Happiness47
Camden, New Jersey's J.G Whittier Family School reopened in 2016 KIPP Cooper Norcross Academy.
Camden finally caught a break in 2018.
For years, the predominantly black and Latino New Jersey city has struggled with chronically challenged public services. Lawmakers’ solution to this problem? Take operations of these essential services out of local hands. This happened when the state legislature passed the “Urban Hope Act” in 2012, allowing Camden schools labeled “failed” to be taken over by private sector operators. And this year, it might have gotten even worse.
The Urban Hope Act allows charter schools, referred to as “renaissance schools,” to take over struggling traditional public schools in Camden, as well as Newark and Trenton. In the original legislation, these schools had to build new facilities. But in 2014, the law was amended to allow them to use existing facilities, as long as they promised to renovate them. Then in 2017, the New Jersey lawmakers introduced a bill to amend the Urban Hope Act making it easier still for charter schools to flourish by removing some of their facilities costs as well as allowing private entities to fund those costs.
Specifically, the proposed legislation stated:
“This bill would allow a facility to be deemed newly-constructed, if it was constructed within five years immediately prior to when the nonprofit entity which operates the renaissance school project takes control of the facility. A facility which has undergone substantial reconstruction within five years immediately prior to when the nonprofit entity takes control of the facility, would also be permitted to be a school of a renaissance school project. The substantial reconstruction would no longer be required to be conducted by the nonprofit entity.”
In other words, under the 2012 and 2014 versions of the law, renaissance schools were responsible for finding their own funds to either build a new school or renovate an existing one. The 2017 proposed change attempted to absolve these non-profit entities of that responsibility and make it easier to set up charter schools anywhere in Camden, Newark, or Trenton with the help of private or public dollars.
Fortunately, this proposed amended version of the Urban Hope Act was recently dropped from the New Jersey Senate Budget Committee agenda. But the proposal represents an important precedent nevertheless and makes clear how the legislation creates a slippery slope toward privatization. By handing off properties either built or renovated with public dollars to private non-profit entities, private companies benefit financially from buildings whose improvements were paid for by the New Jersey School Development Authority.
In New Jersey, renaissance schools are accountable to the state department of education rather than to a locally controlled school board. This is to increase the academic performance of students on the yearly PARCC exam (that’s Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, a coalition of nine states including New Jersey that develops assessment measures for students).
If policymakers seek educational equity for children of color, writing private nonprofits a blank check offers no guarantee.
In Camden, the state is represented by a governor-appointed superintendent, Paymon Rouhanifard, who has approved the Hope Act’s transferal of district schools to the control of renaissance schools. If Rouhanifard decides in the future to close any district schools permanently, as he did with Sumner Elementary School in Camden, the proposed amendment would have empowered him to make the process of a renaissance takeover easier financially and, thus, further dismantle the Camden City School District.
It may very well be a coincidence that this particular bill was introduced after New Jersey Governor Chris Christie gave $133 million dollars to raze and rebuild Camden High School. As it stands, there is nothing preventing a renaissance school from taking over an underperforming Camden High School. But the withdrawn legislation offered a public policy footprint that would have made it even easier.
People continue to debate the answer to the question: does privatization actually serve the public interest? What isn’t debatable is that privatization serves the private sector. Privatization also serves the interests of governments that deem themselves incapable of providing essential services to the public, especially in cities like Camden where the overwhelming majority of residents are black and Latino.
Though this particular piece of legislation has been tabled, the endgame of policymakers remains an open question.
States throughout the country have shifted public dollars to charter schools. And if policymakers seek to expand charter schools at the expense of traditional urban districts with the goal of educational equity for children of color, writing private nonprofits a blank check offers no guarantee. Especially when those entities are led by people who look different from the populations being served.
What it does guarantee for the state is a transfer of its burden of responsibility. What it does guarantee for poor people of color is a further marginalization of power to control their own community property and the education of their children.
Rann Miller directs the 21st Century Community Learning Center, a federally funded after-school program located in southern New Jersey. He spent 6 years teaching in charter schools in Camden, New Jersey. He is the creator, writer and editor of the Official Urban Education Mixtape Blog. Follow him on Twitter:@UrbanEdDJ.