Red Bank as seen from on high. (Google Maps photo. Click to enlarge.)
A Q&A with J.P. Nicolaides, Lead for the Red Bank Complete Count Committee and member of Red Bank’s Human Relations Advisory Committee
The Red Bank Complete Count Committee is a broad spectrum coalition of communit
Ready for the 2020 Census? The Red Bank Public Library can help you respond.
Starting on March 12 through March 20, U.S. households will be asked to respond online or by phone to an invitation issued by the U.S. Census Bureau. This count fulfills a constitution mandate that requires a census of the population be completed every 10 years the results of which establish congressional districts for representation in Congress.
Rumson is now one of America’s top 20 wealthiest towns, Bloomberg reported Wednesday.
In a ranking of average annual household income, the business news organization said the borough had an average of $303,542, and ranked 19th nationally, up from 38th in 2018.
The charter school’s main building, on Oakland Street. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
The Red Bank Charter School does not engage in “segregative” enrollment practices, the New Jersey Department of Education ruled last week in upholding the school’s latest five-year operating charter.
In letter dated April 16 to the charter school, Acting Education Commissioner Lamont Repollet rejected assertions of bias by Fair Schools Red Bank and the Latino Coalition of New Jersey, and found instead that the charter school “is seeking, ‘to the maximum extent practicable,’ to enroll a cross-section of Red Bank Borough’s school-age population.”
By JOHN T. WARD
As signaled last month, the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey has gone to court with two other organizations hoping to pull the plug on the Red Bank Charter School.
For the second time this century, it’s also brought in a marquee-name civil rights lawyer to help in the effort.
CPA Scott Landau turns a drum as business administrator Theresa Shirley looks on during the charter school enrollment lottery last April. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
The American Civil Liberties Union has joined two other organizations already waging war on the Red Bank Charter School‘s existence.
The ACLU of New Jesey said Thursday that, along with Fair Schools Red Bank and the Latino Coalition of New Jersey , it would appeal the state Department of Education’s decision earlier this week to allow the 19-year-old school to operate for at least another five years.
The Red Bank Charter School campus on Oakland Street. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
The Red Bank Charter School is good to go for at least another five years, following an extension of its operating charter announced Wednesday night.
The generally expected renewal comes amid an upswell of tension over the school’s existence, in the form of a pending claim of segregation.
The Red Bank Charter School, on Oakland Street, hotly disputes allegations that the borough schools are “segregated” as a result of its enrollment practices. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
As requested three months ago by two advocacy groups, the federal Justice Education Department is investigating allegations of segregation leveled at the Red Bank Charter School, correspondence obtained by redbankgreen on Tuesday showed.
The decision by the department’s Office of Civil Rights to open an investigation “in no way implies that the OCR has made a determination with regard to its merit,” a government letter to the complainants said.
But the revelation set off a fresh round of sniping in a bitter battle over the charter school’s existence.
Attendees at the charter school’s graduation ceremony in Riverside Gardens Park last June. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
The Red Bank Charter School engaged in “outright fabrication” of data used to support its pending request for a five-year charter extension, opponents alleged Thursday.
The purported falsification, concerning the numbers of resident white and Hispanic children who attend private and parochial schools, was used “in a deliberate attempt to mislead the state Department of Education and to perpetuate the myth that the taxpayer-funded 200-student school reflects the pre-K through 8th grade demographics of the community,” according to two groups seeking a shutdown of the school over alleged civil rights issues.
The charter school dismissed the allegations.
A new interactive map developed by NJ.com, the website of the Star-Ledger, enables users to zoom down to nearly the street level to show where every one of New Jersey’s more than 8.9 million residents lives, as well as the race and ethnicity of each, according to the 2010 Census.
The map doesn’t pinpoint the exact address of every resident: that would be creepy, wrote NJ.com reporter Stephen Stirling. Instead, developers at NJ Advance Media “created a dot for each person of each race within each Census block, and scattered them randomly throughout their representative geography,” he said. The result, said Stirling, “is the most detailed look at race in New Jersey possible with information available today.”
The effect is highly detailed image that shows while the state is the most diverse in the nation, the Greater Red Bank Green is a near monoculture of whites (represented by blue dots) outside Red Bank’s West Side, which is home to dense concentrations of Hispanic and African-American residents. And even those two groups are somewhat segregated, the data suggests. (Screen grab from NJ.com)
The Census Bureau reports that Sea Bright lost 22 percent of its population from 2000 to 2010. No way, says the mayor. (Click to enlarge)
Municipalities along the length of New Jersey’s Atlantic Coast saw dramatic declines in year-round populations. the Star-Ledger reports, citing new Census Bureau data.
Among them: Sea Bright. Though the mayor there, like her counterparts elsewhere along the Shore, isn’t buying it.