BY KATHY CHANG Staff Writer
Hatikvah International Charter School will open in September as scheduled, thanks to a ruling last week by the state commissioner of education.In his decision Aug. 26, one day before his firing over an unrelated matter, Bret Schundler determined that the East Brunswick Board of Education had not met the four conditions necessary to grant a stay on the charter school, deeming the board’s argument “spurious at best.”
“We are grateful to the commissioner for vindicating Hatikvah’s right to open and seeing this baseless lawsuit for what it was — the desperate culmination of a cynical campaign by the East Brunswick school board to sabotage the first charter school in its district,” said Hatikvah attorney Thomas Johnston.
The township school board initiated litigation against Hatikvah on Aug. 12, arguing that the school, set to open for grades K-2 next week, did not have enough students enrolled. Board Attorney Matthew Giacobbe filed the motion to rescind Hatikvah’s state approval, citing its failure to show that it had enrolled at least 90 percent of its approved maximum student enrollment, as required under New Jersey law.
Giacobbe said the charter school was required to have provided enrollment figures by June 30 — a week before its final approval— but that the estimates were never received. The attorney said the board determined that the charter school had just 68 students enrolled at the time the motion was filed. Since the school’s maximum enrollment is 108 students, Hatikvah would be required to enroll at least 97 students to comply with state requirements, he said.
In an Aug. 20 press release, Johnston said that Hatikvah provided “precisely the type of documentation” needed to prove that it had met enrollment requirements prior to the June 30 deadline. He said the documents showed that the school had enrolled 100 students from East Brunswick, which accounted for 92.5 percent of total enrollment. The remaining slots would be available to students from other municipalities, Johnston said.
Additionally, Hatikvah officials claim that the school board has attempted to undermine their operation, with efforts to deny or delay transfer cards, or to “harass parents who expressed interest in enrolling their students … . ”
Johnston formally requested that the state bring sanctions against the school board and order the district to release the per-pupil funding that the district must pay the charter school.
State Attorney General Paula Dow filed a brief on Aug. 23 urging Schundler to deny the request for a stay, stating that the lawsuit was groundless. Schundler indicated his decision was based on the school board’s failure to demonstrate the existence of four separate conditions — that the board would suffer irreversible harm if the request is not granted; the legal right underlying the board’s claim was not settled; the board had the likelihood of winning on the merits of the underlying claim; and the board would suffer greater harm than the other party if the request was not granted.
The board contended that transportation could not be organized without a final enrollment number; that any issue that impedes the delivery of educational services is the board’s responsibility; and that the board needed to finalize the 2010-11 plans for over 9,000 students.
“I’m not surprised by this at all,” Yair Nezaria, co-founder of Hatikvah, said. “I believe that justice has been served.”
“I’m not surprised by this at all,” Yair Nezaria, co-founder of Hatikvah, said. “I believe that justice has been served.”
Nezaria noted that the charter school, which will offer a Hebrew language immersion program while focusing on an International Baccalaureate college preparatory curriculum, is “simply nothing less than a gift to East Brunswick taxpayers,” and that it has tried to establish communications with the district to no avail.
“We have been trying to establish dialogue with the school board for over a year, but all we’ve gotten is rejection coupled with arrogance,” Nezaria said. “If they truly cared about East Brunswick students, then they would sit down and cooperate for their sake.”
School officials say it has been the Hatikvah representatives who have been uncooperative over the course of the year.
Superintendent of Schools Jo Ann Magistro said during the Aug. 26 Board of Education meeting that district officials began meeting with charter school representatives last February in order to set up the appropriate registration process. She said that by law, studentsmust register with the district to be transferred to Hatikvah, and in order for the proper residency papers to be submitted and transportation to be arranged.
“The communication went back and forth for months to try to get a handle on who exactly would be attending the charter school,” Magistro said. “The district tried diligently to get accurate information from the charter school to no avail.”
Magistro said she has not been provided with any specifics with regard to Hatikvah’s claims that staff members had been uncooperative with the charter school.
“The comment that the school district has a ‘communication blackout’ is blatantly false,” she said, adding that the district has “several hundred documents” showing its communications and attempts to communicate with the charter school. She said she has not been in contact with representatives since July, despite her attempt to arrange a meeting with the Hatikvah board.
After the school received final state approval on July 7, Magistro said that an auditor from the state Department of Education was sent to check on Hatikvah’s enrollment figures.
“She asked us to be patient and indicated that she would need to call parents to see if students on the charter school list were indeed going to enroll, since they had not gone through the appropriate registration procedure and many were still on the rolls in our district schools,” Magistro said. “At that time, Hatikvah charter school had still not met its required level of enrollment, and that continues to be true to this day.”
She said the district filed the stay after the auditor confirmed that the enrollment was not met. She said the district was required to file an Open Public Records Act request to get the list of names of students that the charter school had submitted to the state. Magistro said the district received those documents on Aug. 25, and that they confirm that the state “either did not check the information received by the charter school or chose not to follow the code requirements for registration of students.”
Giacobbe said the documents show that only 77 students had registered to be enrolled in Hatikvah as of last week. He said the district will now only be required to pay tuition for that number of students, costing the district significantly less than the $1.22 million allocation that was budgeted for the charter school.
“We would only be required to pay about $875,000,” he said. “That will save the district around $350,000, and every little bit helps in these times.”
“We’ve been accused of filing a frivolous lawsuit, but as of today, they still don’t have their 90 percent,” Giacobbe said.
Magistro said the Department of Education’s ruling contradicts its policies, noting that the decision effectively ignores all regulations for registering children and ensuring that students reside in the district where taxes are being paid.
Giacobbe said the district filed an appeal with the Appellate Division of the Superior Court of New Jersey.
Magistro closed her statement by assuring the charter school parents “that we respect their decision on school choice and that we will continue to work on transportation routes.”
She said the board has pursued litigation in order to perform its “responsibility to due diligence on behalf of the taxpayers of East Brunswick. The district does not want to hold back the $1.2 million budgeted for the charter school. But we do want to make sure that East Brunswick taxpayer dollars are being used to fund children that reside in East Brunswick.”
Nezaria said Tuesday that the charter school had still “not received a penny” of the money owed by the school district.
“They are losing the legal battle, but keep persisting that they are doing everything right,” he said.
Looking forward, he said, “I hope that at a certain point we can all sit down and cooperate for the sake of all East Brunswick children.”
