Hosted by The Center for
Education Reform
Hosted by The Center for
Education Reform
CHARTER FOR REFORM: SAN DIEGO'S TEST CAMPUSES GAIN SUPPORT OF BUSINESS
By Kay Davis
The San Diego Union-Tribune, August 31, 1997
Charter schools are a principal arena for educational reform. While they have not been around long enough for definitive results, the trend of raising academic achievement and support of all constituencies looks promising -- promising enough to make labor unions and school districts nervous. Once charter schools function properly -- costs remain the same, with individual school empowerment driving up student achievement -- we won't need large district bureaucracies, unions or perhaps even school boards and superintendents.
While not all charters will succeed, those that do will educate our students better, foster more community involvement, offer different ways to pay teachers, and develop smarter expenditures of public school money.
The charter school movement's potential is such that it immediately won the support of the Greater San Diego Chamber of Commerce Business Roundtable for Education. The roundtable, founded five years ago, has been unmatched nationally for its degree of interest and involvement in the charter school movement and, specifically, its support of charter schools in the San Diego County region.
With foundation support, the Chamber's Business Roundtable already has played a role in a number of successes. The roundtable has:
Founded a Charter School Consortium that meets three full days a year. We bring in experts to cover topics the schools tell us they need help in (i.e. business, legal, parent involvement, personnel issues, labor issues, public relations). Our meetings draw school representatives from Palm Springs, Temecula, Vista, Lakeside, Chula Vista and San Diego Unified. Charter school organizers who are only in the planning stages also attend.
Provided legal advice through Luce, Forward, Hamilton, & Scripps attorneys Bob Levy and Maria Heredia. It can be very intimidating for the organizers of a charter school to receive a letter from a school board, superintendent or labor union specifying something they supposedly cannot do. Legal help has been seen as the most valuable assistance we have provided.
Offered business and strategic consulting assistance. Most charters, because of the size of their enrollment, are million-dollar businesses. Yet business expertise has not been a required skill.
Given monetary assistance to enable charter school representatives to attend a statewide charter school conference each year in Sacramento.
Provided business roundtable mentors to principals and budget committees at charter schools.
Notable among charter schools already up and running is Yucca Mesa Charter School in the Palm Springs area. It doesn't have students come on the first day of school; parents do, however, and 98 percent of them show up to hear about the school expectations and to sign a mutual support agreement before enrolling their child.
Charter School of San Diego, an educational option for students in grades 7-12, has sites located in 20 storefronts around the city. High standards are in place and there is usually a waiting list of 100.
O'Farrell Community Charter School in San Diego Unified School District, with an enrollment of 1,400, has no vice principals or counselors because it was decided that those expenses would be avoided so that additional teachers could be hired to reduce class sizes. The school is organized into nine educational houses and the teachers stay with the students for all three years.
Clear View Elementary Charter in Chula Vista has a strong partnership with Cox Communications and has made intensive and innovative use of instructional technology. In the spring, 700 parents come to a meeting where the teachers publicly report each student's academic progress.
This fall, Feaster Charter School will open in Chula Vista. The Edison Project, run by Chris Whittle, will be totally responsible for running the school. Teachers who interviewed to stay have agreed to longer school days, a longer school year, a different pay range, and one month of staff development training before the start of the school year. Every teacher is given a lap top computer. After training in the second year every family will be issued a computer.
Nubia Charter Elementary School is also opening in the San Diego Unified School District, housed in the Sunday School rooms of Bayview Baptist Church. There has been no advertising other than word of mouth yet applications have been received from 300 potential students for the 130 slots in grades K-5. Child care will be provided before and after normal school hours.
There are still many obstacles to overcome in building a successful charter school movement in California and issues that need to be addressed.
The most powerful lobby in Sacramento, the California Teachers Association, is absolutely against charter schools (forget their public verbiage). Because of CTA's influence, the cap of 100 charter schools out of 7,600 schools in the state has not been lifted. Only waiver authority by the state Board of Education (which CTA keeps threatening to sue) has allowed the number of charters to climb to 130.
Charter school leaders need to be taught business management. There needs to be more entrepreneurial thinking and subcontracting for services. Locally, a business manager needs to be hired to be on call for charter school use.
Charter schools begin coming up for renewal this year. Each school is given a five-year agreement. School board and district administrations will want to allow less freedom. Successful charters are going to expect more.
A "direct funding" pilot needs to be put in place. I serve on Supt. Delaine Eastin's Charter School Advisory Committee, which feels strongly that it was the intent of the original legislation to not have charter school money filtered through the school district but sent directly to the charter school or a holding agency.
"He who has the money has the power." All of a charter school's revenues -- based on its enrollment and special programs -- should be under its control. The school could then buy back from its district the services it finds of value.
A "direct funding" pilot with a half dozen schools -- Charter School of San Diego was one of them -- was supposed to have begun on July 1, with the new fiscal year. But politics, politics, politicshave kept it from happening.
Many knowledgeable people around the state, including school district attorneys though not San Diego Unified's head attorney, feel that the intent in the original legislation was to allow charter schools, who choose it, to have the status of separate legal entities.
Assemblyman Steve Baldwin has taken two key questions to the state attorney general for consideration. They are:
1. For the purpose of operations, is a charter school a separate legal entity?
2. Can a school board reject a charter petition that asserts the charter school is going to operate as a separate legal entity?
But, enough of the worries over charter schools. Now the good news.
Charter schools have introduced innovative curriculums, instructional methods and management practices and enjoy an exceptionally high level of parent support and community involvement. The obstacles are numerous, but most schools appear to be overcoming them with a combination of hard work, grit and determination.
This is the only real reform effort within the public school system that I am aware of.
These schools do not receive or ask for more money but are given the ability to make smarter uses of their funds. I have witnessed a dramatic change in thinking at each charter school once the money is seen as theirs to spend wisely.
Most charters have carry-over balances, some upward of hundreds of thousands of dollars. No charter school has to spend its money frantically at the end of the fiscal year or see it go back to the district's "black hole." The site governance teams decide how to spend the "excess" and how much to save for carry-over.
Charter schools are serving student, parent and community needs by providing excellent educational options. It behooves all of us to get involved with existing charters, lobby to have the cap of 100 lifted, and support innovation and change within the public school system on charter school campuses.
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Kay Davis was a board member of the San Diego Unified School District from 1981-90. She is the director of the Greater San Diego Chamber of Commerce Business Roundtable for Education.