Newark Public Schools spent $566,000 on an “administrative gym” that draws an average of just seven visitors a day, even as fewer than half of the district’s students read at grade level and math proficiency remains even lower, according to a new state audit.
New Jersey’s largest public school system is facing heightened scrutiny after State Auditor David Kaschak flagged the fitness facility among a series of questionable expenditures.
Kaschak also said that “certain matters” identified during the review had been referred to the state Attorney General’s Office for a criminal investigation.
The district spent $300,000 to build the gym without securing school board approval or seeking competitive bids, the 36-page audit found. Administrators also hired a full-time personal trainer to staff the little-used facility, paying $82,800 during the 2024-25 academic year and $86,940 the year before.
Yet sign-in sheets reviewed by auditors showed an average of only seven users over several months last year—all of them district administrators. The gym opened in November 2024 in the basement of the district’s leased headquarters, according to the report.
The audit identified other troubling expenses, including $2.5 million spent on an unfinished school district museum and more than $700,000 for three separate “Senior Day” class trips that lacked documented educational objectives.
Auditors also found that Newark overstated enrollment by 128 students in both 2023 and 2024. That misreporting led to nearly $6.7 million in excess state aid being awarded to the district.
Newark Public Schools serves more than 41,000 students across 65 schools and employs approximately 7,000 people.
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During the period examined, the district received an average of 81% of its general operating funding from the state.
Superintendent Roger León, whose annual salary is $330,000, has defended the district’s spending.
District officials said every employee is eligible to use the gym and maintained that taxpayers did not directly pay for it. They said the facility was funded through “wellness benefit funds” provided through the staff health program.
The audit also found that 10 active Newark employees had never undergone criminal background checks. In one case, the employee had been hired 27 years earlier.
The state controlled Newark’s schools for 25 years after decades of mismanagement and weak academic performance. Local officials regained authority over the district in 2020.
Following the report’s release last week, Newark school officials called the criminal referral “gratuitous and irresponsible.” In a statement, they said the audit did not establish “any intentional wrongdoing or violation.”
State Assemblywoman Dawn Fantasia, a Republican from Franklin, said the report’s publication does not resolve the district’s underlying problems. She has spent more than a year raising concerns about alleged misconduct and questionable spending.
“This ‘I told you so’ doesn’t feel so good because kids, families, and taxpayers got hammered while apparently 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 said.
Academic results remain a central concern. In spring 2025, just one in three Newark students in grades 3 through 9 passed the state’s English Language Arts exam, while only 17.7% passed the math assessment, Chalkbeat reported.
