Do we need charter schools in high-performing districts?
Tiffany Boyd-Hodgson of Morristown, left, and Jutta Gassner-Snyder of Maplewood, are two of the parents who have applied to establish a charter school in Maplewood. The Mandarin-language immersion program would be housed in the St. Joseph School. (Photo by Danielle Austen.)
One by one, the legislators, parents and district officials lined up to speak at a rally in Millburn on a recent summer night. They had come to make it clear that two new Mandarin-immersion charter schools proposed for the area were unwelcome by many residents of this affluent Essex County enclave, where the median household income approached $170,000 in 2009. It was getting late by the time Alle Ries, a Maplewood parent with a daughter entering kindergarten in the fall, grabbed the microphone. She was the ninth speaker of the night, but
