I presented a brief overview of the BOE’s major roles and responsibilities at a local community event in the Heights on October 8th. The video is on YouTube if you want to view it but I wanted to share my presentation, a handout I created, and some additional context for those interested in learning more.
Additionally, I did not speak to charter schools but I have information about them below because a big touchpoint for voters is “the budget” and charter schools are an important part of that paradigm. I did not give an overview of the budget at the BOE forum but the materials below do touch on this so that you can review at your own pace.
Presentation Materials
The slides I used during my presentation are here, along with additional slides (not shown in the video above) about the budget (I did not have time to get into that context during the event on October 8th).
I also created this handout (partial image below) that shows where the BOE fits within the larger frame of public (government), private, and civic spaces. This frame of thinking of entities as part of the “public” or “private” or “civic” sector is something I learned while community organizing with Jersey City Together.
Key links that I used to compile this information, in case you’re interested in digging further:
- View state law outlining BOE roles & responsibilities
“2023 New Jersey Revised Statutes :: Title 18A – Education :: Section 18A:12-24.1 – Code of Ethics for School Board Members.” (reference from Justia Law) - Learn basics about School Boards via “School Board FAQs” from the New Jersey School Boards Association.
- Learn about the NJ Department of Education (DOE) oversight responsibility for local Boards of Education including JCBOE. Check out data on the NJ DOE website which shows compliance data collected by NJ DOE about schools and districts throughout the state.
- Check out your school’s “Performance Report” which includes voluminous student, teacher, and outcomes-related data per NJ School Performance Report for 2022-23. My visual at the bottom of this post is drawn from this dataset.
- Learn about the budget (this is the best budget summary I’ve seen in 11 years of following the budget):
Budget FY 2024-25 | “Board’s Eye View” of Budget | Town Hall.” Jersey City Board of Education, January 24, 2024. - Learn about capital repairs in the district from the Jersey City Board of Education:
“The NJ School Construction Program in Jersey City: A Short History of the NJ SCC/SDA Impact on the Jersey City Public Schools.” (from the JC BOE website)
A note on charters. I did not speak to this in my presentation, but it’s important.
I am including the charter schools in this post because they are funded with local property tax dollars and this detail is laid out quite well in the “Board’s Eye View” of Budget” which was published in January 2024 by the BOE Business Administrator.
Charter schools educate over 6,800 of our city’s children and, relatedly, consume roughly $174 million of the $1 billion public schools budget. This can be confusing because you may wonder “Why are the charter schools included in the JC BOE budget?” Here’s my best explanation, rooted on years of observation, and the district may have a more official explanation:
(a) Charter schools are public schools so we have to have a way to show the allocation of public tax dollars
(b) it appears to be a procedural mechanism that the “view” we get is through the district’s budget. So the public school tax allocated to the charter schools “passes through” the JC BOE budget and the onus is on the district admin to communicate this detail to the public. Here is that view from this year’s “Board’s Eye View” of Budget“:
An important side note with lots of context that goes beyond this post: charter funding has been increasing year on year (a point made repeatedly by Dr. Fernandez and the BOE Business Administrator during last year’s budget hearings), which reflects that increasing numbers of students are attending those schools.
FYI. Every Year, the District is Audited. This is Standard Compliance.
I added this section in response to some of the commentary from the candidates last night (some of which I listened to on YouTube after the event).
Every year, the district is audited. This is part of the compliance paradigm that I referenced in my presentation, but it’s worth a special call-out.
The audited financials are included in the “Annual Comprehensive Finance Report,” or “ACFR” for short. This is a standard report that you can find online for every district in the state going back to 2017 here (drill into your school district once you click on the year). The shortcut to Jersey City’s 2023 ACFR is here.
Importantly, the ACFR is created by the district administration. The auditor’s role is to then go through a prescribed process (CPAs are trained to do this) to ascertain if the district’s report is reasonably faithful to the underlying reality (that is a rough definition). The audit report is included in the ACFR so you can read the auditor’s point of view directly.
The key insight here is that the district administration is going through a lot of work to try to communicate its operations to the public via the ACFR. Then it’s paying a CPA firm to audit the ACFR and share its opinion on that report with the public so that we, the public, can have assurances about the details or context on issues that may exist with what the district has shared. The BOE trustees can – and in my opinion should – use this report to help communicate about the district to the public.
The call for “an audit” is a plea for transparency and clarity, and it’s a reasonable ask from the public who want accountability for a school system that consumes tax dollars. Members of the public should not be expected to hunt and peck for this information, nor should they be expected to necessarily know this audit report exists and/or how to find it on the state website. BOE trustees, however, should be held to a higher standard. They can and should know about this report and should work to help disseminate the details contained within it so that the public has more transparency about the finances and operations of the district.
I have previously written about the annual audit process on Civic Parent here if you want more details on this report and how it can be useful: “JCPS audit is informing about needed improvements.”
Public Data to Inform the Needs
Finally, I’m sharing a visual on the data I compiled while preparing for this presentation, drawn from the NJ School Performance Report referenced above. It includes the most recent data (2022-23) that shows categories of need within our public schools. Three categories of need in particular are tracked by the NJ Department of Education:
- English language learners
- Students who are economically disadvantaged
- Students with disabilities
Children who fall into any or all of these categories of need are deserving of extra support per state education law which I’ve previously written about here. I categorized these schools in rough neighborhood boundaries in part to help make this data easier to digest if you are not as familiar with our public schools. You may not know which schools fall into your neighborhood absent such a grouping. I have also provided a map below the grouping.
The schools in this dataset are also mapped below:
Wrapping Up
I applaud the Heights organizations who helped make this event happen. This was planned over many months and is a great example of civic organizations working together for community. Check out their social media links below:
