A Red Bank Parent’s Perspective On the Proposed Charter School Expansion

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By Wayne Woolley, Red Bank

I am the father of two amazing girls who are thriving at the Red Bank Public Schools. As a parent and a taxpayer, I wish to voice my strenuous opposition to an application now before Commissioner Hespe to allow the Red Bank Charter School to double in size, from 200 to 400 pupils.
Approval of this expansion would be an unmitigated disaster for the children of Red Bank and for its home and business owners. Homeowners and business owners would be crushed by a property tax increase that could exceed 10 percent as the school district would be forced to send every penny of its state aid to the Charter School as well as an estimated $400,000 directly from its share of local school taxes.
The school district, which has been shorted more than $6 million in state aid over the past six years, would be forced to cut teachers and support staff at the Primary and Middle Schools as well as music, sports and after-school programs. As it is, funding shortfalls at the public Primary and Middle Schools have forced parents and the board of education to resort to public-private partnerships and fundraising to prevent the elimination of several sports teams and an award-winning strings orchestra.
During the same time period, the Red Bank Charter School amassed a $525,000 surplus. An expansion of the Red Bank Charter School would increase an existing disparity under which the Charter School’s annual per pupil funding exceeds the Public School by more than $1,700.
Although the Charter School, in its application to Commissioner Hespe, admits the adverse affects an expansion would have on the public school system and Red Bank’s taxpayers, they claim it will expand educational opportunities for all of Red Bank’s children.
Unfortunately, the Charter School’s recruitment practices over the past decade have demonstrated this to be a fallacy. Red Bank has the most segregated school system in New Jersey, thanks to its Charter School. The Charter School has done everything in its power to ensure that it remains inaccessible to the borough’s growing Latino community. As a result, last year only seven of the Charter School’s students were learning English as a second language compared to more than 30 percent of the Public School’s nearly 1,400 students. Many parents of school-aged children in Red Bank are under the mistaken impression the Charter School is a private school. It’s an impression propagated by the Charter School itself. One of the school’s own trustees, a woman named Caryn Cohen, goes so far as to equate it to a private school in her biography on the school website.
Let me be clear. I am not opposed to the concept of charter schools. I recognize that there are communities where the public schools have abdicated their responsibility to provide quality education. But that’s certainly not the case in Red Bank. The Red Bank Public Schools have made great strides in improving the educational outcomes and standardized test performance of a student body where 90 percent of the children are eligible for free and reduced lunch.
According to Bruce Baker, a Rutgers University professor, when demographic differences are taken into account, the Red Bank Public Schools outperform the Charter School. In addition, over the past several years, the public schools have placed more students in highly competitive magnet high schools, such as High Tech High, than the Charter, and as we sit here today, recent Red Bank Public School graduates are now studying at elite colleges including Harvard University and the United States Military Academy at West Point.
My oldest daughter wants to be an engineer; her younger sister, a doctor. If there was any doubt in my mind that the Red Bank Public Schools couldn’t help them achieve those ends, they wouldn’t be going to school there. I have the financial resources to live where I want. Private school tuition is within my reach. But I chose to live in Red Bank. And my kids choose the Red Bank Public Schools. They don’t want to go anywhere else. It’s the reason I’m here today.
The ill-conceived expansion of the Red Bank Charter School will decimate a great public school. It will do absolutely nothing to improve education outcomes in Red Bank. The only result will be higher taxes, lower property values and an exodus from what’s now a thriving little town on a very pretty river near the Shore.
This slightly edited commentary was originally presented by Wayne Wooley on Jan. 11 in testimony before the state Board of Education.