Residents Rally at Highland Park Elementary School in Support of Changes to Charter Legislation

The message being sent at Monday night’s rally in Highland Park for charter school reform was loud and clear: the people want a say.

About 100 people from across central New Jersey showed up at Bartle Elementary School for the rally organized by Save Our Schools, a grassroots nonprofit organization focused on issues surrounding public education in New Jersey.

The rally, one of three arranged across the state, drummed up support for the issue of charter school reform. Currently, the State Department of Education has the right to approve the establishment of a charter school without local approval, with municipalities having to foot the bill through increased taxes and budget cuts from public schools.

“We’re coming together to urge our legislators to stop stalling and act on two excellent bills that have been put forward to fix our broken charter school laws in New Jersey,” said Melanie McDermott, a Save Our Schools member and organizer of the rally. “We vote on school budgets, we pay the taxes, and we feel like we should have a say on whether or not we can afford a new school in our district.”

At the end of May, the state Assembly Education Committee approved several bills that would lead to such reform. One of those bills, A3852 sponsored by Assemblyman and Education Committee Chairman Patrick Diegnan (D-18) - who was present at Monday’s rally- calls for either board of education or voter approval prior to the opening of a charter school within a district.

“To be cutting programs at the public school, while you’re simultaneously using tax dollars to support a quote unquote “boutique charter school” is just contrary to what this country is all about,” Diegnan said to the crowd. “Hopefully when it reaches the governor’s desk, he will realize that giving citizens a voice in important things like educating their children furthers democracy, strengthens the process and does not destroy it.”

Voters are also tired of paying for schools that don’t represent the entire demography of their local municipalities, and not knowing where their money goes once it gets to the charter school. Bill A3356 addresses both of these issues.

“Charters should indicate where they get their money from, because they also get private dollars,” McDermott added. “They should be required to draw from the entire population of a community, not just what they’re doing right now which is essentially creaming off the easy to educate kids, leaving off English as a second language and leaving out special needs kids.”

Highland Park’s rally featured several additional speakers, including Sen. Barbara Buono (D-18) Assemblyman Peter Barnes (D-18), Mayor Stephen Nolan, Freeholder Jimmy Polos, organizer Darcie Cimarusti, and two Highland Park High School students, all of whom pledged their support in enacting the charter school reforms in question.

Highland Park is no stranger to charter schools. The Tikun Olam Charter School of East Brunswick has begun taking kids from the Highland Park school system, and the borough has also been the proposed location for a new charter school that has been twice denied by the state, but is now receiving a tutorial by the DOE on how to better its application.

Carlos Perez, president and CEO of the New Jersey Charter Schools Association released a statement calling reform on the issue of charter schools "bad public policy"

“Requiring a referendum on charter schools is not only bad public policy, it undermines the entire premise of a charter school,” Perez said.  “It’s a reaction to a challenge of the status quo by the entrenched education establishment to stop the thriving charter school movement in New Jersey in its tracks.”

“If people want a charter school, if they know the facts and they decide they want their tax money to go to a charter school, then by all means they ought to have that charter school,” Buono said. “At a time when New Jersey families are at their most vulnerable, it just doesn’t make sense to burden them with a school that they didn’t want to begin with.”