The New Jersey board of education has asked the state education department to develop a policy for withdrawing from schools that are being run by the state and to determine whether the state is prepared to return the Jersey City schools to local control.
The state board and the education department were scheduled to hear public testimony last week on the Jersey City takeover.
The board last month adopted a report by its state-operated schools committee that posed several queries about the takeover law and how to determine whether students are making sufficient progress to allow control to revert to local officials.
The report defined four areas in which the department needs to establish policies.
They are: setting education goals for Jersey City and Paterson, the two state-controlled districts; when and how a takeover should end; the role the state should play in designing a pilot voucher program in Jersey City; and whether state control in Jersey City should be extended after an October deadline marking the five-year limit permitted under law for the state to run a district.
