The superintendent of Paterson Public Schools, Eileen Shafer, appears to be taking lessons from Newark Superintendent Roger Leon. In an apery of his recurrent demands to the Department of Education to stop the expansion of public charter schools, Shafer just sent a letter to Acting Commissioner Angelica Allen-McMillan insisting the Murphy Administration declare a charter moratorium for New Jersey’s fifth largest school district.

According to the Paterson Press, school board president Nakima Redmon claimed that she took a “straw poll” of her fellow members and a “majority” asked Shafer to contact the DOE.

But Theodore Best, the director of the Paterson Charter School Roundtable group, said the straw poll was actually “a secret vote” that violated New Jersey’s Open Public Meetings Act: “Best asserted that charter school opponents circumvented the public meetings law by holding a private poll on the moratorium,” and added that the “6,000 Paterson families who attend charter schools and the 3,000 on wait lists want to know where the board stands.”

Best also says when school board member Jonathan Hodges tried to to get a resolution for a charter school moratorium passed at a public school board meeting, not a single member supported the resolution.

According to the Press, charter school enrollment in the city has soared in the last five years from 3,677 students to 6,013 students.

The DOE database shows that in Paterson School District, which educates 24,600 students, 24% of students reach proficiency in reading. At Paterson’s College Achieve Charter School, which educates 1,100 students, 41% reach proficiency in reading.