The Star-Ledger Editorial Board first published this editorial.

Public charter schools now serve as many as one in five students in New Jersey’s poorest districts, yet still there aren’t nearly enough seats to meet the demand. And it’s not hard to see why.

Predominately Black, low-income charter kids in Newark aren’t just outperforming their district counterparts – incredibly, they’ve already bounced back from significant pandemic learning loss in reading and are once again outperforming their much wealthier peers around the state.

Yet despite this undeniable success, high demand and growing footprint in cities like Newark and Camden, these schools have long faced a fundamental inequity. Unlike many other states, New Jersey gives its more than 60,000 public charter students zero dollars to rent, purchase, upgrade or maintain their buildings, while fully funding the facilities of district kids.

We are a national outlier in this regard, and it’s impossible to justify. Charter students are the friends, neighbors and siblings of kids in the district schools, with the same needs. So why give preference to one child over another?

Thankfully, a bill just signed by Gov. Phil Murphy, which passed overwhelmingly in the Senate by a margin of 34 to 1, is a good first step toward fixing this inequity. It gives high performing charters the ability to apply for a low interest loan if they want to rehabilitate or buy a building, which could save hundreds of millions of dollars depending on the project.

We hope they someday move to full equity. But this helps put charters on more equal footing with traditional district schools, even though lawmakers will still need to appropriate money for the measure, and charters still get less state funding overall – just 90% of the per-pupil dollars of district schools, at most, and often much less.

They’ve also long had to dip into their operating budgets for facilities, spending about 10% of that pot, on average, to either rent a building, substantially renovate one or save up for their own, according to the New Jersey Public Charter Schools Association – which works out to about $2,000 per student that would have been better spent on things like tutoring for kids.

This bill will help defray some of those costs by capping the maximum interest rate for charter loans at 1.75% instead of the current rate, which is as high as 7%. “I think there is a recognition that public charter schools in New Jersey are knocking it out of the park,” says Harry Lee, president of the Association. “And they deserve to be treated fairly.”

Charter schools are the only public schools that have been excluded from funding for their facilities for the last 30 years, he notes – even though they have open admissions and spots filled by lotteries, while magnet schools, which are highly selective, get their buildings fully funded by the state. How is that equity?

Critics argue that charters often rent space in buildings that are privately owned, so if they close down, the buildings they fixed up with public money will go back to a private owner. But this law has plenty of safeguards against that. To get one of these loans, charters must be nonprofit and high performing. The risk of them closing down and leaving a private landlord with a windfall is miniscule.

In-demand charters seeking to expand, like Phillips Academy in Newark, say this will improve their prospects for finding a new building in a tight time frame. They’ve long outgrown their main campus of nearly 700 kids in pre-k through 8th grade, while renting in downtown Newark at a pretty expensive rate – and facing the added pressure of a leaky roof.

To break ground on a new building, they’ll need startup capital, and will take advantage of these low interest loans so they don’t have to dip into operating money that should go to pay teachers what they deserve and give kids the support they need, says Principal Yasmeen Sampson: “It becomes difficult to choose what is most important.”

That’s a choice no public school should have to make.

Photo courtesy of North Star Academy.