Christie’s charter school nightmare: “White flight, and they’re bankrupting us”
“We are creating separate but equal school systems,” Hoboken school board president warns Salon
While New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie deals with burgeoning scandals surrounding accusations he used the Port Authority and development deals for political ends, he now finds himself in a flap surrounding charter schools in Hoboken.
As charters in the city have exploded in number and size, “they’re fostering white flight, and they’re bankrupting us,” the city’s school board head charged in a Wednesday interview. “We are creating separate but equal school systems,” warned Hoboken Board of Education president Leon Gold. (As Salon has reported, Christie-style ed reform has also sparked controversy in Newark.)
Gold, an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s School of Engineering & Applied Science, decried the Christie administration’s approval of the HoLa charter school’s bid to add middle school grades, which was opposed by the city’s superintendent. (Gold emphasized that he is speaking in a personal capacity, and not on behalf of the entire Board of Education.) State data shows that 11 percent of HoLa students qualify for reduced-cost or free lunch, whereas 72 percent of their counterparts in Hoboken’s traditional public schools do, according to the