Charter Reforms Coming to the New Jersey Senate #educationnation #TeachersEdNat

Charter Reforms Coming to the New Jersey Senate:

CHARTER REFORMS COMING TO THE NJ SENATE! PLEASE TAKE 3 MINUTES TO ENSURE THEIR PASSAGE Thanks to your efforts, New Jersey Senate President Stephen Sweeney has agreed to bring the two charter reform bills that Save Our Schools NJ has been supporting to the Senate Education Committee. Your actions -- phone calls, letters, e-mails, attending rallies – helped these reforms to pass the New Jersey Assembly in late June. Now we need your help to make sure that the Senate Education Committee approves these critical reforms so the full Senate can vote on them. Please call or e-mail the following three members of the Senate Education Committee this week and ask them to vote for these bills [1]. It only takes a couple of minutes of your time and really influences how the Senators vote. Phone calls are much more effective than e-mails. If you reach an answering machine, leave your name and phone number along with your message and ask that a staff member call you back regarding where the Senators stand on these bills. Then please e-mail info@saveourschoolsnj.org to let us know what they said. WHOM TO CALL: 1) Senator Diane B. Allen (609) 239-2800 senallen@njleg.org 2) Senator Thomas H. Kean Jr. (908) 232-3673 senkean@njleg.org 3) Senator M. Teresa Ruiz (973) 484-1000 senruiz@njleg.org WHAT TO ASK: Please ask them to vote for Senate bill 2443, which requires local approval before the establishment of a new charter school, and Senate bill 3005, which improves charter school financial and educational transparency and accountability and helps ensure that charter schools students represent their sending districts in terms of income, English proficiency and special needs. Both bills have bi-partisan sponsorship in the Senate and had bi-partisan support in the Assembly. These are common-sense reforms that would bring New Jersey’s charter law in line with the rest of the country. Nationally, 90 percent of all charter school authorizers are local voters or school boards. Only New Jersey’s law completely ignores local wishes, allowing the Commissioner of Education to force communities to pay for an unlimited number of new charter schools. Local approval of new charter schools is supported by 73 percent of New Jersey residents, across all political parties. We will let you know when the Committee vote is scheduled and encourage everyone who can do so to attend the hearing. The next step after these bills pass the Senate Education Committee is to get them brought up for a vote in the full NJ Senate. We will keep you posted as to how you can help to make that happen. Thank you for all that you are doing. It is having a huge impact!! [1] The other members of the Senate Education Committee -- Senator Shirley Turner and Senator Jim Whelan -- support and co-sponsored these bills.