Leaders at Newark Public Schools, where fewer than half of the students read at grade level and even less demonstrate proficiency in math, spent $566,000 on an “administrative gym” that sees just seven visitors daily, according to a recent audit.
New Jersey’s largest school district is facing increasing scrutiny after this upscale gym was pointed out among various questionable expenditures by State Auditor David Kaschak.
Kaschak also mentioned that he has referred “certain matters” from the audit to the state Attorney General for potential criminal investigation.
The district allocated $300,000 for the gym’s construction without obtaining board approval or engaging in competitive bidding. Additionally, they employed a full-time personal trainer for the seldom-used facility at a cost of $82,800 for the 2024-2025 school year and about $86,940 for the prior year, as detailed in a 36-page state audit.
Despite these expenditures, an average of only seven administrators signed in at the gym over several months after it opened in November 2024, situated in the basement of the district’s rental headquarters, according to the report.
Other troubling discoveries included $2.5 million spent on a still-unfinished school museum and upwards of $700,000 on three “Senior Day” class trips that lacked any documented educational purpose.
The audit also uncovered that officials had inflated student enrollment figures by 128 students in both 2023 and 2024, leading to nearly $6.7 million in excess state aid for the district.
Newark currently enrolls over 41,000 students across 65 schools and employs about 7,000 workers.
During the audit timeframe, the district reportedly received around 81% of its general funding from state sources.
Superintendent Roger León, earning $330,000 annually, has defended the district’s spending practices.
District officials assert that all employees have access to the gym and clarify that taxpayers were not responsible for the costs — these came from “wellness benefit funds” through the staff health program.
Another alarming finding was that 10 active employees had not completed criminal background checks, even though they were hired as far back as 27 years ago, as per the report.
The state had taken control of Newark’s schools for 25 years due to ongoing mismanagement and underperformance, handing back control to the local board in 2020.
Following the release of the report, Newark school officials criticized the criminal referral as “gratuitous and irresponsible,” insisting that the audit did not point to any intentional wrongdoing or violations.
State Assemblywoman Dawn Fantasia (R-Franklin), who has raised concerns about alleged misconduct within the district for over a year, expressed that the report doesn’t resolve ongoing issues.
“This ‘I told you so’ doesn’t feel so good because kids, families, and taxpayers got hammered while the board was dozing, elected officials deflected, or buried their heads in the sand, and the superintendent ran the district like a drunk college kid on spring break with his parents’ credit card,” Fantasia stated.
In the spring of 2025, only one in three Newark students from grades 3 to 9 passed the English Language Arts state standardized test, while merely 17.7% passed the math assessment, according to reports.
