State 'Roiling' Over Charter Schools, Save Our Schools Member Says

Julia Sass Rubin, a founding member of Save Our Schools NJ, says public schools are being undermined.

“This is happening across the country,” said Rubin, during a visit to the Lawrence branch of the Mercer County Library on Wednesday. “It’s a national phenomenon.”

Rubin is an associate professor at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University. The Lawrence chapter of the League of Women Voters hosted her visit. 

Rubin's talk, "Keeping Public Schools Public," covered the state of education in the Garden State and how Save Our Schools NJ is working to strengthen public school systems.

Save our Schools NJ is grassroots campaign for equal access to high-quality public education and advocates for reform of the state charter school law, including a local vote before a charter school is approved by the Department of Education to open in any district. 

“Local communities should have a say if they want a charter school,” Rubin said.

School districts throughout the state – including South Brunswick, East Brunswick, New Brunswick, Princeton and Highland Park – have taken steps to fight the opening of charter schools they oppose.

“Busloads of suburbanites are supposed to have an Occupy DOE [Department of Education] on Dec. 16,” Rubin said. “The state is roiling over charter schools.”

Save Our Schools NJ also has an issue with the lottery system for charter school enrollment. Rubin said most disadvantaged families don’t have the resources to get the necessary information about charter enrollment, so charter schools end with mostly affluent children. 

“It’s an institutional problem," Rubin said. "Charter schools aren't discriminating, they can't control it."

Save Our Schools NJ has proposed the Opt-Out Lottery Bill, which would require charter schools to automatically include everyone in their communities that qualify and give families the option to opt-out if they do not want to be considered for enrollment. The bill is designed to level the field for parents who don’t have easy access to information or are restricted by language barriers.

Rubin expects action on the opt-out legislation and other proposed bills will come soon.

“This has become a headache for the administration,” she said. “There will be something done with the bills.”

Save Our Schools NJ wants to maintain the current school funding formula and opposes school vouchers. She compared the current voucher bill, the Opportunity Scholarship Act, to money laundering.

“If you give me a dollar and I give that dollar back, have you actually given me a dollar?” Rubin asked.

She also wants to stop additional segregation in schools. According to Rubin, there are 500 heavily segregated school systems in the state and the ones that are mixed are being targeted by charter schools.

“We want to see suburban children going to urban schools and vice versa,” Rubin said. “It’s good to mix it up.”

Several members of the audience agreed there is a need for more school integration.

Retired teacher Lloyd Fredericks, who taught at a high school in Newark, said the state has forgotten the benefits of being a melting pot. He added that without public schools there is no nation.

“Education is politics. It’s all about the definition of politics,” Fredericks said. “And that definition is who pays and who benefits. That’s what it’s all about.”

Others like West Windsor resident Karen Siracusa were unsure about the effectiveness of vouchers and charter schools.

“I support reform when it truly improves the educational outcome for the disadvantaged,” Siracusa said. “It’s not clear to me how vouchers and charter schools would help do that.”

Save Our Schools NJ began with six members two years ago and has now grown to has now grown to 4,000 across the state. 

“We are coming from the suburbs, a place rarely heard from but which contains a lot of power,” Rubin said. “The more of us there are, the more powerful we are.”