Hosted by The Center for
Education Reform
Hosted by The Center for
Education Reform
NEW HOPE FOR EDUCATION IN SAN DIEGO
By Melissa Epstein
The San Diego Union-Tribune, July 17, 1997
Nine-year-old April Honore wants to learn. She is bright, energetic and hopeful. Yet she complains that school is often quite boring.
"I ask my teacher for new books, but all she can get are second-grade poetry books," explains April, who just finished the third grade at Webster Academy, a San Diego public school.
April is certainly not the only child in public school who feels that her options for learning are limited. In the past five years, charter schools -- public schools that are freed from most bureaucratic regulations -- have started popping up throughout California, including five in San Diego.
Until recently, low-income parents have had no choice but to send their children to local public schools, no matter how bad. With the advent of charters in recent years, poor parents have finally been given the ability to choose a school for their children that best meets their needs. Next year, students might get yet another choice.
Tonight, the five-member San Diego Board of Education will decide whether to grant a charter to the Nubia Leadership Academy. If approved, the Nubia Leadership school will welcome 150 predominately low-income and minority kindergarten through fourth-grade students this fall, expanding through eight grade in succeeding years.
Rather than being forced to attend overcrowded public schools, these students and 550 others who will join them in the next couple of years, will attend a fresh, innovative school run by educators freed from excessive bureaucracy.
Developed through a collaboration of parents, teachers, staff, community leaders and the nonprofit School Futures Research Foundation, the Nubia Leadership Academy plans to emphasize academics, business principles, the arts, character development and leadership. School Futures Research Foundation, established in 1994 with funds from philanthropist John Walton, has already acquired charters to start two schools in underprivileged communities next fall, one in Watts and the other in East Palo Alto.
The daily routine at the Nubia Leadership Academy will differ from most other schools. The school will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. offering enrichment activities before and after classes including extra tutoring, extracurricular programs as well as supervised recreation. Staying after school to both learn and play proves a much better option than sending a latchkey kid home to await the arrival of working parents in the early evening, as many public school students must do.
As a start-up school, the Nubia Leadership Academy has stipulated in its charter that it will hire teachers based on their ability to maintain the school's standards (such as putting in long hours) rather than on their seniority, as in most district schools. Among other requirements, classrooms will be open for 210 days a year, rather than the usual 180, and for eight hours daily, rather than the usual six.
Traditionally in California, one of the most difficult issues facing charter schools is the lack of immediate funds. School Futures has offered to solve that problem for the Nubia Leadership Academy by providing the funds to lease the education facilities at Bay View Church in South Encanto for the first year and to buy equipment, such as computers. It also promises to help the school attract funding from other private sources in the future.
But because the Nubia Academy is a public school, most of its funding will come from the government. According to the president of School Futures, Eugene Ruffin, the Board of Education plans to allow the Nubia Leadership Academy much financial independence.
This arrangement proves promising. It enables the school to function efficiently, shopping around for the best deal on everything from cleaning supplies to learning aids.
Yet it takes more than money to run a school. Operational decisions need to be made on a daily basis for a range of issues. To operate to the best of its ability, a charter school needs much independence. Without such independence, a charter school essentially becomes just another public school, potential innovation can be hampered by the educational bureaucracy.
In addition to deciding whether to grant the Nubia Leadership Academy a charter, tonight, the Board of Education must also decide how much freedom the school will enjoy.
As incentive for the Nubia Leadership Academy experiment to yield results, like other charters it will have to seek renewal every five years. This demonstrates yet another strength of charter schools over regular public schools -- performance matters.
If a charter school doesn't educate kids, its charter is revoked, and it goes out of business. The same cannot be said for other public schools. The San Diego school board has a very mixed record in providing charter school alternatives. Last year, it shut down the San Diego Urban League's charter school under dubious circumstances.
Its vote on this new charter school will signal whether the Board of Education is committed to high quality educational opportunities.
No student should be consigned to a failing school. Yet right now, many children are forced to attend a failing school simply because they live in a certain district.
By granting charters to promising schools like the Nubia Leadership Academy, the Board of Education would offer kids like April a better shot at learning.
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Melissa Epstein is an intern at the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Justice, which litigates nationwide on behalf of education reform and other causes.