CAPS Awaits Approval To Open In Middletown, Amid Bombshell Report

MIDDLETOWN, NJ — What's the latest with the attempt by CAPS charter school to move into the old Mater Dei campus in Middletown?

As of May 2, Middletown Township has still not approved CAPS for a Certificate of Occupancy (CO) to rent space at Mater Die high school, Middletown's longtime Catholic prep school that closed its doors in 2022 due to diminished enrollment.

On April 19, the Middletown Zoning Department sent CAPS a letter, informing the charter school they need to fulfill a number of requirements before the town grants them the CO.

Among them are that CAPS needs to first obtain a waiver from the state Department of Education, and that CAPS needs to show compliance with a number of construction, fire prevention and health codes. Middletown also said it is consulting with the state to determine if the Mater Dei building is ADA accessible, has ADA-accessible parking and whether the building's Fire Suppression system is up to date.

For those unaware, CAPS is College Achieve Public School, a charter school that started in poor, urban areas of New Jersey. CAPS runs high schools in Paterson, Plainfield, Asbury Park and Neptune, and services children and teenagers seeking an alternative from the public schools in those cities.

In April, Patch was the first to reveal that St. Mary's Catholic church in Middletown entered into contract with CAPS to rent space at Mater Dei: CAPS plans to turn Mater Dei into a charter high school for 9th-12th graders. These are high schoolers currently enrolled in CAPS schools in Asbury Park and Neptune, and the teenagers will be bused from those towns to the Middletown campus.

Should the plan go through, CAPS Middletown will be CAPS' first outpost in an upper middle-class New Jersey suburb.

The parish of St. Mary's and CAPS already signed a lease, St. Mary's business manager Glenn Holck said in April:

The initial plan is to bring 140 CAPS teenagers from the Asbury Park/Neptune area into Mater Dei. But the former Catholic high school can accommodate up to 260 students, so the numbers will likely rise, said Holck.

All CAPS and St. Mary's need is for Middletown to approve their Certificate of Occupancy request. Holck said as soon as that CO is granted, the plan is to have CAPS students at Mater Dei starting in September.

Star Ledger does investigative report into CAPS charter school

At the same time, Star Ledger/NJ.com reporter Matthew Stanmyre published this bombshell report Thursday about CAPS. The Star Ledger did a deep-dive investigation into CAPS, which they called a "New Jersey school empire" where the people in charge are paid "astonishing" salaries.

The article is behind NJ.com's paywall, but Patch read it and here are some of the most eye-opening revelations about the school:

• CAPS founder and CEO Michael Piscal is paid a total salary of $697,528 a year. His base compensation is $125,000 more than the highest-paid public school superintendent in New Jersey (Bergen County Vocational Technical School District superintendent Howard Lerner, who made $319,134 in 2023.)
• The director of the CAPS Paterson, Gemar Mills, make a total salary of $433,734 a year. Jodi McInerney, director of the CAPS Asbury Park school — and who herself graduated from Red Bank Catholic — was paid $323,245 in total compensation. Her husband, Timothy McInerney, is the principal of CAPS Asbury Park and he makes a salary of $165,000 per year. Jodi's mother also works at CAPS Asbury Park.
• CAPS maintains "this is what excellent educators need to get paid." But former NJ education commissioner Christopher Cerf told the Star Ledger these salary figure are “eye-popping” and “astonishing.”
• “The fact that these executives are getting paid that much money, I guess I would just say that people aren’t paying attention,” said Julie Larrea Borst, executive director of Save Our Schools NJ Community Organizing. “These schools are in economically disadvantaged districts, and here’s this guy paying himself nearly $700,000 a year. That’s incredible. That’s really incredible.”
• These salaries far exceed the salaries of all other charter school executives in New Jersey. Charter schools in New Jersey receive taxpayer dollars. The way charter schools work is they receive taxpayer money from the school districts where they are located; if students in those districts want to attend CAPS charter school instead of their district, the school district has to pay CAPS to send the student there.
• So, Asbury Park, Neptune, Paterson and Plainfield boards of education — or rather, the NJ state Department of Education — pays CAPS for students from their towns who want. Should CAPS be approved at Mater Dei, that's how it will work in Middletown: The Middletown school district, which already lost millions in funding

But that's not all:

• The Star Ledger also unearthed that former NJ education commissioner David Hespe now works for CAPS, where he is paid $158,892 as chief of staff. Hespe served as education commissioner in 2015, when the DOE approved the initial CAPS charter schools to open. CAPS says “there is no conflict of interest" and that Hespe started working for CAPS four years after he left the DOE.
• And then there's the CAPS Asbury Park basketball team, which stunned the state this past winter when they won a state tournament in their first season of existence, beating all the boys' basketball teams in the Jersey Shore Conference.
• However, the Star Ledger reports that CAPS put 11 of the most highly ranked basketball players in the state on its team, from towns such as Trenton, Keyport, Newark and Irvington. Critics say CAPS manipulated a loophole that allows students to attend a charter school outside the town in which they live if the charter school is not at full enrollment — CAPS said it was not at full enrollment in Asbury Park. Now state Sen. Paul Sarlo (D-Bergen) and the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association (NJSIAA) are calling for a review after CAPS Asbury Park won the season.

St. Mary's business manager is refusing to tell Patch how much CAPS will pay St. Mary's in yearly rent for Mater Dei. He said he has not yet read the May 2 Star Ledger report into CAPS, and he "may respond tomorrow" to our questions about the St. Mary's/CAPS business deal.

Initial Patch report about CAPS: St. Mary's Plans To Bring Urban Charter School To Mater Dei Campus (April 11)

Star Ledger reporting about CAPS: Inside the ‘astonishing’ salaries at N.J. school empire. Taxpayers foot the huge bill (May 2)

A new N.J. super team is destroying its small-school opponents. Critics are calling foul. (March 10)