Following media reports of unusually high salaries for charter school administrators, some of whom do not live in New Jersey, the state’s charter schools association says it now wants to lead reform efforts that will stop “bad actors.”
The charter association’s policy proposals include requiring budgets to be publicly posted and requiring charter management organizations to complete compensation studies. But researchers from Rutgers University say the reforms need to go further to best serve the state’s public school students, whether they attend charter schools or traditional public schools…
Julia Sass Rubin, an associate professor at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University, said board members should be elected, just like for the boards of traditional public schools.
“There’s no real rationale for why charter boards are appointed or only elected by charter parents, and local public-school boards are elected by everybody in the community. They’re both public schools, right? They’re both funded by public dollars,” Rubin said…
The proposals also include requiring charter schools to make their budgets accessible to the public by sharing current-year 108-line budgets, which break down incomes and expenses by category.
Rubin said financial transparency is important and charter schools should go even further by providing user-friendly budgets just like traditional public schools. She said because this format is designed to be accessible to taxpayers and parents, it’s better than 108-line budgets.
“More transparency, more oversight is necessary before we really know how widespread these abuses are. It’s not to say that district schools don’t have things like this happen. It’s just a lot easier to find them because there’s greater required transparency and greater oversight,” Rubin said.