Charter schools in New Jersey will face more public scrutiny after the first major overhaul of the laws that created them more than 30 years ago.
Former Gov. Phil Murphy signed the legislation in one of his final acts before Gov. Mikie Sherril took office last week. It marks the first comprehensive update to the laws that govern charter schools, laws enacted before the first cohort of charters opened.
Charter school budgets and their applications will face more public scrutiny. Charter school networks will get the chance to request longer renewal periods. And their trustees will be legally required to be more public about some of their actions.
The legislation aims to impose “stricter governance standards as well as training and residency requirements for trustees,” said state Sen. Vin Gopal (D-Monmouth), who chairs the Senate’s education committee, in a press release. “These bills add new and necessary requirements for increased transparency, accountability, and oversight of New Jersey’s charter schools in response to excessive executive compensation and financial mismanagement,” Gopal said.
The landmark legislation came after news investigations into fiscal mismanagement and nepotism issues at some charter schools across the state.
Lawmakers and education advocates, including the teachers’ union and charter supporters, reached an agreement on the set of bills that ultimately made it to Murphy’s desk in the last days of his administration. It will be up to Sherrill’s administration to execute the law, which takes effect in the 2027-28 school year.
Statewide, about 64,000 students attend 84 charter schools, which are publicly funded and privately managed.
New requirements strengthen state oversight
The legislation, outlined in bills S4713 and S4716, includes new rules for enrollment, reporting, athletics, and more. It strengthens the state education commissioner’s authority for granting longer renewal periods and allows more opportunities for charters to consolidate.
“These bills add new and necessary requirements for increased transparency, accountability, and oversight of New Jersey’s charter schools in response to excessive executive compensation and financial mismanagement,” Gopal said.
News reports of some charter school leaders receiving salaries that outpace those of public school superintendents serving larger student populations spurred lawmakers and stakeholders to take policy action. Legislative committee hearings began in late 2024, months after NJ.com first published its investigations into certain charter schools.
The law requires charter schools to submit compensation studies concerning administrative personnel and school leader posts as part of their annual reports and renewal applications. Charter schools’ boards of trustees must also to notify the public when there are plans to modify school leader contracts, similar to the requirements for public school districts.
Like public school boards, charter boards of trustees are now prohibited from “renegotiating, extending, amending, or otherwise altering the terms of a contract with a lead person, school business, administrator, charter management organization, or education management organization” without public notice provided at least 30 days before scheduled action.
“The whole idea around charters is that with more autonomy, you also get greater accountability,” said Harry Lee, president and chief executive officer of the New Jersey Public Charter Schools Association, in an interview last week.
Repercussions for a few ‘bad actors’
A South Jersey charter network remains under investigation by the state comptroller’s office. A Trenton charter school shuttered. A small Newark charter school relinquished its membership in the state’s public charter school association.
This has been some of the fallout for charter schools part of the NJ.com investigations in 2024. Across the schools, leaders were earning salaries that far outpaced those for superintendents of public school districts that were typically larger in size.
Former Acting State Comptroller Kevin Walsh, in his final days in office under the Murphy administration, released an investigation on College Achieve Public Schools, the charter management organization that manages College Achieve Greater Asbury Park Charter School. The report states that the school violated public contracting laws and nepotism policies when it hired the management organization without state review or approval and with minimal involvement by its board of trustees.
The investigation confirmed findings outlined in the news reports.
“We were not surprised by the findings,” Lee said. “We think this legislation addresses the concerns in the report, provides safeguards, and allows the department to review charter schools and charter school management organization contracts that were previously not even defined.”
Stakeholders say the legislation marks a milestone for the state’s public education system, in part because the state’s largest teachers’ union and the state’s charter school membership association were able to agree on the changes to the law. Over the last few decades, public and charter school advocates have clashed.
“It was a real collaborative effort where there wasn’t always agreement and not everyone walked away happy,” said Steve Beatty, president of the New Jersey Education Association.
“There’s always going to be bad actors and in this case charters are not immune to that,” Beatty said on Friday. “But we’re confident these new guardrails will address much-needed transparency.”
Mark Weber, a school finance lecturer at the Rutgers Graduate School of Education, argues that because charter schools’ budgets are funded by taxpayer money, boards of trustees should be publicly elected to represent residents and not just the school community.
“The legislation primarily addresses accountability and transparency issues,” said Weber, who is also an education analyst at New Jersey Policy Perspective and a public school teacher. “From my perspective, that’s a good first step — but it’s a first step.”
Ten-year renewal could be transformative
Under the new legislation, the education commissioner can grant 10-year renewals to charter schools that meet the state’s high-performing standards, which consider how well the school is doing in terms of academic and fiscal performance, among other measures.
The prior rules allowed for a maximum of a five-year renewal. Charters will need to meet a high bar to qualify for a 10-year renewal, including a clean record without a probationary status during its previous renewal period. The schools will also still be required to submit an annual report during the extended renewal period.
For some charter schools, the additional five years in a renewal period could be transformative.
“A 10-year renewal would enable us to make longer-term plans for facilities,” said Colin Hogan, head of school at Learning Community Charter School in Jersey City. “We want to expand but you can’t make these plans on a five-year basis.”
Hogan’s pre-K-8 charter school, which has about 640 students, was among the first in New Jersey that opened its doors after the enactment of the Charter School Program Act of 1995.
In recent years, the school has received awards and recognitions for meeting high-performing standards. Still, it faces challenges when seeking additional funding or loans for facilities.
“There have been times when we’ve gone out for facility funding but because of the five-year renewal, we’re not considered a long-term institution and not eligible,” Hogan told NJ Spotlight News.
The longer renewal period option also sends a strong message statewide, he added.
“The law was written before we even existed — it was time for an update,” Hogan said. “Now, we can move on from the outdated argument of ‘whether charters should exist.’ This legislation understands the important role charters play in New Jersey’s future.”
Charter office needs more support, advocates say
More required reporting will increase the demand from the state education department, which oversees and authorizes the schools to operate.
Some advocates said the department’s Office of Charter and Renaissance Schools, which employs about a handful of staffers, will need more staffing support to improve oversight of reporting from the charter networks.
“Capacity in that office is not where it needs to be,” Lee said. “We have a new commissioner coming in and staffing up the office is going to be something that should be looked at, for sure.”
