Following media reports highlighting unusually high salaries for charter school administrators, some residing outside New Jersey, the state's charter schools association has expressed a desire to spearhead reform efforts to curb "bad actors."
The association's policy proposals include making budgets publicly available and mandating charter management organizations to conduct compensation studies. However, researchers from Rutgers University argue that reforms should extend further to better serve public school students across both charter and traditional schools.
Julia Sass Rubin, an associate professor at Rutgers University's Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, advocates for elected board members akin to those in traditional public schools. "There’s no real rationale for why charter boards are appointed or only elected by charter parents, and local public-school boards are elected by everybody in the community. They’re both public schools, right? They’re both funded by public dollars," Rubin stated.
The reform proposals also suggest that charter schools should provide accessible budgets by sharing current-year 108-line budgets detailing incomes and expenses by category. Rubin emphasizes the importance of financial transparency and suggests that charter schools adopt user-friendly budget formats similar to those used in traditional public schools. She argues this approach is more taxpayer- and parent-friendly than 108-line budgets.
"More transparency, more oversight is necessary before we really know how widespread these abuses are. It’s not to say that district schools don’t have things like this happen. It’s just a lot easier to find them because there’s greater required transparency and greater oversight," Rubin commented.
