The Red Bank Charter School (Photo by Brian Donohue. Click to enlarge.)
By BRIAN DONOHUE
A judge has ordered the Red Bank Charter School to resume supplying its enrollment waiting list to the Red Bank Borough public school district after a legal battle that carried bitter echoes of the decades of litigation between the two sides.
In a written decision filed on July 25th, Monmouth County Superior Court Judge Andrea Mitchell ordered the Charter School to comply with a 2007 negotiated settlement agreement between the sides, by supplying written wait lists to the district by October 15, January 15 and May 15 of each year. 
Both Red Bank Borough Schools Superintendent Jared Rumage and Red Bank Charter School Head of School Kristin Martello declined to comment on the suit or the judge’s decision.
The legal dustup began in May, when the Red Bank Borough Schools Board of Education filed a lawsuit charging RBCS administrators were violating the terms of the consent agreement, which requires, in part, that the charter school regularly provide the district with its list of students awaiting slots at the 200-seat charter school. (Read the full complaint here.)
After years of compliance, the Board of Education’s suit alleged, charter school administrators stopped providing the lists in 2021.
In their response to the complaint, Red Bank Charter School attorneys flatly admitted the school had stopped providing the list.
But in a 26-page-letter to the judge, Charter School attorney Thomas Johnston said they withheld the lists because the district was using the information to intimidate families from sending their kids to the charter school. (Read the full letter here.)
“The District seeks to actively thwart enrollment of Hispanic students at RBCS by engaging in chilling and (sic) intimidation tactics against Hispanic parents, and then citing relatively less Hispanic student enrollment at RBCS as a reason for its closure,” the letter reads.
In his 24-page response to those allegations, Red Bank Borough Board of Education attorney Nicholas Celso III called the Charter School’s argument “a conglomeration of preposterous, previously failed accusations, irrelevant information about RBCS, and self-serving, inflated recitations” of decades of litigation between the two sides. (Read the full response here.)
Celso cited the dismissal of the Charter School’s 2023 complaint with the US Department of Education Office of Civil Rights, in which RBCS made similar allegations that the district was discriminating against Hispanic students by contacting families on the waiting list.
Celso called the charges, “ongoing, unfounded aspersions of a purported civil rights violation with which no agency or court has thus far agreed.”
In a two-paragraph order, Judge Mitchell ruled in the District’s favor without further comment on the arguments from either side.
The consent agreement at the heart of the case is a product of years of litigation that began with the inception of the Red Bank Charter School in 1998.
That year, the Red Bank Board of Education challenged the state Board of Education’s decision to grant RBCS its original charter, saying it would fuel segregation in the school systems. The Board then appealed the renewal of the RBCS charter in 2001, citing the same issues.
A state appellate court ordered a hearing in 2004 to determine whether Charter School policies regarding entrance lotteries, sibling preference and other practices were “adversely affecting the Red Bank districts’ racial imbalance.”
And in 2007, the two sides agreed to a consent decree, which, in part, required the Charter School to hand over its waiting list to the district three times a year.
In 2023, RBCS filed a complaint with the US Department of Education Office of Civil Rights charging the district with discrimination against Hispanic students “emanating from its use of the wait list.” That case complaint was dismissed, according to legal documents.
In its response to the latest lawsuit, RBCS charged, “The District used the waitlist information to chill Red Bank family interest in enrollment at RBCS by sending unwelcomed communications to families with children on the waitlist, which they reasonably perceived as threatening.”
At least some of the students on the RBCS waiting list are likely currently enrolled in the two schools run by the Red Bank Board of Education, Red Bank Primary School and Red Bank Middle School.
In a sworn statement accompanying the May lawsuit, Red Bank Borough Superintendent of Schools Rumage said he uses the charter school waiting list data “primarily to address potential class sizes which significantly dictate annual budget needs and planning.”
“For example,” his statement reads, “if several of my students are on the wait list, that impacts potential class sizes and the number of sections I may or may not need and the corresponding staffing of them. Without this information, I have no way of forecasting our needs regarding these variables.”
redbankgreen editor Brian Donohue may be reached via email at [email protected] or by calling or texting 848-331-8331 or yelling his name loudly as he walks by. Do you value the news coverage provided by redbankgreen? Please become a financial supporter if you haven’t already. Click here to set your own level of monthly or annual contribution.
