Schools

Talks of a Charter School Arises at Freehold Borough BOE Meeting

At the Jan. 23 Borough Board of Education meeting, a public comment was made about bringing a charter school to the Borough in order to help with over-populated schools.

Overcrowded and under-funded Borough schools are not an ideal setting for our future leaders. Much discussion has occurred at recent to see what the options are to help the situation. At the Jan. 23 Borough BOE meeting, a comment was made about the opening of a charter school from a representative of Beta Charter, Richard Ginn.

“A charter school would give you an additional facility that could take a portion or all of that surplus population without a referendum and without any tax payer money going towards the facility,” explained Ginn to the board.

According to Patrick DeGeorge, Borough BOE secretary and business administrator, about a year and half ago, parents and taxpayers met with the BOE and the Superintendent to ask questions about bringing a charter school to the Borough. DeGeorge explained that even though a charter school would help alleviate the overcrowding in classrooms, it would cause the district to lose most of its state funding.

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“Despite what others may want to say, the district itself would have to fund the charter school. The district would have to give part, if not all, of it’s almost $10,000 a cost per student. For every child that chooses to go to the charter school, we would have to take our state aid, our revenue, and give it to the charter school to educate those kids,” said DeGeorge.

In order for a charter school to open in the Borough, the company behind the charter school would first have to put in an application.

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Ginn explained to the board that Beta Charter has plans of putting in an application after conducting a survey.

“Our group decided a few months ago that before we put an application in we conduct a two month community survey that would start in February. At the end of that survey, if we do not feel the feed back from the town wants a charter school we are not going to put in an application. We believe that there will be positive feedback once everyone understands what we are trying to do.”

With plans for Beta Charter’s survey to come out soon, DeGeorge further explained that although a charter school will help with overcrowded classrooms, there are more factors that have to be considered.

“Residents say that maybe it will help the crowding situation, and I get that even though I’m not an instructional person. But when you find out that the district and in turn tax payers locally and state wide are going to have to support this through taxes, it gets to become a horse of a different color and it doesn’t quite have the allure that it might once have had if overcrowding or solving that issue was the only issue.”

At the Jan. 23 BOE meeting other possible solutions to fix overpopulated schools were also mentioned. One item that was voted on by the Borough BOE was to have district architect, Fraytak Veisz Hopkins Duthie, provide facilities expansion design services in relation to the district’s strategic planning related initiative. In addition to Borough looking into a possible facility expansion, President Mindy Wille, confirmed at the Jan. 24 Township BOE meeting that talks of increasing Township and Borough School shared services have occurred.


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