Hoboken BOE vs. HoLa: Appellate Court Rules In Charter School’s Favor

HOBOKEN, NJ — The Battle of HoLa may be at an end, Hoboken.

Last week, after more than two years of costly litigation between the Hoboken Board of Education and the Hoboken Dual Language Charter School (HoLa), the Appellate Division of the New Jersey Superior Court affirmed a previous decision from the state commissioner of education that granted the school’s application to expand its program to the 7th and 8th grades.

The decision comes a week after the school graduated its first 8th grade class, according to school administrators.

As part of their June 29 decision, an appellate panel of judges found that – contrary to school administrators’ claims - there was no evidence of socio-economic impact or an adverse funding impact to the Hoboken district from its expansion.

Read the full court decision here.

According to a statement from HoLa, the years of legal action between the three involved parties - HoLa, the Hoboken Board of Education and the New Jersey Department of Education – cost taxpayers more than $200,000.

The Hoboken Board of Education sued the school in March 2014 after the Department of Education approved the school’s expansion to the 8th grade. At the time, the school’s oldest students were in 5th grade.

Hoboken BOE members had argued that the charter school’s expansion has shown trends of segregation, and that the percentage of minority students who attend HoLa is about half that of the district’s public schools.

• See related article: Battle of HoLa Continues in Hoboken
• See related article: Legal Battle Over Fate of Hoboken Charter School Continues

The panel of appellate judges gave some details about the school’s admission process in their decision:

“HoLa is located in a low-income section of Hoboken, close to the Connors school. Students are admitted to HoLa through a lottery with no interviews. No demographic data is collected until students are registered. In order to represent a cross section of the Hoboken community, HoLa holds open houses and tours and advertises in local publications. It also partners with local organizations to recruit on-site. Dates for the open houses, tours and events, as well as the lottery, are posted on the school's website and are printed on flyers ‘distributed throughout the city.’ In addition, applications and brochures are mailed to every low-income household each year prior to the lottery. HoLa's parents and teachers also canvass subsidized and public housing and help complete applications on the spot. Parents may enroll children in the lottery online, in person, or by a phone call to the school. HoLa has a sibling preference, so that if a child is enrolled in HoLa, that child's younger sibling will have priority over other lottery applicants.”

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