As both sides of the charter school debate in Massachusetts continue digging in, recent efforts by the state Legislature have sought to appease everyone, with a proposal to modestly increase the charter cap, but tying it to more funding for traditional district schools.
That proposal, however, doesn’t appear to be gaining much traction anywhere, with Senate President Stanley Rosenberg himself saying progress on the issue ground to a “dead stop” in the Legislature.
The Senate passed a bill, dubbed the RISE Act, on April 7 that would allow the state’s cap on charter schools to gradually increase by half a percentage point per year in an attempt to head off a referendum that could result in a bigger expansion, but tied it to annual increases of $200 million in state funding for public education in low-performing districts for seven years — $1.4 billion, in total.
An amendment that would have lifted the cap by 12 schools per year in the lowest-performing school districts — more in line with Gov. Charlie Baker’s vision for charter expansion — was shot down, but another more controversial amendment that would give local school committees authority to decide whether its district would pay for students who enrolled in charter schools did pass. If the local school committee voted no, the state would be required to provide the funding.
Many charter opponents have criticized the level of public accountability surrounding charter schools, so the bill would also require more transparency around charter school operations. Charters must provide and make publicly available an annual report detailing its finances, capital projects and work toward achievement goals, among other things. Under the bill, the schools would be required for the first time to disclose their discipline policies, contracts, and meeting minutes — information that regular public schools must make public now.
Locally, the Four Rivers school has made such information available voluntarily, said Garbus.
It would also allow local districts to count Horace Mann charter schools and Innovation schools, which have more public oversight, toward the cap.
Horace Mann charter schools have more local oversight during their creation than Commonwealth Charter Schools.
Further, it would effectively eliminate the current lottery system through which charter students are selected by requiring all students to be included automatically — whether or not they’ve applied to the school — while allowing parents to opt-out.
Right now, parents must personally apply for their children to get into charter schools. The change is designed to ensure every student has at least a shot at a charter seat, regardless of their economic status or home life, or whether their parents are savvy enough to have filed an application.
The House has been moving slowly on its own charter reform bill, and it’s not clear when that proposal may be brought to a vote.
Peter Garbus, the principal at Four Rivers Charter School in Greenfield, said he agrees with the Senate’s effort to compromise on the financial end, but thinks other aspects of the bill, including requiring a member of the local school committee be given a seat on the charter’s board and requiring new charters to seek approval from each sending town before being approved, will handicap their operations.
“To have a voting member (on the board) from a school committee who doesn’t share the school’s interests and no commitment to its overall vision? It strikes me as a ‘No’ vote every time,” he said. “Those requirements don’t make sense to me.”
Marc Kenen, the executive director of the Massachusetts Charter Public Schools Association, said the organization strongly opposes the bill.
“There’s a number of crippling proposals for existing (charter) schools, and it seems pretty evident that this is going to die,” Kenen said. “It’s clearly a rejection of compromise, it’s so harsh on charters.”
Among those provisions, according to a statement by the association, the ability for towns to count Innovation schools and Horace Mann Charter Schools toward the cap — particularly in Greenfield, where the Discovery School at Four Corners has been named an Innovation school — and tying a cap lift to increases in state education funding would effectively negate a cap lift.
The statement also said provisions requiring new charter proponents to develop impact reports, meet with each of the superintendents in sending districts, obtain local approval for their application and shifting more transportation cost to charters could make it easy to block new schools despite a cap lift.
TOMORROW: Do charters use special privileges to create a brain drain?
Material from the State House News Service was used in this report.