[INSPRATIONAL MUSIC STING] - We're now joined by TJ Best, Senior Advisor for the New Jersey Public Charter School Association, one of our partners in our series, "Urban Education That Works."

Good to see you, TJ.

- Good to see you too, Steve.

- You got it.

Question right outta the box.

There've been some changes, reforms, if you will, in the charter school system.

Lemme disclose that back in the day my dad, Steve Adubato Sr.

founded the first charter school in the state of New Jersey, the Robert Treat Academy.

I know a little bit about charter schools, but you live it every day.

They didn't have reforms then, they were just starting.

Now that there've been reforms, what are the reforms and why does it matter matter, TJ?

- Well, I wanna start by saying we fully supported the legislation that was just passed led by the Senate Education Chair, Vin Gopal.

The biggest change really was just to add more accountability and transparency.

It's been 30 years since the charter school legislation was first passed, and since that time, charter schools have evolved, they've grown, and there was time that we put legislation in place that accounted for all of those changes.

Some of the big things that it did was just to add more transparency in terms of the types of information that we need to put on our websites, making sure that the public is fully informed anytime we hire somebody, enter into contracts.

We are public schools, and we should be accountable to the public at large.

And that's what this legislation did.

- And what does it say about, or what does it do when it comes to so-called bad actors?

Because there was a tremendous amount of publicity around certain charter schools that were failing, that were structurally, financially, educationally, they were not sound.

What did the reforms do as it relates to dealing with those kinds of schools?

How would the Commissioner of Education identify them?

What happens when they do identify them, please?

- Yeah, so the commissioner has always had a lot of authority when it comes to charter schools.

And what this has done is it has even strengthened the commissioner's ability to place charter schools on probation.

As you know, charter schools enter into a five year performance contract with the state of New Jersey.

We like to consider ourselves the most accountable public school there are.

If our schools aren't performing, whether it be academically or financially or from a governance standpoint, the Department of Education has the ability to put us on probation or close us down.

And we've seen that happen with some of those bad actors.

One of which had some issues both academically and from a governance standpoint.

And the department closed them down after, when they were up for renewal.

- And you support closing those schools down when they are not performing?

- Totally, totally, I mean, we are here for the kids.

We wanna make sure that we are accountable to the families and to the taxpayers.

We receive our revenue from the state of New Jersey through the local municipalities, and we should be held accountable.

And when our schools aren't performing, we need to be held accountable to those standards.

- But, TJ, you mentioned a five year deal, a five year contract.

Did the reforms move from a five to a 10 year renewal period?

- Yeah, that was one of our big wins that we like to consider.

We've had some schools like.

- How's that a win?

Explain, how's that a win?

- So like the school that your father founded, for example.

- Yeah.

- They are a phenomenal school.

They've been outperforming both the local district average as well as the state and national average.

They're one of.

- At the Robert Treat, I'm just trying to give another plug for the Robert Treat Academy.

- At Robert Treat Academy, they've been outperforming national standards, and if they're doing everything right, they should be allowed a little bit more time to continue the work.

Our team's effort needs to be focused on the classroom and in instruction and not preparing massive amounts of reports.

The accountability that we have already with the renewal process is very, very cumbersome.

They ask for everything, not just academics, financials.

They interview the staff, they interview board members.

And to do that every five years means it takes almost a full year of just preparing for that review.

So giving great schools like Robert Treat Academy, the ability to have a 10-year was a big win for us.

It's not automatic for everyone.

- Yeah.

- It's only for proven providers that's been around for at least a decade.

- Yeah, by the way, we can't mention the Robert Treat Academy again 'cause that'll sound like a commercial.

- No problem.

- So we had your colleague Harry Lee on with us, right, and I asked him this question I wanna ask of you because I remember when my dad was starting the charter school, one of the questions that kept getting asked, still gets asked.

You're cherry picking, you're picking, you see you're shaking your head already 'cause I know 'cause I was witness to it.

There's a lottery to get into that charter school.

There are at many.

I don't know if it's all, but the argument that you're cherry-picking the kids, the public "public" schools, they have to take everybody.

Charter schools not so much.

You say what to that TJ Best?

- I say we are public schools, and just like all public schools, whoever applies has to have the same opportunity to get in.

So what we do is we have a lottery, and many times our lottery is weighted for students who come from low income backgrounds or special needs students to make sure that we have our fair share of those students.

- Explain what the lottery looks like.

I've seen it in person.

Explain to folks what it's like.

And by the way, parents, they're hoping and praying that their number gets picked, their name gets picked, but it's peer reviewed.

There's usually an accounting firm that comes in and does it.

Pick it up from there.

- So normally if there's let's say 100 seats available in kindergarten, we normally have about 1,000 families that will apply for those hundred seats.

And what we do is we don't look at anything other than just a number on a sheet of paper.

That goes most of the time into a computer generated lottery where it will randomly pull out those numbers.

Now there are some exceptions where we would have a special consideration for siblings.

So if you are a sibling, your number will be together with your brother or sister to really help families out to make sure that they get those kids into school.

But as the numbers come out, once we reach 100, those first 100 students get into the school, and then we continue the lottery process for the other 990 students or 900 students and make sure that as they come out of the lottery, they're number one on the wait list.

Number two on the wait list, number three.

So if a opening happens, we go based upon that wait list.

There is no cherry picking whatsoever.

- Lemme put this in context.

There are 84 public charter schools in the state of New Jersey in 18 counties serving 64,000 students.

As of June 2025, 23 charter schools were closed, and 30 were not granted renewal or voluntarily surrendered their charter.

Last question for you, TJ, to what degree do you and your colleagues at the Association regulate, monitor, and frankly put pressure on the schools that are not performing?

- Well, we are our biggest critics.

At the end of the day when we have our meetings with all of the charter schools statewide, the main thing that we tell 'em is that we're here to serve the families, and we're here to serve the students.

And that's gonna take precedence and paramount.

So anytime that one of our schools is a bad actor, we'll call 'em out on it.

And when we have our meetings with legislators or the Department of Education, we let them know what's going on because we don't want one school to infect the entire sector.

We're doing great work.

We have outstanding performance both academically as well as serving the families.

And we wanna make sure we continue that for more students - To TJ's point, we will have Senator Vin Gopal on again.

We had him on as this was being, as the legislation was moving forward, but it was not passed.

We'll have Vin Gopal, the Senator who chairs the Senate Education Committee on State of Affairs to talk more about his perspective on this.

TJ, best to you and your colleagues at the Charter School Association.

Thank you so much for joining us.

We appreciate it.

- Thanks for having us.

- I'm Steve Adubato.

This is "State of Affairs."

We thank you for watching.

We'll see you next time.

- [Narrator] State of Affairs with Steve Adubato is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Funding has been provided by in support of the Adler Aphasia Center.

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