In an apparent about-face, New Jersey’s acting Commissioner of Education David Hespe is seeking to review the state’s decision this past spring to allow Hoboken Dual Language Charter School (HoLa) to expand to seventh and eighth grade.
In a Nov. 7 motion filed in state appellate court, where the Hoboken Board of Education’s controversial lawsuit against the expansion now awaits a hearing as well, Hespe asked that the matter be remanded to his office “so that additional evidence and data may be reviewed regarding issues related to HoLa’s enrollment demographics and the relevant community population.”
The request is a potentially promising sign for the Hoboken school board, which has been fighting the expansion of the charter school for much of the year, claiming it would take resources from the other district schools.
The board majority has argued that Assistant Commissioner Evo Popoff did not adequately consider the effect HoLa’s expansion would have on de facto segregation and funding in Hoboken’s traditional public schools when he approved the move in March.
HoLa would like to expand to seventh and eighth grade.
The school has already begun accepting applications for the 2015-16 HoLa lottery, which will take place in January. According to HoLa board president Barbara Martinez, 21 of HoLa’s current sixth graders are planning to continue to the newly formed seventh grade next year, seventy percent of whom are black or Hispanic.
Legal path
The school board has sought a reevaluation of HoLa’s alleged segregative effect by the New Jersey Department of Education (NJDOE) since April, but was denied in July when Hespe ruled that Popoff’s decision was “final” and must therefore be appealed in court. Since then, however, Hoboken’s lawyer Eric Harrison has been allowed to introduce new data into the record, including enrollment reports for both HoLa and Hoboken Public Schools for the 2012-2013 school year.
“If the Hoboken Board of Education wants to see a low-income preference in HoLa’s lottery…all it has to do is drop its lawsuit.”—Barbara Martinez
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Barbara Martinez said she welcomes close scrutiny of the demographics, which she says show that racial and economic diversity in the Hoboken school district have actually increased since HoLa’s opening.
The school board’s limited legal victory comes at a time of wavering support for the board’s HoLa lawsuit in the political sphere. None of the eight candidates in November school board election publically supported continuing the lawsuit, including one incumbent, Monica Stromwall, who had voted twice to fund the lawsuit earlier this year. When up for re-election, she changed her mind.
What does the data show?
The numbers that Commissioner Hespe is asking to consider in his reevaluation come from annual enrollment reports available on his agency’s own website. What they reveal depends greatly on who you ask and what standard you are using.
Between the 2010-11 and 2013-14 school years, the NJDOE data indicates that HoLa’s minority enrollment has hovered between 30 and 39 percent, while the minority enrollment of Hoboken’s traditional school district fell from 78 to 69 percent.
In terms of economic diversity, the percentage of HoLa students eligible for free or reduced price lunch (FRPL), a common indicator of low-income status, has fallen from 16 percent in 2010-11 to 11 percent in 2013-14. Meanwhile, the percentage of FRPL-eligible students in the Hoboken district at large hovered around 70 percent and then dropped precipitously to 49.1 percent in 2013-14.
Under state law, charter schools are required “to the maximum extent possible, [to] seek the enrollment of a cross section of the community’s school-age population including racial and academic factors.”
But perfect demographic data on Hoboken’s school-age population does not exist, and the numbers Hoboken and HoLa use as the closest approximation diverge widely.
The school board uses its own cumulative district demographics, which display a much higher concentration of minority and low-income enrollment than HoLa. As Harrison points out in his appellate brief, “HoLa’s student population is not representative of the district student body.”
But Martinez says the district demographics exclude the roughly 1,400 children who attend charter and private schools in Hoboken. HoLa instead uses the citywide 2010 census demographics, which depict a city that is 73 percent white and 11 percent low-income, much more in line with HoLa’s demographic breakdowns.
Of course, the census reflects the total population, not just those of schooling age, and so risks its own inaccuracies. But Martinez said she did not know of more accurate data.
To make things even more complicated, the NJDOE enrollment data itself may not paint the full picture of Hoboken’s school demographic trends. In particular, it does not include preschool students taught by district-funded private providers like HOPES CAP, according to William Moffitt, the school board’s business administrator.
For example, said Moffitt, while the total number of Hoboken preschool students including private providers was 626 for the 2012-13 school year, the NJDOE data lists a single student enrolled in full day preschool for the year.
Other data sets using different collection standards show vastly different trends in Hoboken’s district-wide diversity. In enrollment data submitted by the school board to the federal Department of Education, the percentage of low-income students in the district actually rose slightly between 2012-13 and 2013-14, from 69.31 percent to 70.34 percent, instead of falling 22 percentage points.
Addressing admissions
Hoboken’s appellate brief also raises questions about HoLa’s admissions practices, arguing that they “exacerbate the de facto segregation apparent” in HoLa’s demographic statistics. In particular, HoLa’s policy of automatically granting spots to siblings of current students is singled out as allegedly making ethnic diversity less likely.
Martinez said that HoLa makes a variety of concerted efforts to reach out to minority and low-income students. Every year, HoLa representatives knock on doors in public and subsidized housing, put up posters in western Hoboken, and speak to parents outside of Hoboken preschool programs. In addition, HoLa sends information and applications to low-income mailing lists and parents in the HOPES CAP Pre-K program.
HoLa also requested that the district give flyers detailing Hoboken’s charter school options to the parents of all 4-year-old Pre-K students, but the distribution was rejected this week by interim Superintendent Dr. Richard Brockel, according to emails provided to The Hoboken Reporter.
Harrison’s brief also suggested that the HoLa Board is resistant to the idea of incorporating a low-income preference in their lottery admissions.
According to Martinez, just the opposite is true. At its September meeting, she said, the HoLa Board voted unanimously to install a low-income preference program, but “HoLa could not adopt such a preference due to the lawsuit brought by the Hoboken Board of Education.”
“If the Hoboken Board of Education wants to see a low-income preference in HoLa’s lottery on Jan. 9,” she said, “all it has to do is drop its lawsuit against HoLa.”
The other two charter schools in town do not have such a preference.
Next moves
The appellate court has yet to grant Hespe’s motion to remand, but none of the parties in the case object to the move. Harrison said it was a “virtual impossibility” that the motion would not be granted.
Just what form Hespe’s reevaluation will take remains an open question. Harrison argued that the school board should receive the opportunity to present its case at a full hearing before the NJDOE’s Office of Administrative Law.
Given the length of time an administrative review could take, Harrison has also filed a motion to stay HoLa’s expansion to seventh and eighth grade until a decision is reached.
But Martinez is confident that the expansion will go forward. “We do not believe our expansion is in jeopardy,” she said. “It was granted under the merits and our application was solid.”
Carlo Davis may be reached at cdavis@hudsonreporter.com.