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This story was originally published by the New Jersey Monitor.
Senate lawmakers on Monday advanced legislation that would launch the most comprehensive overhaul of New Jersey’s regulation of charter schools in 30 years.
The bill advanced by the Senate Education Committee on Monday would outright ban for-profit charter schools, require them to post a range of documents online, and impose residency requirements for some charter school trustees.
“We have not looked at charter schools as a whole legislatively in this committee since the 1990s, so this is an opportunity where we’re trying to do that,” said Sen. Vin Gopal, who represents parts of Monmouth County, the panel’s chair and the bill’s prime sponsor.
The bill comes as New Jersey charter schools have faced scrutiny after reporting revealed top officials were paid far more than their counterparts at traditional public schools, including, among others, a Newark charter school CEO who was paid nearly $800,000 in 2024.
The proposal, which Gopal said was the product of a year of negotiations, would require charter schools to post user-friendly budgets that include the compensation paid to charter school leaders and school business administrators. They must also post existing contracts.
Charters would be required to post meeting notices, annual reports, board members’ identities, and facility locations online. Some critics have charged that charter schools routinely fail to provide notice of their public meetings.
The legislation would also require the state to create a dedicated charter school transparency website to host plain language budgets, 990 disclosure forms filed with the IRS, contracts with charter management organizations, and a list of charter schools on probation, among other things.
It would also ban fully virtual charter schools.
“We support the bills as a step forward in holding all public schools in our state accountable for fiscal and transparency requirements that will ultimately best serve our students,” said Debbie Bradley, director of government relations for the New Jersey Principals and Supervisors Association.
The two sides remained at odds over the membership of charter school boards.
Charter critics argued residency for those positions — which, unlike traditional public school boards, are largely appointed rather than elected — should mirror those imposed on regular public schools.
In New Jersey, school board members must live in the district they serve. That’s not the case for charter schools, whose trustees face no residency or qualification limits under existing law.
The bill would only impose a residency requirement on one-third of a charter school’s trustees, and rather than forcing them to live in the district, the bill would require charter trustees to live in the school’s county or within 30 miles of the school.
That language was criticized by statewide teachers union the New Jersey Education Association, which has called existing law governing charter schools outdated and flawed.
“School board representation should remain primarily local, and when we mean local, we don’t mean within a 30-mile radius. A 30-mile radius of Newark could include Maplewood, South Orange, communities that don’t necessarily represent what Newark looks like as a community,” said Deb Cornavaca, the union’s director of government relations.
Charter school supporters said their boards need flexibility because their leadership has broader responsibilities than counterparts in traditional public schools.
“Running a charter is a little different than running a traditional district. You need experience in school finance. You need to fundraise a bunch of money on the front end because you’re not getting paid on the front end,” said New Jersey Charter School Association President Harry Lee, adding they also needed familiarity with real estate and community experience.
Amendments removed provisions that would have required charter school board members to be approved by the state commissioner of education, though the commissioner retains sole power over whether to allow the formation of a new charter, a power that gives the commissioner some veto power over a charter’s board.
Gopal acknowledged the 30-mile residency rule was a sticking point and said legislators would discuss it before the measure comes before the Senate Budget Committee. Earlier, he warned the bill was likely to see more changes as it moved through the Legislature.
Some argued enrollment in charter schools should be more limited by geography, arguing that out-of-district enrollments that are common at New Jersey charters could place financial strain on the students’ former district.
Most per-pupil state and local funding follows students who enroll in charter schools, even if their departure does not actually decrease the original district’s expenses because, for example, those schools still require the same number of teachers and administrators.
Charter operators said that would make New Jersey a national outlier and argued that a separate provision that would bar new charter schools when there are empty seats in existing area charters should come out of the bill.
“It could be read as a moratorium on charters, so we want to revisit that provision,” Lee said.
Such vacancies could exist for various reasons, they argued, including student age distributions.
Alongside that measure, the panel approved separate legislation that would bar charter schools from setting criteria to enroll students, ban them from imposing other requirements on a student randomly selected to attend, and place new limits on how such schools can enroll children from outside their district.
That bill would also bar charter schools from encouraging students to break with the district. Some opponents have charged that charter schools push out low-performing students to boost their metrics.
The committee approved the bills in unanimous votes, though Sens. Owen Henry, who represents portions of four counties in Central Jersey, and Kristin Corrado, who represents parts of three counties in North Jersey, abstained from votes on both bills, saying they are broadly supportive but need more time to review amendments.
Nikita Biryukov covers state government and politics for the New Jersey Monitor. You can reach him at nbiryukov@newjerseymonitor.com.
