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Credit: Photo: Nick Romanenko
Heather Ngoma, left, director of
Rutgers’ Charter School Resource Center
(CSRC), with Tiffany Foster-Wise, a
graduate of Newark’s North Star Academy
Charter School, and now a student at
Douglass College. The CSRC offers access
to professional expertise and lends
technical support to charter schools
across New Jersey.
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As director of the Charter School Resource Center (CSRC), Heather Ngoma helps educators and parents set up and operate charter schools so that children in New Jersey have an alternative to traditional public schools. Ngoma learned the importance of school choice growing up in Buffalo, N.Y.
“I learned about school choice through my mother’s regard for education,” Ngoma said. “She grew dissatisfied with the school in our district and enrolled me and my sister in the local parochial school and paid tuition. My mother was the first educational choice advocate I knew.”
Ngoma, who holds a master’s degree in English from Middlebury College, has worked at the CSRC since 1999, when it was part of the New Jersey Institute for School Innovation in Newark. In 2002, the CSRC came to Rutgers under the auspices of the Center for Effective School Practices, now part of the Graduate School of Education. Ysabel Gonzalez serves as the CSRC’s program coordinator.
The benefit of charter schools is that they create tuition-free options for families. Charter schools operate separately from the school district’s board of education under an initial four-year charter granted by the state. After this, the charter can be renewed every five years or closed at any time if the school does not meet educational requirements. Managed by boards of trustees, charter schools hold a public lottery for admission that must be well-publicized to local parents.
In New Jersey, charter schools were established with the Charter School Program Act of 1996. The following year, 13 charter schools sprouted. Fifty-one charter schools now operate in the state, serving approximately 14,900 students, according to the state Department of Education. About 83 percent of the students enrolled in charter schools are from special-needs districts. In January, the education department announced the approval of six new charter schools and the renewal of 12 existing ones.
The CSRC, now located in Somerset, worked with many of these schools at some point in their development process, either in the planning stages, the proposal process or the renewal phase by providing resources, workshops, conferences or technical assistance. The more seasoned schools give back to the center by facilitating workshops and site visits. (The CSRC will co-host a charter school job fair March 11 on the Busch Campus Center for teachers in search of careers in the charter school community.)
“Our goal in New Jersey is to stimulate an interest in charter schools and to expand charter schools to ensure better lives for the children,” said Ngoma, who taught in East Orange through Teach for America. “We want all children to have access to the best education possible.” Ngoma also supports charter schools because many are theme-driven and instill “conscious caring” in the students. “Charter schools fill the gap because they are organized around a mission not addressed by the district schools,” she said. “What we are proposing is a complement to what the district is offering.”
The Environment Community Opportunity (ECO) Charter School in Camden focuses on the environment and serving the community. A kindergarten through second grade school that started in September 2005, ECO serves 150 students and will add a third grade next year. Antoinette Dendtler, founder and school head, relied heavily on CSRC in all phases of the school’s planning process, such as writing the charter, hiring teachers, recruiting students and finding a facility for the school.
“Heather set up visits for me to see other schools that were up and running and talk about the pitfalls with individuals who have already laid the ground work,” Dendtler said. “If I had a question about the board of directors, she reached out to other schools so that we’re not operating in a vacuum. I don’t think the school would be here without her support.”
CSRC launched Modern Education Ventures last year to provide more formalized support to charter school planners. The workshop series covers topics such as financial planning, marketing and working with families as customers. Because charter schools receive only 90 percent of state funds per pupil, the schools must raise outside funds.
“Modern Education Ventures was developed with a management and operations focus because we found that 70 percent of charter schools close not for academic reasons but for management and fiscal reasons,” Ngoma said. “We wanted to offer strategic guidance so that leaders who develop schools have the foresight of operational expenditures and how to meet them.”
Claudia Burzichelli, founder and executive director of the Center for Effective School Practices, is pleased that CSRC is fulfilling the university’s mission by serving schools throughout the state. “The work is important because charter schools offer the opportunity for innovation while providing needed personalization for students,” Burzichelli said. “These schools bring together faculty, students, and families who connect – by choice – to the same goals and outcomes. In these smaller learning environments, students can be educated and encouraged to reach their academic potential.”
This foundation is what helped Tiffany Foster-Wise, a graduate of Newark’s North Star Academy Charter School, land a full scholarship to Douglass College. The sophomore said that her rigorous high school writing assignments and math courses prepared her for academia. Foster-Wise developed a sense of community at North Star, where she served at a soup kitchen. A James Dickson Carr Scholar and honors student, she now tutors her peers. “North Star instilled in me that college was a viable option,” Foster-Wise said. “My choices would have been limited if I hadn’t gone to North Star.”
For more information about the New Jersey Charter School Job Fair or the CSRC, visit www.njcharterschools.org.
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