Moments after delivering opening remarks highlighting the successes in New Jersey’s charter school sector, Harry Lee steeled himself at a lectern inside the Statehouse Annex in Trenton on Monday.
The weight of the entire state charter system, dogged this year by allegations of financial and ethical impropriety in some of its schools, seemed to hang in the expansive hearing room filled with education officials and experts from across New Jersey.
Then came the rapid fire questions from lawmakers.
They wanted to know how charter board members are selected. Who does the vetting? How are school budgets decided? Who agrees on doling out salaries that some have described as “outrageous”? And why are some charter schools at enrollment capacity and others not?
The pointed questions went on and on for nearly an hour, as Lee, the president and CEO of the New Jersey Public Charter Schools Association, worked through answers.
It was all part of a hotly debated, nearly four-hour legislative hearing regarding the state’s public charter school sector, in response to a series of NJ Advance Media investigations that uncovered widespread allegations of financial and ethical misconduct, as well as possible violations of state law, in several schools.
The hearing before the state Senate Education Committee began discussions that are expected to result in lawmakers updating or overhauling the state’s nearly 30-year-old Charter School Program Act of 1995.
After the hearing, committee chairman and state Sen. Vin Gopal, D-Monmouth, said he expects a bill to be proposed in January to restructure the state’s charter school laws.
“The NJ.com articles raised a lot of issues,” Gopal said. “There could be more hearings, but we will have legislation next and then hear the bill. There needs to be more accountability.”
Lawmakers raised several concerns regarding the charter sector, honing in on the selection of charter boards and the state Department of Education’s role as the sole charter school authorizer in New Jersey.
When Lee noted during testimony that the state Department of Education could be involved with vetting charter board members under restructured guidelines, Sen. Kristin M. Corrado, R-Passaic, said, “I don’t have a lot of faith in the Department of Education.”
“Because what we’re not saying here is the issues that were screwing around, the Department of Education should have caught,“ Corrado said. ”They should have done a better job.”
“There has got to be something in place to vet school board members better,” Corrado continued. “In the public sector, we’re electing them — they don’t do their job, we vote them out. If they’re not doing their job at the charter school level, what is the mechanism to remove them?”
The state’s charter school statute came under scrutiny this year after NJ Advance Media investigations uncovered several instances of alleged misconducted, including: top officials at several charter schools earning salaries that far outpace other districts across the state; married school leaders who run a small school in Newark while living in Florida; and a separate husband-and-wife team that used a family-owned business to produce thousands of dollars of school apparel in direct violation of state ethics laws.
The investigations also zeroed in on the College Achieve Public Schools network, where founder and CEO Michael Piscal was found to be making $795,515 in total compensation, according to tax forms filed by the organization in 2024, making him the highest paid education official in New Jersey by far. Executive directors of College Achieve schools in Paterson and Asbury Park/Neptune made $515,674 and $460,515, respectively, in total compensation — salaries that are significantly higher than other top school officials in New Jersey.
College Achieve also was accused of financial and ethical impropriety in one school, according to an NJ Advance Media report. And it was widely criticized when the news organization uncovered it fielded a varsity basketball team that utilized a loophole allowing students to attend a charter outside the town in which they live if the school has open seats not taken by students in its district of residence. In turn, College Achieve Asbury Park stacked its roster with 11 elite transfers from across New Jersey, and won a state championship in its first season of existence.
The hearing Monday featured more than 10 speakers from all different academic and educational backgrounds and lasted almost four hours, as lawmakers weighed testimony and probed speakers.
Lee, president and CEO of the the largest charter school advocacy group in the state, opened the hearing with testimony that touted the achievements of the state’s charter sector, pointing to innovative learning methods, longer school days and middle school charter students overall outperforming state averages in reading despite serving twice as many low-income students.
“The results speak for themselves,” Lee said. “While New Jersey’s public school system is ranked the top-performing in the country, we know that large opportunity gaps remain. Not every child is getting a great education that meets their individual needs. Charter schools are undeniably helping to close the gap.”
After those remarks, Lee fielded pointed questions from lawmakers about charter school funding, budget transparency, fiscal responsibility and enrollment and student selection processes.
“Charter schools play a very important role in the state of New Jersey in educating our students,” Sen. Paul Sarlo, D-Bergen, said. “What we’re trying to get at is that 1995 was the Charter School Act, and 13 charter schools opened in 1997. It’s been some time, and clearly some things have come to light that raises some questions.”
The selection process for charter boards, as well as the state Department of Education’s role in oversight, also were frequent topics Monday and previously raised in NJ Advance Media reports this year.
Charter school board members are independently appointed by the schools themselves — not publicly elected like in most public-school districts in New Jersey. Meanwhile, the state Department of Education is the sole charter school authorizer in New Jersey, charged with providing independent oversight of the institutions.
Charter schools were created decades ago as a solution to struggling public education in impoverished communities, constructed to create efficiencies, do away with wasteful spending and establish innovative methods for learning. Some have succeeded, turning in stellar testing results and sending kids to high-performing colleges.
But others have floundered, shuttered or provided a sector where some officials have found ways to get rich on the strength of taxpayer dollars, several state education experts said.
New Jersey’s nearly 30-year-old charter school statute — which established state mandates for the founding, operation and administration of charter schools — was amended in 2000 and 2011. Since the first law was put in place, New Jersey’s charter school sector has exploded by nearly 550%, from 13 to 86 schools, now encompassing 18 of the state’s 21 counties.
Several other speakers followed Lee, including New Jersey Education Association director of government relations Deborah Cornavaca, education policy analyst Mark Weber and Macke Raymond of the Center for Research on Education Outcomes, among others.
While Lee fiercely defended New Jersey’s charter sector, he also said charter regulations could be improved in five areas, including better vetting of charter boards, requiring schools to engage in compensation studies and more transparency around budgets.
“Clearly there is work to be done,” Sarlo said. “I don’t want anybody to think this is an attack on charters. Charters are an important part of our educational system here in New Jersey. We have to look at some governance and tighten up some transparency. Let’s figure it out and get it done.”
“There are bad actors out there,” Sarlo continued. “If you look at the articles on NJ.com, they focused on bad actors. They didn’t paint this wide brush. But there are bad actors out there.”
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Matthew Stanmyre may be reached at mstanmyre@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on X @MattStanmyre. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
