Town says charter tips district's racial balance

[The Bobster]

http://www.nj.com/statehouse/ledger/index....95455279400.xml

State must address school segregation

Red Bank board says charter tips district's racial balance


Thursday, March 18, 2004


BY KATHY BARRETT CARTER
Star-Ledger Staff

The state has a duty to determine whether a charter school is exacerbating racial segregation in a school district, a state appeals court ruled yesterday.

The court ordered Education Commissioner William L. Librera to determine whether the Red Bank Charter School is causing the small Monmouth County borough
#39;s two other public schools to become more segregated.


"New Jersey abhors discrimination and segregation in our public schools. Our policy prohibiting segregation is strong and rooted i
n ou
r constitution," said the decision by a three-judge panel of the Appellate Divisi
on of Superior Court.

The Red Bank Board of Education raised the issue in the fall of 2001 when the charter school, which had 80 students in grades four through eight, sought state permission to add kindergarten through third grade and expand to 162 students.

School district officials objected, saying that since the charter school opened in 1998, the percentage of white students enrolled in the district's elementary and middle schools had decreased from 32 percent to 18 percent.

While the charter school's student body was 47 percent white, the district said a disproportionate number of students who left the charter school and returned to the district's schools were minorit
y, and noted that the charter school's 2000 graduating class was 88 percent white. (Who says porch monkeys are stupid? Just the statistics.)

Officials at the charter school said they
were simply
attracting white students who were home schooled or in private or parochial schools back to the district
. They also argued that the percentage of nonminority students in the public schools had been declining before the charter school opened.

The state education commissioner renewed the school's charter and authorized its expansion, but never mentioned the board's concerns about segregation in his renewal letter.

Yesterday, in a decision written by Appellate Division Judge Steven Lefelt (la chaime in the highest), the court said Librera had given short shrift to the school board's concerns. Though New Jersey is attempting to promote charter schools, the court said those goals do not eliminate the commissioner's duty to make sure schools do not end up segregated.

The court noted the state's poor track record in this area. "While we have struggled to maintain nonsegregated schools, our efforts have met with less than universal success," Lef
elt wrote, citing a
Harvard University study last year that found New Jersey has some of the most segregated schools in the nation.

The court sent t
he matter back to the commissioner to hold hearings on whether the Red Bank Charter School's admission and withdrawal policies adversely impact the district's ethnic balance.

Following state rules, the charter school uses a color-blind lottery to select students from all applicants. Jennifer Langer, executive director of the New Jersey Charter Public Schools Association, said maintaining diversity in the charter schools is not easy because of the lottery.

"The lottery is the limiting factor. If the kids don't win the lottery, they don't end up in the school," said Langer.

The Red Bank school board argued, how
ever, that several of the charter school's policies contribute to racial disparity. One is a preference given to siblings of current charter school students. The board also said some mino
rity students with poor aca
demic records had been urged to leave the charter school and return to the district's schools prior to statewide standardized testing -- a charge the charter
school denied.

In its ruling yesterday, the court said, "We find these allegations of the school's enrollment and withdrawal policies disturbing and difficult to dismiss ..."

David Apy, the lawyer for the charter school, did not return a call seeking comment yesterday.

R. Armen McOmber, the attorney for the district, said, "We're obviously pleased the Appellate Division found that there should have been a hearing. Finally, we'll have our day in court. So, on the one hand we're very pleased. On the other hand, they didn't go far enough."

He said he was con
cerned that by the time the issue is resolved there will be virtually no white students left in the district's regular public schools.

Richard Vespucci, a spokesman for the Depar
tment of Education, said the issue
of racial imbalance is not a big problem in the state's 51 charter schools.

"Certainly we will do what we need to do as a follow-up to the court decision ... but up to this point there has not been a problem
." He said the state has not seen significant differences between the racial makeup of charter schools and other public schools within their districts.

[Sophia]

They want it both ways.

There are all black schools that never get hasseld.


The problem is not blacks and whites

The problem is jew run govt interference.

Restructuring EVERYTHING to push jew agenda.