Unchartered Waters...Do Charter schools get too much latitude?

Just over a decade ago, California became the second state in the country to legalize charter schools. They were intended to be an experiment in academic flexibility and freedom since they were not bound by most of the regulations in the state Education Code.

"Free classrooms and teachers from the ties of bureaucracy, and watch the magic happen," predicted the San Francisco Chronicle. Sometimes it does happen, especially when charter schools are able to increase academic success for students and give teachers a role in decision-making that they are unable to find in traditional schools. In other cases, charters may offer substandard curriculum and materials, deny teachers their rights or mismanage public funds.

As approved by the Legislature, the charter school idea was:

• To improve and increase academic
  opportunities for students, especially low achievers;
• To encourage innovative teaching methods;
• To create opportunities for teachers wishing to exercise professional responsibility for the learning program;
• To provide parents and students with expanded choices within the public school system.

"In a good charter, you have teachers who are there for the purpose of doing something different and innovative, allowing creativity for themselves as well as their students," says CTA Board member Tom Conry, chair of the CTA Charter Schools Workgroup.

Charter schools can give teachers a voice, says Mignon Jackson, a CTA Board member who teaches at the Paul Revere Charter Middle School in Pacific Palisades. "When you are part of a regular district, you don't have much say-so. Here, we control our own calendar, are part of the interview process for new teachers and administrators, and have input on the school schedule and discipline policy. We are known for community involvement, teacher involvement and test scores that are rising - not going down."

In charters where success is not taking place, the bureaucracy of traditional schools has been replaced "with control by one or more individuals who don't know anything about education. But they do know how to make money, and they are doing that successfully," says Conry, the only teacher member of the State Board of Education's Advisory Commission on Charters. "I am amazed at the state's willingness to hand over public money to individuals who have no background or understanding in education."

"One of the things that is lacking is the ability to really monitor what goes on inside these schools," says Conry. "Much of the information we have - especially about the independent-study charter schools - is based on what they tell us. And there will be fewer resources to monitor them due to budget cutbacks."

"CTA supports the kind of charter school that gives teachers and students newfound freedom from bureaucracy," says CTA President Barbara E. Kerr. "What it doesn't support is profiteering or trying to turn a profit from the venture at the expense of students and teachers."

CTA would also like to see charters held accountable, both for student outcomes and for financial stewardship.

"There's a double standard implicit in the way the federal government is encouraging the proliferation of charters," says Kerr. Under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (also known as the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001), public schools are given unrealistic timetables to bring up scores or face sanctions. One possible sanction is conversion to a charter school.

"Traditional schools have so many rules and regulations that they can't even breathe, let alone have a creative thought. The government has established unreal expectations and set our schools up for failure. Then the same government encourages charter schools and says, 'Do whatever you want to without any rules and regulations.' This is extremely unfair."

With traditional schools forced into lockstep thinking and automated learning to raise test scores and avoid sanctions, it is no wonder that some parents and educators have sought charter schools as an alternative, she adds. "But there should be room for teachers to be creative and to exercise professional judgment withoutgoing the charter route if they don't want to."

According to the California Department of Education, approximately 166,000 students attend 480 charter schools in California. In addition, eight charter districts have converted all their schools - 16 in all - to charters.

Of the 597 charters approved by the state since it became legal, 117 have closed: 21 never became operational, 31 had their charters revoked and an additional 65 were closed for other reasons.

The number of charter schools allowed to operate in the state is capped at 750, but can increase by 100 schools every July 1.

Seventy percent of the charters in operation are "startup" schools, created from scratch by education management companies, individuals and nonprofits. The other 30 percent are "conversion" schools - public schools that have been converted to charter status by the district or school staff with the approval of the permanent certificated staff.

Developers of startup charter schools must obtain the signatures of either 50 percent of the teachers "meaningfully" interested in teaching at the school, or 50 percent of the parents meaningfully interested in having their children attend (the number of parents is based on the expected enrollment at the school). For the conversion of regular public schools, the signatures of 50 percent of permanent teachers at the site are required. The law prohibits conversion of private schools to public charter schools.

A charter school must be nonsectarian in its programs, admission policies, employment practices and all other operations. It may not charge tuition or discriminate against any student on the basis of ethnicity, national origin, gender or disability.

However, some believe that discrimination against special education students is rampant in startup schools.

"Teaching special education kids is expensive, which makes it difficult for charters," says Conry.

"I always hear stories about charter schools holding meetings to encourage community parents to enroll their children. And when parents say their children have special needs, they are told, 'Your child can probably get a better education where he or she is now.'

"They never say a special education child can'tcome," says Conry, "but parents are discouraged from enrolling such students in charter schools."

The biggest problem with charters has been their lack of accountability in fiscal, academic and even safety matters. State charter laws have been tightened in response to scandals involving mismanagement or corruption.

A law enacted in 2001 (SB 740) prevents charter operators from taking large administrative fees to run networks of charter schools that oversee home schooling. Charters whose students are enrolled in independent study (including home schooling) now have to show state officials why they should continue to receive the same level of funding as charters that have buildings, classrooms and teachers.

Opportunities for Learning, which operates four schools, and Options for Youth, which operates six schools, were cut back to 60 percent of funding due charters operating in a more traditional fashion as a result of SB 740.

A 2002 law, AB 1994, restricts the geographical boundaries within which charter schools and their satellites can operate.

The Prosser Creek Charter School, based in Truckee, had its wings clipped as a result. It was told that only students living within district boundaries could enroll. Its independent study centers in Sacramento, Yuba City and South Lake Tahoe, which served 700 students, were ordered to get their own charters or shut down. Then, in a dramatic move, the school board revoked the Prosser Creek charter altogether for other reasons, one of which was financial mismanagement.

AB 1464, which has been held over for the next legislative session, could make charter oversight more difficult than it already is, says CTA lobbyist Sharon Scott Dow.

The CTA-opposed bill would allow nonprofits, big city mayors, and colleges and universities to grant charters. All of these entities can and do sponsor charters under current law. Presently, only school districts, county offices of education and the State Board of Education can approve charters.

Another bill that is still moving through the system, AB 1137, could require additional financial oversight by school districts and help weed out failing charters. Teachers originally opposed some of its provisions, but CTA's recommendations for amendments have been incorporated.

CTA believes that school districts should be compensated fairly for their actual costs
of supervision, which is not happening now. "They haven't been given specific direction, nor have most school districts established quality review procedures,"says Dow. "Very often school districts don't have enough money to do it right. Many times they just neglect oversight altogether."

School boards may have little say - and in some cases do not want a say - in governing charters within their boundaries, but they have even less say in whether or not to grant charter petitions.

School districts and county offices of education are often caught between a rock and a hard place - even when they don't want a charter - because in most cases they have to grant approval if the conditions described in the charter law are met.

Having too many charters in a district and fearing a charter might divert funds from other schools are not considered valid reasons for turning down a charter petition, according to the Education Code. Acceptable reasons for denying a charter include not having enough valid signatures on the petition or presenting an unsound educational program. Ironically, the law does not prohibit a district from approving a charter with an unsound program.

If a charter is denied, the petitioner may submit the charter to the county board of education and then to the California Department of Education.

Often, school districts rationalize approving charters they don't want. They figure if they say no, it will happen anyway and then they will have no control; if they say yes, they will at least have some control.

"When the first charter petition was brought here three years ago, the East Side Teachers Association (ESTA) lobbied the school board pretty hard to reject it," says Don McKell, president of the San Jose chapter. Teachers believed the school district could provide services to students that were as good as if not better than what the charter operator could. "But just because a school district can provide the same services doesn't mean that it can deny a charter."

Today, there are four charter schools in East Side, which some residents say is too many. Last March, trustees voted to deny a petition by Leadership Public Schools, a nonprofit group based in San Francisco, to establish a fifth charter school.

Ironically, a new state law may eventually force the district to provide facilities, even if it does not issue the charter.

Proposition 39, passed in November 2000, requires school districts to accommodate charter school students with facilities equivalent to their own public schools.

Facilities are a huge problem for startup charters. Staff at one charter school relocated twice in one year when the fire marshal ruled the facilities were unsafe. Eventually, the students were put on independent study.

The issue of who is responsible for providing facilities for charters has sparked lawsuits. The Sequoia Union High School District in Redwood City sued Aurora Charter School, saying the district is not obligated to provide facilities for a charter issued by the neighboring Redwood City School District.

Aurora operators maintain that Prop. 39 entitles them to facilities funded by Sequoia, including money from an $88 million facilities bond measure passed last year. The district is paying approximately $120,000 annually for Aurora's facility fees out of bond money.

Facilities can even be an issue for conversion charters. When the Los Angeles Board of Education voted to convert Granada Hills High School into a charter school on the campus it already occupied, the Los Angeles Unified School District announced that it would impose a facilities fee of more than $1 million - doubling what the district now pays for maintenance there.

"It's only fair that charter schools be charged a fee for facilities," says United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) President John Perez. "It's an equity issue. Up to now our district has cut deals with charters that give them a financial advantage, and they haven't been paying their fair share."

At Kennedy High School in Sacramento, where teachers are trying to start a curriculum-focused charter, teachers feel differently. They do not want to pay for district-owned facilities out of instructional money.

In urban areas, where there is a surging student population and overcrowding of schools, charter schools have not had a significant financial impact.

"A large district such as San Francisco can absorb its fair share of charters," says Dennis Kelley, president of United Educators of San Francisco (UESF). "But now that the district is responsible for providing building space for charters, it will have an impact. I worry that at some point charters will take a significant number of students and employees out of the pool, which will have an impact on hiring, layoffs and building utilization."

In smaller districts, teachers say charters drain resources away from existing schools. Some fear the situation will get worse as more charters are granted. The issue has divided some communities, including Los Altos and neighborhoods in San Jose.

No matter how one views the proliferation of charter schools, one thing is certain: The controversy is unlikely to go away anytime soon. It may, in fact, grow more heated as the number of charter schools increases and their full impact - both educationally and financially - is felt in California and throughout the rest of the country.