By Christopher Baxter/The Star-Ledger
TRENTON — The payroll at Somerset Hills School reads like a family tree, with 10 relatives sprinkled throughout. Four of them earn six-figure salaries.
Even the land and buildings are worth big bucks. The school paid nearly half a million dollars for rent in 2012, mostly to a company owned by its former executive director.
Tucked away amid lush green meadows in Warren Township, Somerset Hills is one of about 180 private schools across the state where more than 10,000 severely disabled children go for an education when their public schools can’t handle them.
Though Somerset Hills is privately owned and run, it’s like a public school in one simple way: You pay for all of it.
A two-month Star-Ledger investigation found Somerset Hills and schools like it operate in a twilight zone of the state education system, under a unique set of rules that allows them to spend taxpayer money in ways few would tolerate of public schools.
In an era when public schools are under intense pressure to do more with less, the newspaper’s review showed nepotism, high executive salaries, generous pensions, fancy cars and questionable business deals are common in parts of this more than $600 million New Jersey industry.
Prompted by a state auditor’s report earlier this year raising concerns about these schools, The Star-Ledger reviewed more than 8,000 pages of annual financial audits and other documents obtained from the state Department of Education under the Open Public Records Act.
The records, covering the fiscal year ending June 30, 2012, for about 170 schools, reveal a laundry list of some of the most despised practices in government and paint a picture of what privatization can cost when state oversight fails to guard the public’s wallet.
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