High Court Upholds Administration's Charter Review Process

The Christie administration has faced its share of criticism -- from both sides -- for how it reviews charter schools, but for now, the process passes legal muster. The state Supreme Court yesterday upheld that review process in the case of a proposal for a charter school in Montclair that the New Jersey Department of Education had rejected six times.

The founders of the proposed Quest Academy Charter School had appealed the third of those rejections, this one by former state Education Commissioner Rochelle Hendricks, as failing to meet a required “standard of review.” But the court in a unanimous decision written by Justice Jaynee LaVecchia said Hendricks had met the required standard that the decision was not “arbitrary, capricious or unreasonable.”

“The Commissioner’s decision … demonstrates a thoughtful and thorough weighing and judgment of the merits of the Quest Academy application,” LaVecchia wrote.

“There is no right to operate a charter school,” she continued. “There is only the opportunity to apply for approval to operate one if the application demonstrates proper merit. The burden is on the applicant to show that it can meet the requirements for obtaining permission to educate public school children in a charter school setting.”

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