Who in the world makes close to a million dollars working in education? At least one charter school executive in New Jersey and his salary originates through taxpayer money. Publicly funded charter schools have become big business in New Jersey. Perhaps no network has benefitted as much as College Achieve Public Schools (CAPS). People usually don’t go into public education to get rich. But, these executives did…all while marketing schools in poor, urban school districts. A series of NJ Advance Media investigations has prompted the network to slash the organization’s salaries, place two senior officials on administrative leave and hire an outside firm to open a formal investigation. Meanwhile, four state lawmakers have demanded a state inquiry into the network’s operations. (Video by Andre Malok, Matt Stanmyre and Natalie Paterson)
Charter school executives in New Jersey are making obscene salaries and the money going
into their pockets is coming from the people in some of the poorest school districts in New Jersey
and it's all perfectly legal. I'm Matt Standmyer and I'm a reporter from NJ.com. We did a major
investigation into the College Achieved Public Schools Network and what we found is pretty
unbelievable. College Achieved is a growing empire. It has nine schools in four locations
Typically people don't go into public education to get rich
but that's exactly what's happening in this case here. The founder and CEO of College Achieved,
Michael Piscow, made nearly $800,000 in total compensation last year and the top two officials
under him made $515,000 and $460,000 in total compensation. To put that into perspective,
the average salary for a New Jersey superintendent last year was $193,000. And by the way,
when we're talking about these College Achieved salaries, we're talking about taxpayer money.
So how are they pulling this off? Especially when we're talking about money that's unheard of in
public education. Here's how. Salaries are approved by charter boards and those members
are not publicly elected like the majority of public districts in New Jersey. That means they
don't have to answer directly to taxpayers about how they spend their money. In New Jersey,
charter schools get money from the school districts where their students live.
So money follows the student from their town to the charter school like College Achieved.
So let's say that the average cost per student is about $19,000. If a charter school has 600
students, that's 600 times 19,000 which comes out to a lot of money. 11.4 million to be exact.
All those public dollars go into funding all the school's operational costs like textbooks,
teachers pay, building rent, school supplies, and other programs. But it also pays for these
lavish salaries of top officials. And here in Asbury Park, it's a tale of two school systems.
While CAPS officials were getting rich, positions were being lost in public schools.
In April, the Asbury Park School Board cut 27 teachers and other jobs due to economic issues.
In addition to how some CAPS officials were using taxpayer money,
some of them were making sure it stayed in the family. Our investigation found the husband and
wife team that ran CAPS Asbury Park used their family-owned business to produce thousands of
dollars of school apparel at taxpayer expense. That's a direct violation of New Jersey school
ethics laws. They even had four more family members on the payroll. As a result of our
investigation, College Achieve has slashed the salaries of their top officials, including
Piscow. He's taken a nearly half-million-dollar pay cut. The other two officials also have had
their salaries slashed. The state is also taking notice. Four senior lawmakers have called for a
full-blown investigation by the State Department of Education. There could even be hearings in the
statehouse, which may lead to an overhaul of not just College Achieve, but the entire charter
school system in New Jersey, ensuring more accountability and oversight for these schools.
