Older Archives 2013-14 Announcement Archives

NEWARK — Linda Newton enrolled her 8-year-old son at Adelaide L. Sanford Charter School to shield him from the ills that afflict many of Newark’s regular public schools.

She has regretted that decision every day since.

Last summer, nearly all of the troubled school’s two dozen teachers resigned, and students were hastily relocated to a downtown building that parents say is not equipped for their children. Some students climb five flights of stairs to reach their classrooms in the hulking former church.

Other kids have no classrooms at all, sharing space in a vast multipurpose room where academic instruction is often interrupted by the clapping and stomping of a dance class some 50 feet away.

Parents and teachers complain of a shortage of textbooks, an insufficient heating system and a lack of discipline for rowdy students, leading to fights and bullying.

At least half of the 339 kids enrolled on the first day of school have left, though some have been replaced with new recruits, the parents and teachers said. Test scores are among the bottom 10 percent in the state.

"There are a lot of angry parents who want to get their kids out," said Newton, who pulled her son from Adelaide Sanford several weeks ago after a spot at another charter school finally opened up. "I feel sorry for my son’s friends who are still stuck there."

Now in its sixth year, the Adelaide L. Sanford Charter School was supposed to be a better place for hundreds of kids in a district that has long failed its students.

But a Star-Ledger examination of the school and its leadership reveals a faltering institution that provides bare-bones learning facilities while using millions of dollars in state and federal aid, bolstering a real estate fiefdom controlled by the school’s founder, Fredrica Bey.

A fiery community activist with political pull, Bey has come under intense scrutiny by both the state Department of Education and the U.S. Justice Department, which accuses her of fraud in a civil suit. That case, unrelated to Adelaide Sanford, is expected to come to trial later this year, barring a last-minute settlement.

The Star-Ledger review found that school officials — including Bey’s daughter and longtime friends — approved hugely inflated rental payments to Women in Support of the Million Man March, a community group Bey founded, for space the school doesn’t use. An attorney who specializes in nonprofit law said the arrangement smacks of a "sham transaction."

At the same time, investigators with the state Education Department determined Bey may have broken the law by using a possibly invalid school lease as the bedrock document to obtain an $8.27 million loan. The investigators recommended that the Division of Criminal Justice look into the matter.

The newspaper’s examination — encompassing court records, Education Department reports, financial documents and dozens of interviews — also found a pattern of recalcitrance by Bey and school officials, who repeatedly ignored state directives, according to documents obtained under the Open Public Records Act.

In particular, the state has accused Adelaide Sanford for more than a year of refusing to comply with regulations, turn over records or eliminate clear conflicts of interest, chiefly the dual roles Bey held as executive director of both the school and her group, known in the community by its acronym, WISOMMM.

In recent weeks, top school employees, including the principal, the business administrator and two board members, have written to state Education Department officials, pleading for them to intervene at Adelaide Sanford.

The letters carry a sense of desperation.

"We are seeking your help because our children and the entire Adelaide L. Sanford Charter School community deserve much more from those who are entrusted with their educational welfare," Principal Larry Hazzard wrote.

Revered by some and feared by others, Bey, 68, has built a reputation as a powerful figure in New Jersey’s largest city, with friends in political, cultural and activist circles, along with a direct line to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.

But she has also periodically drawn scrutiny from law enforcement officials investigating allegations of fraud. Most recently, the U.S. Attorney’s Office last year sued Bey and WISOMMM, alleging violations of the False Claims Act.

The suit, which seeks triple damages and civil penalties, contends Bey took $345,325 in federal grant money earmarked for programs to keep "at-risk" youths off the streets and instead used much of it to pay WISOMMM’s bills, then falsely reported how the money was spent.

Among other claims, government lawyers contend Bey used nearly $100,000 of the grant money to make "wildly inflated" rental payments to Women in Support of the Million Man March for the use of a building to house the youth program.

Because the nonprofit group already owned the building — the same converted church that now houses Adelaide Sanford — it should not have charged rent at all, government lawyers said.

Bey’s lawyer, Thomas Ashley, denies in court papers his client did anything wrong, writing at one point that Bey was "inexperienced with respect to grant management."

In an interview, Ashley called the Justice Department suit "big, fat hyperbole," contending WISOMMM was entitled to charge rent for the program, officially called the Boycott Crime Campaign, and that both WISOMMM and the campaign had identical purposes.

"If the allegations and sinister suggestions are true, why weren’t we indicted?" Ashley asked. "There was never a crime on any front, nor did Ms. Bey ever receive a dime she spent on herself. No Gucci bags. No trips to Florida. Nothing."

Bey declined to be interviewed for this story, and repeated phone calls and e-mails to other officials at Adelaide Sanford were not returned. Requests for budgets, employment contracts and other public documents under the Open Public Records Act were ignored for 10 months.

In a letter dated April 16, School Business Administrator Karen Milteer apologizes for the school’s delayed response to the request and asks for a payment of $700 up front to gather and copy the records sought.

Under the provisions of New Jersey’s public records law, the school could be fined up to $1,000 by the Government Records Council if the board finds the decision to withhold records was "knowing and willful," said attorney Thomas J. Cafferty, author of the state’s public records statute.

A reporter who tried to speak with school officials in person was locked out of the building, and talks with parents on public streets surrounding the school were broken up by security guards and other employees with verbal and physical threats to "stay away."

In a brief statement, an attorney for Adelaide Sanford said the school "is in full operation, continuing to provide quality education for its students."

"The students and the staff are functioning well," the attorney, Robert T. Pickett, wrote in an e-mail.

The state Education Department placed Adelaide Sanford on probation in February 2012, citing a litany of violations. State officials have since extended the probationary status at least four times over the past year.

Education Commissioner Christopher Cerf and Newark schools Superintendent Cami Anderson declined to comment on Adelaide Sanford.

An Education Department spokeswoman, Barbara Morgan, would speak only in general terms about charter schools, offering a warning for those that flout the rules.

"We firmly believe that it is a privilege to operate a school in New Jersey, and we are committed to holding schools to high standards," Morgan said. "When a school is not meeting these standards, we will put them on notice that they must improve or risk losing this privilege."

LONGTIME ACTIVIST

She is known in certain circles as "Queen Fredrica." In others, she goes by "Sister Bey."

Fredrica Bey, a Realtor by occupation, has been in the trenches of community activism in Essex County since the late 1980s, speaking out against crime, police brutality, spiraling property taxes and injustice where she sees it.

As an early member of the People’s Organization for Progress, a Newark-based civil rights organization, Bey appeared at rallies and opened her home for community meetings.

She has since founded or served on the boards of several other nonprofit groups, including Jihad Health Network and the African Credit Union.

But it is through Women in Support of the Million Man March that Bey has made her mark. Even the license plate on her Lincoln Town Car bears the group’s acronym.

Bey, who lives in East Orange, founded WISOMMM in 1995 after helping with local planning and travel logistics for the Million Man March, held in the nation’s capital that October with the aim of inspiring black men to become leaders in their communities.

Bey, admirers said, took the message of leadership to heart.

"The men came home and did nothing. Fredrica came home and said, ‘We must provide the services, the day care, the tutoring and the mentoring this city needs,’ " said former Newark Mayor Sharpe James, a close friend. "She’s a legend. She’s a hero. She’s a role model."

In the years since the march, Bey’s group has opened a state-funded preschool, organized educational programs, sponsored arts festivals for children and held forums on various topics, from slavery to the plight of prisoners.

Buoyed largely by taxpayer-funded grants and state-facilitated loans, it also bought two historic buildings on Lincoln Park and, in 2004, the former church that now houses Adelaide Sanford on James Street in downtown Newark.

When James ran for re-election, Bey campaigned tirelessly for him, and during the former mayor’s tenure the group’s fortunes grew.

Between 1999 and 2006, James’ final year in office, WISOMMM received $3.5 million in federal community block grants, which are distributed each year at the discretion of a city’s mayor and council, public records show.

Less well known is Bey’s involvement in a series of real estate deals that would later land James and his former mistress, Tamika Riley, in federal prison.

The July 2007 corruption indictment against James did not name Bey. But in court papers filed a month later, she was identified as "individual one," the person in the indictment who fronted money for Riley to buy city-owned properties at bargain-basement prices.

When Riley illegally flipped those properties at James’ direction, selling them for hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits, "individual one" shared in some of the proceeds, Assistant U.S. Attorney Judith Germano wrote. Bey also served as the real estate agent on one of the transactions, the court papers show.

Initially a "subject" of the grand jury investigation, Bey was later identified as a potential witness, the documents show. She was not charged in the case. At the time of the disclosure, she declined to comment. Ashley, James’ former defense lawyer, said she did nothing illegal.

'OBVIOUSLY FRAUDULENT'

The prosecution of James wasn’t Bey’s first brush with the justice system.

In the early 1990s, a jury convicted her of promoting gambling for her involvement in a pyramid scheme. Using the pseudonym "Star," Bey recruited people to pay $1,500 into an "investment network" with the promise they would receive $12,000 once they reached the pyramid’s highest level, court records show.

Bey, sentenced to a year’s probation, appealed the conviction, and in November 1992, a state appellate panel overturned it, writing that while Bey’s actions were "obviously fraudulent," New Jersey’s statute against promoting gambling did not specifically include pyramid schemes.

The Justice Department’s fraud suit last year, charging misappropriation of federal grant money, marked her latest legal trouble.

In addition to improperly charging nearly $100,000 in rent for the Boycott Crime Campaign, the suit alleges, Bey used the grant money to pay the salaries and benefits of two employees purportedly hired to run the program.

In the end, however, those employees did little work for the anti-crime initiative, according to the suit. Instead, government lawyers said, the employees continued to work almost exclusively for the preschool run by Women in Support of the Million Man March.

There were other questionable moves, investigators said.

Bey used tens of thousands of dollars in grant money to make payroll for WISOMMM, the government contends, and diverted tens of thousands more to De Lacy Davis, a retired East Orange police officer and the founder of the East Orange Police Athletic League.

Davis, a codefendant in the fraud suit, used some of Bey’s grant money to pay his own group’s bills, the Justice Department said.

A longtime friend of Bey’s and the founder of Black Cops Against Police Brutality, Davis would go on to become the top administrator at the Adelaide L. Sanford Charter School when it opened in 2007. Bey fired him in May 2012, replacing him with Larry Hazzard, a former commissioner of the New Jersey State Athletic Control Board.

James, the former mayor, said without elaboration that Davis and Bey had a "falling out."

Davis confirmed he was fired by Bey but declined to discuss the circumstances. He also declined to address the allegations in the Justice Department’s lawsuit.

A trial date for the suit has not been set.

As head of WISOMMM, Bey was paid $66,531 in the budget year that ended June 30, 2012, according to the group’s most recent tax filing. The filings show she was paid $76,453 in 2011 and between $51,000 and $75,000 in previous years.

It is not clear how much, if any, compensation she has drawn from Adelaide Sanford, where she held the title of executive director. Her name does not appear on school tax filings as a salaried employee, and there is no record of her work with the charter school in state payroll records.

Those records, however, appear to be incomplete. Like all school districts, Adelaide Sanford — a district unto itself as a charter school — is required to report salaries to the state Treasury Department for employees enrolled in the Teachers’ Pension and Annuity Fund or the Public Employees’ Retirement System, Treasury Department spokesman William Quinn said.

But 10 other employees whose names appear on an organizational chart the school filed with the Education Department in 2009 do not appear in state payroll records for that year. They include Adelaide Sanford’s treasurer, its project director, a nurse, a computer technician and a custodian.

Quinn said districts that fail to report salary information for eligible employees in a timely manner could face fines under the state’s administrative code.

Bey’s supporters call her a selfless champion of children, lauding her dedication and accomplishments.

Elizabeth Councilwoman Patricia Perkins-Auguste praised Bey’s "sacrificial labor," while the Rev. David Jefferson Sr., pastor of Newark’s Metropolitan Baptist Church, called the work of Bey and WISOMMM "noble."

Newark writer and activist Amiri Baraka, the former poet laureate of New Jersey, criticized The Star-Ledger for raising questions about Bey and Adelaide Sanford.

"The WISOMMM people have been doing positive things in the community for 20 years," Baraka said, "and now must be attacked and ‘bad-mouthed’ by a newspaper that is not famous for such great work."

The Nation of Islam also has gone on the offensive, characterizing the government’s fraud suit against Bey as punishment for her support of Farrakhan, who organized the Million Man March, and as a naked grab for the sprawling James Street building, which also houses an African-American cultural center.

In May of last year, Farrakhan appeared at the cultural center to raise money for WISOMMM’s legal defense.

"The aim of the enemy is always to destroy the fact that we have been," he told hundreds of people gathered for the fundraiser, according to an account in The Final Call, the Nation of Islam’s newspaper. "The enemy is always watching."

IN THE BEGINNING

The Adelaide L. Sanford Charter School — named after a prominent black educator and former vice chancellor of the New York Board of Regents — first gained state approval in 2006, its application packed with letters of support from New Jersey’s political elite, including U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg and the newly elected governor, Jon Corzine.

The school opened its doors to kindergartners, first-graders and second-graders the following year.

It is one of 86 charter schools now in operation across the state, a movement that began 16 years ago with the aim of providing an alternative to failing public schools.

Charter schools are not bound by some of the state regulations or collective bargaining agreements that prevent experimentation in regular public schools. In exchange, charter schools are expected to boost student achievement. The schools run on five-year terms, after which the state can renew them or pull the charters.

Adelaide Sanford, last renewed in 2011, has added a grade every year since it opened and now serves kids in grades K-7. It plans to add an eighth grade this fall.

Most students are black, and 65 percent of the student population qualifies for free lunch based on family income.

Though standardized test scores have crept up in recent years, they are low compared with results in other Newark charters serving similar numbers of poor students. Only one school in that group, Newark Educators Community Charter School, has a lower rate of students passing NJ ASK, an annual state test that measures math and language arts proficiency.

More than half of Adelaide Sanford’s fourth-graders failed the language arts portion of the test in the 2011-12 school year, the most recent data available. Twenty-eight percent failed the test’s math section. The state ranks Adelaide Sanford in the bottom 10 percent of New Jersey’s public schools as measured by student achievement.

Though the state has expressed concern about those test scores, it is not poor performance that has aroused the interest of investigators with the Education Department.

In an echo of the fraud suit filed against Bey by the federal government, the state questions whether she and some other school officials have misused taxpayer dollars to fund the real estate portfolio of Women in Support of the Million Man March.

Among the officials is Bey’s daughter, Amina Bey, who, like her mother, has held leadership positions at both the charter school and WISOMMM.

The Education Department’s Office of Fiscal Accountability and Compliance, in a report obtained by The Star-Ledger, noted that Adelaide Sanford’s board, led by Amina Bey, repeatedly revised lease agreements that dramatically increased the school’s rental payments to WISOMMM.

When Adelaide Sanford opened in 2007, it was housed at 51-53 Lincoln Park, which WISOMMM bought a decade earlier.

Rent for the school was set at $222,000 per year, or $102,000 more than what Bey projected in her charter school application to the state.

Ten months later, in July 2008, the board approved a new lease agreement that increased annual rent payments to $300,000, a bump of 35 percent, the state found.

The following July, Adelaide Sanford expanded into a second building purchased by WISOMMM on Lincoln Park. The rent for the use of both buildings jumped to $420,000.

Then in February 2011, the lease was revised to show the charter school was again growing and would be using space more than a mile and a half away at the former church property on James Street, which WISOMMM acquired in 2004 with $4.55 million in bond financing.

The rent for all three buildings climbed to $624,000, or 48.6 percent more than what the school had been charged for each of the previous two years.

But none of Adelaide Sanford’s students moved to the James Street location, which already housed WISOMMM’s publicly funded preschool.

Indeed, it would be more than a year before the state discovered that hundreds of thousands of dollars in state aid were spent to rent a building for students who weren’t using it.

After the Education Department’s investigators issued their report in March 2012, Adelaide Sanford arranged to move all of its students to James Street by the start of the school year last September.

The property, assessed at $2.3 million, has 65,000 square feet, including a sanctuary large enough to seat 1,200 people, but Adelaide Sanford occupies only a portion of the property, parents and teachers say.

According to WISOMMM’s website, the sanctuary is available to rent for weddings and other events starting at $3,000. A large room next to the sanctuary and an auditorium rent for $1,500 each. A gymnasium goes for $500, according to the website.

The two buildings on Lincoln Park no longer house the charter school, according to documents that school officials sent to the state. But Adelaide Sanford continues to pay the same $624,000 in rent it was once charged for all three buildings owned by WISOMMM.

Seen another way, Adelaide Sanford’s rental payments amount to $1,840 per student, according to The Star-Ledger’s analysis of lease and enrollment data for the 2012-13 school year. That per-student cost is significantly more than what most other Newark charter schools open more than a year pay, the newspaper found.

Some charters pay less than $1,000 per pupil. Robert Treat Academy, considered one of the city’s best charter schools, spends $1,850 per student, a figure comparable to Adelaide Sanford’s rate. (See the accompanying chart for more details.)

DWINDLING FUNDS

The escalating rent prices for Adelaide Sanford came at a time when other sources of income for Bey’s group and the school began to run dry.

The millions of dollars in federal community block grants Bey received from the James administration were slashed dramatically, then eliminated entirely, in the years after Mayor Cory Booker took office, public records show. Booker, a vocal charter school proponent, declined to comment on Bey, WISOMMM or the school’s operations.

Another blow came when the nonprofit Newark Charter School Fund cut ties with Adelaide Sanford in 2011. The fund had invested heavily in the school’s success, providing $485,248 in grants over four years.

WISOMMM, with annual mortgage payments as high as $458,869, had become almost totally dependent on its rent from the charter school and the $1.2 million it received from the state each year to run the preschool. Grants and private donations dwindled to less than $50,000 in 2010, the group’s tax filings show.

Bey would ultimately secure a financial lifeline for WISOMMM, but investigators with the Education Department question whether she violated rules or broke the law in the process.

In mid-2011, WISOMMM received an $8.27 million loan, financed with the sale of bonds through the state Economic Development Authority. Shortly before the deal, the community group changed its name to Ace Alliance, which appears on all loan documents. The group continues to call itself WISOMMM on tax filings and other documents.

Of the $8.27 million, more than $2 million was earmarked for the renovation of the James Street property, while the remainder was set aside to pay off old debt and cover fees associated with the bond sale.

To obtain the loan, the investigators wrote in their report, Bey presented an amended lease for Adelaide Sanford, again stating that rental payments were for the use of all three properties owned by WISOMMM when, in fact, the school was housed at the time in two buildings on Lincoln Park.

The amended lease also stated Adelaide Sanford could not move to a location outside of WISOMMM’s three buildings without approval from the bondholders, potentially locking it in place with high rent for years to come.

Most seriously, the investigators wrote, the entire bond deal may have been predicated on a lease that wasn’t valid to begin with because Adelaide Sanford’s school board never approved it. Indeed, the investigators said, some board members weren’t even aware a new lease had been drawn up when Bey applied for the $8.27 million loan.

A spokeswoman for the state Economic Development Authority, the bond deal’s broker, declined to comment on the validity of the lease presented with Bey’s application.

State education officials wrote to Adelaide Sanford three times last year demanding a valid copy of the lease. The requests were ignored, officials maintained in letters to the school.

In their report, the investigators recommended the case be referred to the state Division of Criminal Justice to determine "whether there was any criminal involvement regarding issuance of the lease and bonds."

The Division of Criminal Justice did look into the matter but closed its investigation without bringing criminal charges, according to an official familiar with the matter.

An attorney hired by Adelaide Sanford’s school board to review its lease, however, found the agreement violates state ethics laws and would be deemed invalid by a court due to Bey’s conflict of interest at the time the lease was formed.

"In laymen’s terms, the lease is not the result of an arm’s length transaction," attorney Cassandra T. Savoy wrote in a confidential report obtained by The Star-Ledger. "The School Ethics Act was enacted to proscribe the exact conduct occurring in the formation of the lease between ALSCS and WISOMMM/Ace."

Savoy declined to comment on the report, but said she had recently been retained by Adelaide Sanford’s facilities committee for a short time.

Like state investigators, Savoy found the board never approved the school’s lease or its role in the bond transaction, according to the report. Under the lease, the school is paying too much rent, Savoy wrote, calling this a "misuse of public funds."

"The school’s charter is in serious jeopardy unless the board acts decisively," Savoy wrote. "I believe that you as fiduciaries must take aggressive action as outlined herein to save the school."

Principal Larry Hazzard has also expressed concerns about Adelaide Sanford’s future. In a February letter to state education officials obtained through the Open Public Records Act, Hazzard wrote that Adelaide Sanford’s school board is "embroiled in serious turmoil" and that in-fighting has harmed his students.

RELATED COVERAGE:

• Newark charter school is on shaky ground, lease for unused facility at center of state probe

In the letter, he describes a "rather bizarre occurrence" that took place at the board’s Feb. 11 meeting. School attorney Robert T. Pickett "arbitrarily appointed" two individuals to the board who had been previously denied appointment at the board’s Dec. 10 meeting.

"In my opinion, (the school board) has become a dysfunctional entity and can no longer serve the best interest of the students of this school," wrote Hazzard, whom Bey hired about a year ago. "Our school is confronted with other extremely serious challenges at this particular juncture and can ill afford this type of distraction."

Hazzard declined to comment for this story.

The Education Department’s inquiry, which continued long after state investigators issued their report on Adelaide Sanford’s lease, found other problems and inconsistencies.

Under pressure from the state to disassociate themselves from Adelaide Sanford because of conflicts of interest, Bey and her daughter offered letters of resignation in July of last year.

But as late as October, the state accused both in a letter of continuing to play influential roles at the school.

In addition, while the lease requires Adelaide Sanford to remain in place, Bey at one point sought to find a new home for the school, the investigators found.

Then in December of last year, WISOMMM listed the James Street property with Weichert Realtors. The sale price stood at $14.9 million, nearly four times what WISOMMM paid for the property nine years ago.

Barbara Nagle, a New York attorney who specializes in nonprofit law, said the rental agreement could result in legal penalties for Adelaide Sanford if its school board acted in the interests of Bey or WISOMMM and not the school.

"Their first loyalty by law needs to be to the organizations they serve," Nagle said. "If the board members are not acting independently, they could have a problem with the law."

In a letter to the federal judge overseeing the Justice Department’s fraud lawsuit, Bey’s lawyer Thomas Ashley suggested the sale could provide the necessary cash to reach a settlement with prosecutors.

No such settlement has been reached. In January, the James Street property was taken off the market, but during a hearing last month, Ashley said he was "hopeful" WISOMMM could still sell one of its buildings.

"I can’t assure the court when or if at all we’ll be able to get rid of this property," said Ashley, who declined to comment on where Adelaide Sanford’s students would go to school if WISOMMM sold the James Street building. "We’re negotiating now."

Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Kirschbaum, however, said he does not want to settle.

"We’ve been bending on a settlement for a year now, and I’m dubious we’ll reach a resolution," Kirschbaum told U.S. Magistrate Judge Cathy Waldor at the hearing. "(Ashley’s) client is flaky and disingenuous. We will be talking about settling this case until the next ice age."

A final pretrial conference in the federal fraud lawsuit is set for late July.

FUTURE CLOUDY

The fate of Adelaide Sanford — and the hundreds of students who attend the school — remains uncertain.

In a Jan. 25 letter to the school, the Education Department’s chief innovation officer, Evo Popoff, said without elaboration that Adelaide Sanford remained in violation of its probation terms and that its charter "may be summarily revoked."

Robert T. Pickett, the school’s attorney, responded in a Feb. 21 letter, arguing the school had in fact addressed all of the state’s concerns and deserved to have its probationary status lifted.

Fredrica Bey remains executive director of WISOMMM. An attorney for WISOMMM said Amina Bey has cut ties with the group, though its website continues to identify her as chairwoman of the executive board.

Parents of children who attend Adelaide Sanford say the school has begun to unravel, with high teacher turnover and little in the way of discipline for students who cause trouble.

In an interview outside the school, the mother of a sixth-grader called it "a big mess."

"This school used to be at the top of my list, and now it’s at the bottom," said the woman, who would provide only her last name, Muhammad. Among the problems, parents and teachers say, is the school’s layout.

Some classrooms have no doors or walls, and children doing class work can’t help but twist in their seats to watch people pass. And teachers said even the slightest sounds echo loudly off brick walls and high, vaulted ceilings, causing frequent distractions.

Cold weather poses another problem. Parents say the balky heating system doesn’t adequately warm the large building.

Some children wore long johns to school in winter, while others kept their jackets on throughout the day, the parents say. On several occasions, the boiler has broken down entirely, causing early dismissals, the parents said.

Sen. Lautenberg, who praised Bey’s vision of the school when she sought state approval to open its doors, balked at the idea that funds meant for students could have been misspent.

"The senator has zero tolerance for the abuse of public funding and is confident that the authorities will properly pursue all allegations," said Caley Gray, a spokesman for the senator.

The Rev. Reginald Jackson called the problems at Adelaide Sanford "distressing."

Jackson, an influential figure in New Jersey’s African-American community, has known Bey since the Million Man March and calls her a "very committed" community leader. He also strongly supports charter schools. The organization Jackson heads, the Black Ministers’ Council of New Jersey, runs two such schools.

But Jackson said it was troubling that Adelaide Sanford had failed to comply with state requirements.

"This is not about Fredrica," he said. "It’s about the school fulfilling the purpose for which it was founded, and it’s on that basis that the state should determine whether to take action against the school. I think Fredrica is doing her best to provide high quality education for those children, but is her best good enough for those children? That’s for the state to decide."

Star-Ledger staff writers Mark Mueller and Ted Sherman contributed to this report.

NJ Spotlight - Student's-Eye View of NJ's Statewide Tests…When your kids sit down to one of NJ's state tests, what do they need to know? [For actual sample questions. go to njspotlight.com ]

By John Mooney, May 6, 2013 in Education |Post a Comment

For all the talk these days about the value of New Jersey’s state tests for judging schools and teachers, here’s your chance to judge for yourself.

For the next five days, as students across the state take the NJ ASK elementary school tests, NJ Spotlight will run sample questions from the exams to give you a view into what the state expects your kids to know and do each step of the way.

We start with a handful of math questions for grades 3-5, both multiple choice and extended-response questions, which require several related answers. As New Jersey begins moving to the Common Core State Standards, the math questions will likely see the most change in this first year.

After you've gotten a feel for the questions, NJ Spotlight invites you to share your thoughts in the comments section about what New Jersey tests and how. We plan on republishing excerpts of your comments at the end of this five-day series.

One more thing: You can check your work against the answers at the end of this story. But no peeking.

Answers: question 13, B; question 14, A; question 15, A; question 16 (extended response), 18, 6, 3, multiply length and width; question 17, 2/3 is greater; question 18, 9 inches, 3/8.