Even bad actors can be positive places. Which is my way of saying, even schools that have problematic practices, are unsustainable, or are flat-out known for corruption, can be positive spaces for youth. Because schools and teachers must focus on learning, and institutions that focus on children’s learning are often wondrous places. That schools are, at their core, often positive places, is one of the reasons it’s such a shame that in Camden, public officials have embarked on a path that will result in the closure of so many of them. Trust me, that will be unpopular. No matter how many times I say it, it bears repeating: it was political cowardice to open so many schools (a policy with mixed support in the community), while putting off school closures (decidedly unpopular with the community). We’ve just seen this play out with Sharpe — which was targeted for closure, saw its community rally around it, and will remain open for the time being. But less notice is being paid to the other Camden school closure, that of Camden Community Charter School. 

Sue Altman (my wife!) did a deep dive into Camden Community Charter School’s practices for Blue Jersey. That article includes, sketchy real estate deals: 

In April, 2013, a profitable real estate flip involving the land that would eventually become the campus of Camden Community Charter School moved the property from the public domain to the private, for-profit educational industry. This flip involved several players: CSMI, the Camden Redevelopment Authority, Education Capital Solutions, LLC and an affiliated Real Estate Investment Trust, EPR Properties.

On April 3, 2013, The Camden Redevelopment Authority sold the property to CSMI for $300,000. Three weeks later, on April 24, CSMI re-sold the property to Education Capital Solutions, LLC for $500,000. A tidy $200,000 profit in three weeks! In one of NJ’s most vulnerable cities! Not bad.

It includes cheating scandals in other districts:

The nature of this cheating scandal is worth repeating. Once Pennsylvania forced Chester Community Charter to adhere to stricter security measures, test scores dropped 30 points!  But, hmm… nothing to see here, folks. According to Philadelphia’s The Notebook:

“CSMI is the for-profit management company that operates Chester Community Charter School, which educates more than half the elementary-age children in Chester-Upland. That charter school, described on the company’s website as “one of Pennsylvania’s great educational success stories,” last year was among those investigated by the state for suspicious PSSA test score patterns, including high numbers of wrong-to-right erasures, and was required to impose much stricter test security protocols in 2012. After the measures were adopted, student proficiency rates in math and reading plummeted by 30 points. A school spokesman attributed the decline to reduced funding from the state.”

It includes the fact that Camden Community Charter School is actual run by a for-profit entity, something that is illegal in New Jersey: 

Camden Community Charter School (CCCS) is run by a for-profit Charter Management Organization (CMO), called CSMI.  A CMO is an organization that oversees management duties that the charter school does not handle in-house. In the charter school industry, CMOs can be nonprofit (KIPP), or for-profit (CSMI or White Hat Management). In Camden Community Charter School’s case, the organization was not hired as an independent entity after the fact by a school looking to fill a need— in CCCS’ case, the CMO was the party directly responsible for the founding of the school and public records show that CSMI staff filed the application to the state.

CMOs often work like this: The CMO sets up the charter school by applying to the state; the CMO arranges for a place to house the school; once approved and the school opens, taxpayer money flows to the charter school in the form of state aid per-pupil (which is much more money in Camden as compared to Philadelphia, perhaps a reason CSMI chose NJ as a next target); the charter school “educates” those children and also pays a handsome fee to the CMO for their services; the CMO accumulates a profit. In a nonprofit CMO, the CMO can use the excess cash to start new schools in a sort of pyramid-scheme type model, or pay administrators a hefty salary. In a for-profit CMO, it is fairly straightforward: the owners gain a profit, and because it is a private entity, citizens and taxpayers don’t know how much profit the organization is making off their schools. 

So quick summary: this school is illegal, used as a pawn in sketchy real estate transactions, and its school sisters have seen their scores bottom out once they stopped cheating. It’s great that it’s closing!

Well, kind of.

Recent reporting by Greg Adomantis cites parents as asking “where do we go from here?”

“It makes me very concerned. Why would you hurt these little kids,” questioned longtime Camden resident and block captain Fred Simpson. “You close the school, you bring in more crime.” 

Anecdotally, students who work in Rutgers after-school program at Camden Community Charter School find it a welcoming place, and many prefer it over stricter schools that use harsh “no excuses” discipline with their students. Indeed, the school had a relatively low, 8.3% suspension rate in 2014-2015 (that year, Freedom Prep clocked in at 51% — “freedom” indeed). 

Further, at first glance (and it’s difficult to do this well, because schools are so new, and the state hasn’t released last year’s data), Camden Community Charter School doesn’t have any of the hallmarks of a school that ends up with a more favorable student population by culling students with poor discipline. In 2014-2015 they had an equal number of boys and girls. They had 8.3% English Language Learners. And they had 10% students with disabilities. These are by no means the highest rates in the city, and without more recent data it’s difficult to compare to other schools, but these rates compare ok to data for the school district compiled by Dr. Julia Sass Rubin and Mark Weber in 2013-2014.

This was always the most disturbing aspect of the accountability movement — that the hammer is brought hardest on those who seek to serve the most challenging students. We’ve already seen this with Pyne Poynt’s closure and the closure of the City Invincible Charter School — schools with disproportionately difficult students are the first on the chopping block because of low scores. Despite asking numerous times, the School District has never released their attempts at accounting for different populations — and the slides they’ve used at public meetings have done this embarrassingly poorly (disagree with my analysis, but it is blatantly misleading to compare Camden scores to state scores — I would fail my undergrads for making that comparison without considering differences in socio-economic status). 

I say this, not to defend Camden Community Charter School. They were a bad actor, with a proven record of both corruption and scandal. They should never have been approved (and its hard to see so many Camden officials stand and smile at their recent ribbon-cutting to announce their new building). 

It’s to say that the people who lose here are parents whose children were in a school whose charter never should have been granted. And it’s to say that even in this, quite literally an illegal school with a history of cheating scandals, there were positives. The school was less militaristic, suspended students less, and appears to have attempted to welcome all students. 

To facetiously paraphrase the great Walt Whitman: “schools contain multitudes.” They are not simply test-score factories. They are not simply pawns for political unions (or to be used against political unions). Schools contain a multitude of different stories. From what I know of Camden Community Charter School, it was both a bad actor and a supportive place. Let’s remember that schools can be more than one thing, and bring that compassion to parents, community and teachers when we focus on broader political struggles over education policy.