Sunday, June 19, 2011

Charter School Update



Let Your Voice be Heard for Charter School Reforms!

Save Our Schools NJ is holding three simultaneous rallies across the state to demonstrate the strong, bipartisan support for our proposed charter reforms.

If you believe that local communities should decide if a new charter school opens, come and bring your children!

The larger the rallies, the stronger the message we will send to Trenton that the voters want this legislation!

Date: Tuesday, June 21st
Time: 7:00 pm to 7:30 pm
Location:
Highland Park– Bartle Elementary School playground (435 Mansfield Street). In case of rain, the rally will be in the school's gym.
Millburn -- Bauer Center in Taylor Park (the Park is on Main Street).
South Brunswick– in front of the Municipal Building (540 Ridge Road, Monmouth Junction). The rally will be followed by the Town Council vote on the resolution to require local approval for new charter schools. In case of rain, the rally will be inside the Municipal Building.

Sponsors of the reform legislation who will be attending include Senators Barbara Buono and Shirley Turner and Assemblyman Patrick Diegnan.

Save Our Schools NJ has been advocating for two sets of legislative reforms to New Jersey’s broken charter school law:

Bills A3852/S2243 -- require local approval before the establishment of new charter schools
Bill A3356 -- ensures charter schools have financial and educational transparency and accountability, and demographically represent their communities

These bills have strong popular support and bi-partisan legislative sponsors.

The Assembly voted both bills out of the Education committee in May. The next step is to bring them up for a vote in the full Assembly and in the Senate Education Committee.

This is our chance to show the legislature that we support reforming New Jersey's broken charter school law and that we want them to vote on these bills!