NJEA today announced its support of the Urban Hope Act, sponsored by Sen. Donald Norcross and Asm. Angel Fuentes. NJEA president Barbara Keshishian issued this statement about the legislation:
“The Urban Hope Act is an innovative effort to improve educational outcomes for children in some of our most challenging educational settings. NJEA supports this legislation because it allows for innovation while providing meaningful public accountability. It is a creative expansion of public school choice that uses public funds to support public education.
“We appreciate the opportunity to work with the sponsors of this legislation. This bill ensures that employees in the proposed Renaissance schools will have all of the rights of other public school employees, which will help create a climate of innovation and creativity in the classroom.
“NJEA has long supported public school choice options that provide good educational opportunities and are accountable to taxpayers, from charter schools, to intradistrict school choice, to the conversion of high-performing private schools into public charter schools.
“NJEA’s support of this legislation is another good-faith effort by NJEA and its members to explore new ways of giving every child in New Jersey access to a great public school. The sponsors wisely made this a limited pilot so that everyone involved can focus on making these schools successful. We call on the public education community to join NJEA in working for the success of these Renaissance schools. Their success will once again demonstrate that New Jersey’s public schools work.”