Program Act of 1995” does not appear to authorize the establishment of additional charter schools after the end of 1999, 48 months after the effective date of the law.  N.J.S.A. 18A:36A-3(b) and N.J.S.A. 18A:36A-4(2)(e).

    •    Based on the Grade Level Summary included in the application, in its fifth year of operation, the size of the school will be 240 students. This is less than half the size of the typical school used by the Department to generate the “base pupil amount, N.J.S.A. 18A:7F-45” used to determine the adequacy calculations to generate State aid under the School Funding Reform Act. N.J.S.A. 18A:7F-44, et seq. To the extent charter schools are intended to be laboratories for reform, they must be laboratories that can be efficiently replicated by school districts.  Large school districts like South Orange-Maplewood, with approximately 6,500 students, cannot afford to replicate a model that relies on small schools.

    •    The application, on its face, appears to discriminate based on race and socio-economic status. South Orange and Maplewood are contiguous to Irvington, Orange, East Orange and Newark. All of these urban districts are specifically encouraged to establish charter schools under the statute.  N.J.S.A. 18A:36A-3(b). All are District Factor Group A, urban, Abbott districts with high incidents of poverty and a large proportion of minority students. However, the application does not include these high poverty districts that are for some students, within two miles, or walking distance, from the proposed location of the school. N.J.S.A. 18A:39-1.

N.J.S.A. 18A:36A-6 requires that:

A charter school shall be open to all students on a space available basis and shall not discriminate in its admission policies or practices on the basis of intellectual or athletic ability, measures of achievement or aptitude, status as a handicapped person, proficiency in the English language, or any other basis that would be illegal if used by a school district.

A charter school may not exempt itself from regulations concerning civil rights.  N.J.S.A. 18A:36A-11(a). As the New Jersey Supreme Court noted in In Re: Grant of the Charter School Application of Englewood on the Palisades Charter School:

The history and vigor of our State’s policy in favor of a thorough and efficient public school system are matched in its policy against racial discrimination and segregation in the public schools.  Ibid. 
   
The applicants do not appear to have considered the legislative preference for charter schools in or including high poverty, high minority urban districts.  Neither of the districts included is in District Factor Group (“DFG”) A. Instead, the applicants selected districts with fewer minority students and fewer low income students than the districts surrounding Maplewood and South Orange.
   
    •    The recruitment activities noted in the application are not designed to reach a broad cross section of the student population in the district. The activities include scant mention about communication through local community groups, and no information about Head Start providers, the home districts, or other groups or individuals who come into contact with students of various races, ethnicities and socio-economic status.  Instead the recruitment activities appear to target sponsors and petition signers, giving those individuals, in effect, an enrollment preference.

    •    As described, the program involves immersion in a non-phonetic based language (Mandarin). There is no data to suggest that acquisition of a non-phonetic language will assist in the development of the phonetic based language skills needed to decode English. In fact, the program may impede the development of phonetic based language skills. The Mandarin program, as described, does not develop effectively the teaching of reading and writing in English. The program devotes three weeks to test preparation for the NJ ASK.  This is not an integrated program designed for students to develop fluency in reading and writing English. 

And, as scant attention as the program pays to reading and writing, it pays virtually no attention to other core subjects. In particular, numeracy and the teaching of mathematics go virtually ignored. The Social Studies program described does not relate to children in the early grades. However, the application proposes to serve only those children.

The proposed program is not aligned with the national Common Core Standards.

The teaching method outlined is simply a list of definitions and not a depiction of actual anticipated instruction.

    •    The application includes a table of benchmark scores on the third grade NJ ASK for both of the districts included in the application. Ninety-three percent of third graders in South Orange-Maplewood received a score of proficient or advanced proficient on the NJ ASK. The assessment objective in the application is: State average for proficient or advanced or the average of the districts.  Under either calculation, the program objective is less than the scores the students in South Orange and Maplewood currently achieve. At a minimum, therefore, the application does not address a need. At worst, expectations for students at Hua Mei are lower than for students attending the South Orange and Maplewood Public Schools. 

    •    The application includes no realistic standards for teacher evaluation.  There are no measures or objective review criteria. For example, the application notes that a lead teacher “will emerge.” The application does not specify that at least one teacher with a standard certificate will be among the teachers hired. Rather, the application suggests that Mandarin fluency, not teacher certification, is the primary qualification for teaching staff members. The ability to speak or read and write in a particular language is, by no means, an indicator of the ability to teach that language. Additionally, no reference is made to recruiting teachers with subject matter endorsements in areas such as mathematics or science. There is no reference concerning who will mentor alternate route teachers. The hiring guidelines set forth in the application would permit discrimination based on gender preference.

    •    With respect to facilities, the application does not specify other tenants at the proposed location and their suitability to interact with young children. The application does not specify if the premises meet current standards for classrooms, particularly kindergarten classroom. If the church intends to continue using the space for its programs, that may raise First Amendment issues. 

    •    The application does not indicate how the Mandarin learning needs of children who enter the program after kindergarten will be successfully addressed. The application does not consider the rate of student mobility. Additionally, expectations for children to attain literacy in Mandarin or in English whose home language is neither are both minimal and unrealistic. The application seems to confuse English Language Learners with students with disabilities who are in need of 504 plans. Both are discussed together in the application, and the discussion concerning both is inadequate.

    •    The application’s discussion of community involvement focuses on parents, but is silent on the remainder of the community.

    •    With respect to fiscal concerns the instructional portion of the proposed budget may be less than 60% of proposed expenses. Additionally, the application anticipates lender financing for start-up costs, but interest payments are not included in the proposed budget. Nothing is budgeted for building supplies.  There is no cash reserve.

    •    The petitions attached to the application do not identify the towns that will be eligible to attend the charter school or the possible location of the school. It is possible that the same petition was used for more than one charter school. The name of the school does not appear anywhere on the petition.

    •    The governance and human resources section of the application appears unworkable. The relationship between board, staff and parents is ill defined. The organizational chart provided is not clear. The application fails to note that Board members are required to have criminal background checks. The role of non-profit entities to supply supplementary services, as articulated, may run afoul of ethics and bidding requirements.

    •    The implementation timeline is completely unrealistic. Even if there were start-up funds in place, which there are not, it is not possible to do all the work necessary to open a new school between the end of January and the beginning of September. The timeline does not account for mandatory staff training.

The sections of the application concerning special education and school climate merely parrot the language of the regulations without providing specific information concerning the program. Additionally, those areas reflect the following specific deficiencies:

    •    The application states that the applicant is “committed to maximizing the use of allocated funds for special education.” Funds cannot determine services.  Services must be determined by the program and services outlined in the IEP for each student. The application suggests however that dollars will determine need in contravention of IDEA. Additionally, while this new application provides some additional information concerning meeting the needs of special education students it remains extremely unclear how child study team services and intervention and referral services will actually be provided. Much of the discussion concerning special needs students in the application focuses on reading.  There is no discussion concerning other types of disabilities or the services that will be available to address the needs of those students.

    •    The section of the application concerning school climate, culture and discipline does not include meaningful information about supports or services, only sanctions.  This is inconsistent with the requirements of the administrative code concerning student support services and good educational practice.

    •    The application states, on page 39, that the decision whether to communicate with parents in English or in Mandarin will be at the discretion of the teacher.  According to census information most of the households in South Orange and in Maplewood are not Mandarin speaking.

    •    The application while mentioning fire drills makes no reference to school safety drills.

    •    The definition of harassment, intimidation and bullying in the application’s proposed student handbook differs from the definition in the law.

    •    The application does not make clear how the needs of students with individual health plans or other health issues will be addressed in the absence of a full-time school nurse.

The New Jersey School Board’s Association (NJSBA) has recently revised its position on charter schools to call for a local vote prior to charter school approval. Similarly, the Education Law Center has released a position paper recommending wholesale changes to the charter school law. Additionally, on May 23, 2011 the Assembly Education Committee released a plethora of bills that would make changes to the charter school law. The South Orange-Maplewood Board of Education, supports revisiting this law which not been revised in more than 15 years. 

The South Orange and Maplewood Board has taken a position close to that of the NJSBA’s, by adopting a resolution requiring voter approval when a predominant portion of funding for the charter school will come from the local tax base.  Today’s economic climate is such that local taxpayers simply cannot afford the 1.1 million dollar cost of an extra school when the current configuration of schools is adequate to meet the needs of all of its students. It is particularly unfair that the taxpayers be asked to take on the burden of an additional school when the cost will be the expense of the over 6,000 remaining students in the district who will suffer a loss of programs and services.

Thank you for your time and attention in addressing the needs of the students of the South Orange and Maplewood School District.

Very truly yours,

Brian Osborne

To read a letter sent to Cerf by West Orange School District Superintendent Dr. Anthony P. Cavanna, read here.