Application for Hebrew Charter School in New Jersey Raises Concern In the last couple of years, Sharon Akman, a real estate agent, applied to the state of New Jersey three times to open a new charter school in the Highland Park area, to be called Tikun Olam Hebrew Language Charter High School. Each time, she was rejected. Then on Oct. 6, one week after the state's most recent rejection, the United States Education Department announced that it had approved a $600,000 grant to finance Ms. Akman's proposed charter. It would have taken federal officials just a few phone calls to determine that there were many good reasons for the state to have rejected Ms. Akman's applications. For one thing, they have been full of misrepresentations. Ms. Akman, who declined to comment for this column, writes that the charter school would be located in St. Mary of Mount Virgin Church in New Brunswick, even though the bishop of the Diocese of Metuchen, Paul G. Bootkoski, has repeatedly said that the building is not available. Ms. Akman's documents list community supporters of the school, including Jun Choi, a former mayor of Edison, and the directors of the Zimmerli Art Museum in New Brunswick, who have written in e-mails made public that they are not supporters. The application says there is a need for a Hebrew charter in the Highland Park-Edison-New Brunswick area, even though there are many Jewish private schools close by and, as Ms. Akman has told state reviewers, no community survey has been done. The application says that the families served by the New Brunswick schools, which are predominantly black and Hispanic, support the Hebrew charter, even though school leaders and the local N.A.A.C.P. chapter do not. Since March 2010, community volunteers from Highland Park, Edison and New Brunswick have been battling to stop the school from opening, arguing that it would drain resources from traditional public schools in order to provide a free Jewish education that should be the responsibility of private schools. For each child who leaves a district to attend a charter, the charter receives 90 percent of the district's per-pupil spending allotment. In modest-size communities like Highland Park, with a district of 1,500 students, that can take a substantial bite out of a school budget. What has been so frustrating to opponents is that despite repeated distortions in the Tikun Olam applications, the charter still may open in September. How could federal oversight be so lax? Part of the answer is that charter schools are a top priority for the Obama administration, making federal officials predisposed to support them. And part of the answer, as Justin Hamilton, an Education Department spokesman, explained in an e-mail, is that federal officials see their oversight role as limited. The department hires private consultants to rate the quality of a charter applicant, but those consultants "cannot use information not included in the grant application," he said. In other words, if Ms. Akman writes that Assemblyman Peter J. Barnes III supports the charter, the federal consultants are not permitted to interview Mr. Barnes, who would have been happy to tell them that he does not. This prohibition against using outside information is intended to ensure that no special measures are taken to either favor or hinder an applicant, although what it really invites is fiction writing. Mr. Hamilton points out that the federal grant does not take effect unless the state approves Ms. Akman's application. The federal role, he said, is to "operate as a funding source for applicants proposing to open high-quality start-up charter schools," although it is hard to imagine why an applicant would propose a low-quality charter school. An applicant with a $600,000 pledge in her pocket may be seen in a new light by state officials. In mid-October, Ms. Akman wrote to the state's acting education commissioner, Christopher D. Cerf, requesting assistance in winning approval for her fourth application. "We were just granted a substantial federal charter school grant," she wrote him, and would "love to have a meeting to better strategize and prepare for our reapplication."