PHILADELPHIA CHARTER SCHOOLS ASKED TO SURRENDER RIGHTS
District’s hostility to charter opportunities is inequitable and unjust
Statement by Jeanne Allen, CER’s Founder and CEO
Recent charter school renewals in Philadelphia include a poison pill called a “surrender clause” which in effect gives districts the upper hand to close a charter regardless of its quality, facts or demand. This would cause charter schools to lose their due process and an equitable opportunity to defend their schools and the students and families attending.
While the School District of Philadelphia did move to renew all charter schools given COVID’s severe impact on students this year, this new condition will negatively impact charter schools in the near future.
“A surrender clause is nothing but another way for the District to shut us down,” said David Hardy, founder of Boys’ Latin of Philadelphia Charter School and a CER Board Member.
“It is not rooted in the law. If this were about closing schools that were bad, close them. But this is solely directed at charter schools, and particularly those led by people of color.”
Hardy, a founding member of African American Charter School Coalition which recently challenged the District for disproportionately closing schools led by people of color and attended mainly by low income, black and brown children, called the move by the District “an attack on charter schools which are serving the least advantaged students and which parents have depended on as long as the District schools have failed them.”
“No public charter school operator should feel forced to give up their right to appeal their authorizer’s decisions just to keep their doors open,” said the Pennsylvania Coalition of Public Charter Schools (PCPCS), who along with area charter school leaders is demanding that the District change the process, conditions and requirements by which they evaluate charter schools, which has historically been negative and hostile to these innovative public schools and which is dependent on political winds, not evidence and outcomes.
Learn more about this and related issues from the African American Charter School Coalition or contact CER at [email protected] or 202-750-0016.
Founded in 1993, the Center for Education Reform aims to expand educational opportunities that lead to improved economic outcomes for all Americans — particularly our youth — ensuring that conditions are ripe for innovation, freedom and flexibility throughout U.S. education.