Reform By Charter

Donna Harrington-Lueker

Superintendent Discover How Charter Schools Fit (or Don't) Their Districts' Agendas

In Kingsburg, Calif., Superintendent on Allvin is anything but lukewarm about charter schools.

"When I heard state officials present the idea back in 1992, it was a real revelation to me," remembers Allvin, who was then in his first year as the districts superintendent.

"Here they were saying, 'If you think you can do a better job without us, then prove it.' And here I was thinking, 'A better job without these regulations? You're darn right I can.'"

In fact, Alivin and the Kingsburg school board were so confident that the district's four schools and 1,850 students in K-8 could prosper under the new legislation, which freed charter schools from the straightjacket of the California education code, that they applied for a charter for their entire district. "It was a question of local control," says Allvin.

By becoming a charter school district, he and his board reasoned, Kingsburg would be able to withstand the controversial pendulum swings of teaching and learning that periodically rock the Golden State.

Six years after Minnesota passed the nation's first charter law, the charter school movement is booming. Slightly more than half the states have made charter schools an essential part of their school reform agenda. And while many superintendents continue to staunchly oppose charters, fearing that the movement will siphon off much-needed funding from the public schools that remain under their jurisdiction, a small but growing number of top school administrators, like Allvin, are finding ways to make charter schools part of their school district's reform plans.

Exponential Growth

Numbers alone suggest that the charter school movement cannot be ignored. As of early summer, 26 states plus the District of Columbia had adopted charter school legislation that allows groups of parents, teachers, or community members to form their own schools and frees those schools from most state and local regulations. That number is up dramatically from 19 states the year before and only two states in 1991.

The number of charter schools has grown as well. In 1995-96, 200 charter schools were operating nationwide. In 1996-97, though, that number had risen to 480 schools. This fall about 700 charter schools should be in operation, says Joe Nathan, director of the Center for School Change at the University of Minnesota and a nation 1 expert on charter schools.

Charter advocates a also predict that legislators in an estimated nine states, including Oregon, Washington, Missouri, New York Pennsylvania, and Oregon, are likely to consider charter legislation in the coming year, and a similar number are expected to strength en laws they already have passed, paving the way for even more schools to open.

The federal government also has offered its support. In his 1997 State of the Union address President Clinton called for the creation of 3,000 charter schools by the year 2000. To make that rhetoric a reality, the 1997 federal budget also calls for $51 million in funding to cover startup costs for charters. In addition, the U.S. Department o Education has contracted for a $2.1 million study to evaluate the effectiveness of charters and identify the characteristics of successful charter schools, and the administration has requested $100 million in charter school funding for FY 1998.

Legislation Dictates

As the number of charters increases, superintendents who have worked with charter schools are beginning to offer their own perspectives on the role superintendents have come to play and on how charter schools can become a part of a school system's mission.

First, they readily acknowledge, the superintendent's role o ten depends on a specific state's legislation. In Massachusetts, for example, charter school organizers bypass local school districts and take their plans directly to state officials. In Color do, on the other hand, charter school organizers must first seek the approval of the local school district but can appeal the district's decision to the state board of education.

Other states, including California, Michigan, and Arizona, allow organizers to seek charters from a number of sources in addition to local boards, including county boards of education in California, community colleges and local universities in Michigan, and a state charter school board in Arizona.

In states where local school boards grant charters, school superintendents are likely to be key players. "They're probably the first person in the school system that charter organizers contact," says Jim Griffin, executive director of the Colorado League of Charter Schools, a nonprofit group that supports the development of charter schools in the state. Depending on the size of the district, superintendents are also likely to have "handson, regular interaction" with the charter schools, Griffin says.

Intensive Support

Douglas County, Colo., a fast-growing district of 25,000 students just south of Denver, is a case in point. Last year, the district had three charter schools serving approximately 850 students. Two of he schools were so-called core Knowledge schools, based on the principles of University of Virginia professor E.D. Hirsch; the third emphasized experiential learning an multiage classrooms. Two additional charter schools--a Montessori school and another core knowledge school--will open this fall and are expected to enroll another 300 students.

"We're just strong promoters of choice an see charter schools as a viable choice for parents," says Superintendent Rick O'Connell. In fact, he adds, one of the district's core-knowledge charter schools was the first charter school in Colorado developed by parents.

That commitment to choice and charters, though, means that school officials have a significant role to play in helping charter organizers understand "the mechanics of running a school," O'Connell acknowledges.

One of Douglas County's assistant superintendents, Pat Grippe, works closely with the district's charter schools, coaching new charter schools through the application process, advising them n start-up issues, and negotiating whether the charter will purchase se vices such as transportation, payroll, and school lunches from the district. Once a charter is operating, Grippe continues to provide advice on discipline codes, personnel issues special education plans, governance, budgeting, and a myriad of other concerns.

Such support is most intensive when a charter is starting up and typically tapers off once t e school becomes established, Grippe says.

The process is time-consuming. Grippe estimates that e spends half his time working with charter schools in the district. Still, the district is comfortable wit the relationship and with the amount of support it provides. "We went in to [our first] charter with the untie standing and the philosophy that t is was one of our schools--and that it was just as important as any other school in our district," says Grippe.

Up until now, the district provided such support free of charge. This fall, though, when the district has five charter schools operating, the school system plans to hire a halftime charter school ombudsman whose salary will be assessed to the charter schools.

Genteel Relations

One of the biggest challenges facing charter schools is securing the funds they require for start-up costs for rent, instructional materials, insurance, and other needs. (Charter school legislation typically provides a charter school with some portion of the district's per-pupil expenditure once the school is operating but offers little in the way of start-up funds.)

To help with such expenses, the Jefferson County Public Schools, located in the suburbs of Denver, provides charter schools with loans of up to $100,000 and has allowed the fledgling schools to use surplus materials from the district's warehouse, says Wayne Carle, who retired this summer as superintendent. The charter schools repay the loans over the course of their four-year contract.

"There's some risk involved," Carle says, "but there's also that recognition that if you approve a charter, you have an interest in having it succeed."

The district also has grouped its "schools of choice," which include the charter schools as well as districtwide alternative schools, into a single feeder system of schools and encourages charter school personnel to attend in-service workshops the district offers. (Approximately 10,000 of the district's 85,000 students attend alternative schools or charters.) "That's really been beneficial," says Carle. "They're able to trade on each other's ideas and compare not only logistics but programs.

In addition, when one school's principal left after a disagreement with charter organizers, Jefferson County supplied the charter school with an interim administrator. The district also provides ongoing assistance with finances, budgets, testing, and curriculum, though it does not charge the charter schools for that support.

"We see charters as a way to show that a number of choices can operate under the umbrella of public education," says Carle.

This fall, Jefferson County will have six charter schools, including a new magnet school for the deaf, which will teach both American Sign Language and English as a second language, and the county's first Montessori school. Four schools--a science and technology school, a K-8 school that focuses on individual learning styles, a core knowledge school, and a school devoted to experiential education--have been operating for two or more years.

In Verona, Wis., school board members saw charter schools as the next logical step in the district's own reform plan. "We'd already adopted site-based decision making in the district, and our schools already were accustomed to doing their own budgets and their own school [improvement] plans," says Superintendent Bob Gilpatrick. So making the transition to charter schools "was an easy one," he adds. (The district has two charter schools: a progressive school and a core knowledge school.)

In fact, when the Wisconsin legislature passed its charter school bill, Verona school board members interrupted their regular board meeting to send off the district's application via fax, Gilpatrick says.

Financial Impediments

Still, many superintendents say, working with a charter school can be a risky and contentious enterprise. Finances, for example, continue to be a thorny issue. State formulas for how much funding a charter school should receive vary, and divvying up federal funds, such as Title I or bilingual education funds, often leads to ongoing disagreements between districts and charter schools, advocates and administrators say.

And while many school districts have developed a menu of central office services, such as transportation, payroll, and special education, that charter schools ca purchase from the district, deciding which services a charter school should pay for-*and how much those services are worth--can lead to conflict as well.

"It's gotten pretty ugly," says Ginny Jaramillo, principal for the Lake George-Guffey Charte School in Park County, Colo., where charter organizers and district officials have been at odds for the last ear.

Sometimes, it's difficult for public school leaders to avoid looking like an impediment to change. "I spent a lot of time explaining the math involved," says Dick Lates, superintendent in Londonderry, N.H., whose community turned own New Hampshire's first charter school application in May.

Charter organizers n Londonderry planned to enroll 94 students in grades 1 through 5 this fall. But, Lates had to explain o Londonderry citizens, who eventually voted on the charter school proposal, the departure of those students wouldn't reduce the school system's costs because only a smal1 number of students would have been taken from each grade.

"[I had to] try to make sense of these numbers without becoming obstructionist," says Lates. That was a challenge given the political atmosphere in the community, where an activist taxpayers association strongly supported the charter school. "The tendency for people to see you as either or them or against them," he says.

That's a tendency the Flagstaff, Ariz., Unified School district is resisting. Eight charter schools currently operate in Flagstaff, and the charters have enrolled approximately 150 of the school district's students, says Superintendent Kent Matheson. Those numbers, though, have resulted in a $51 5,000 budget shortfall for the district--a gap Matheson hopes to close through attrition rather than layoffs.

Despite that financial pressure, he says the Flagstaff school board has adopted a philosophy of inclusion toward the charter schools in its district, none of which the school board chartered. "Our governing board has said, these kids are still Flagstaff kids," Matheson says. In addition, the district has offered to contract with the charters for various services such as student counseling, payroll processing, and special education.

Equity Issues

Balancing the needs of charter schools with the needs of other schools in the district is a constant concern as well.

"Charter schools are labor-intensive" for the central office as well as the charter school, says Joe Rao, charter school ombudsman for the Los Angeles Unified School District, which has 14 charters. "You have to strike a balance ... and make sure that no student in the district is negatively affected, not the student in the charter school and not the student in one of the others."

"Things just spill over from the charter schools and require considerable staff time," agrees Carle, the former superintendent in Jefferson County, Colo. "But that's a factor that probably will never be fully understood."

The parents of children at other schools in the district also are likely to keep a keen eye on equity, many superintendents observe. In Stanislaus County, Calif., for example, Richard Ferriera, superintendent of the Hickman School District, says he had to stop granting teachers' requests to transfer to the district's charter school, which served 75 home-schoolers this past year. The reason: "The community was concerned that all our excellent teachers would move to the charter," says Ferriera, who also serves as president of the California Network of Educational Charters.

When charter school organizers in Cambridge, Mass., founded the Benjamin Banneker Charter School, which focuses on the needs of disadvantaged minority students, Mary Lou McGrath, the former superintendent, says she worked hard to quell any controversy.

"I didn't want Cambridge to go through what some other communities in Massachusetts did, with neighbors fighting neighbors," says McGrath, whose district lost 160 students and $1.1 million in state aid when the charter school opened last year. "I felt that these were all our kids and that under law this was a public school."

Another reason to look for a peaceful resolution: Some time in the future, some superintendents say, charter schools might decide to rejoin their school districts.

Reporting Results

Increasingly, too, school districts are wrestling with the question of how they will determine whether a school has fulfilled its charter.

Five of the 14 charter schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District, for example, will be eligible for renewal in 1998. And according to Rio, the district may hire an outside contractor to evaluate the charter schools' performance. "Outside evaluators will have no preconceived notions, so their findings are likely to satisfy both sides," he says.

Jefferson County, Colo., used just such an approach this year when three of its charters came up for renewal. All three charters were renewed, though one low-performing charter school will have its charter reviewed again in a year.

Both sides like the use of external evaluators. "Going to an outside consultant gets around the politics of charter schools," says one charter school advocate.

Finally, superintendents report, they often face the disapproval and anger of colleagues. "Frankly, other superintendents view me as a traitor," says one superintendent who has promoted charter schools in his district and who asked not to be identified.

Regulatory Buildup

Charter organizers and advocates have their own worries. Most acknowledge that district superintendents have a central role to play. "The attitude of the school district leader just makes all the difference in the world," says Tracey Bailey, director of Florida's Office of Charter Schools and a former National Teacher of the Year.

Florida, which passed charter school legislation only a year ago, has approved 35 charter schools. "If the staff feels the superintendent is reluctant, cautious, or even hostile to the charter school, then most of the answers [charter school organizers] will receive will be 'No, we don't do that' or 'No, we can't do that,'" says Bailey.

Howard Fuller, former superintendent of schools in Milwaukee and a charter school proponent, offers a broader perspective: "I'd argue that if we're going to collectively rethink the institution of education, it would be better to have superintendents and school boards on board." However, superintendents and school boards--and to a greater extent, teachers unions--have a history of blocking charter schools, charter school advocates say, especially in states that have just begun their work with charter schools.

And even when a district sponsors a charter school, many advocates worry about respecting the fine line between help and interference, responsibility and uniformity.

"I call it 'regulatory reloading,'" says Bailey. "Districts basically say, 'Yes, we'll approve the charter, but ...'" What follows is the all-too-human desire to promote what's familiar. Before school districts approve a charter school, they naturally have to be comfortable with the school's viability, he says. "But face it, we're only comfortable with what we know--and we only know what we've been doing for the last 50 years."

Instead of offering new and innovative programs, charters instead can end up looking "just like all the bureaucratically protected schools," says Bailey.

Fuller, director of the Institute for the Transformation of Learning at Marquette University, offers a harsher assessment: Powerful interest groups--and he includes superintendents in that camp--have fought charters tooth-and-nail in many communities. Now, largely Out of necessity, many school leaders and union representatives declare they're in favor of charters. Their words and actions are at odds, though. Instead of fostering innovation and allowing significant flexibility, "they use all the old bureaucratic ways of sucking up reform ... and try to make charters as much like the existing schools as they possibly can," says Fuller. "They try to re-regulate you in the name of accountability."

Working out that balance between accountability and autonomy might be the biggest challenge superintendents face, many say.

"This is just the largest stretch I've ever made as an administrator," confesses Gilpatrick, the superintendent in Verona, Wis., when asked about creating an environment where schools with different philosophies can develop and grow. "But if you go in with an open mind and look at your district goals, you're likely to see pieces and corners at charters might help you reach."

Donna Harrington-Lueker is an education free-lance writer in Newport, R.I.

Passions Run Deep on All Sides

For former Milwaukee Superintendent Howard Fuller, the question of whether or not a superintendent supports charter schools is a question of how the school district's top administrator views change.

If a superintendent is committed to making fundamental change in a school system that has resisted reform--or if he or she wants to create more options for children and their families--then charter schools are an ally, not an enemy.

Nor is Fuller, who spent nearly four years as superintendent of the Milwaukee Public Schools, troubled by any shift in funds from the school district to the charter school. "My view has always been: The money isn't the superintendent's or the school system's, it's the family's, it's the children's. The same state that authorizes local boards can also give another public body the option of offering education."

Ask other superintendents about their attitudes toward charter schools, though, and the answers vary.

In Arizona, home of the country's most free-wheeling charter school law, George Garcia, superintendent of the Tucson Unified School District, questions the wisdom of his state's legislation, which has given rise to 167 charter schools serving 17,000 students--the largest concentration of charter schools in the country.

"In times of limited funding, our legislature and governor have chosen to be free-spending with charters," says Garcia. "But the legislation leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to supervision, monitoring, and accountability."

Other superintendents echo Garcia's argument and voice additional reservations. "I'm concerned that, like a private school, a charter school will be selective in its clientele," says John Fotheringham, executive director of the Washington Association of School Administrators. "Personally, I think [a number of charter school organizers] want their kids to be with their own type."

Most superintendents insist that if it's good to allow one school or group of schools to operate outside the confines of a state's education code or a union contract, it's even better for all schools to be given the option. Most insist, too, that charter school legislation include local school boards as chartering authorities.

External Pressure

Charter school advocates see things differently. For one thing, they say, charter school laws that allow someone other than the local board to grant the charter result in higher numbers of charter schools. Among the states that allow or require another chartering authority are Massachusetts, where the state board of education approves charters; North Carolina, where charter organizers can go to the local board, the state board of education, or a university; and Michigan, where local boards, community colleges and universities, and intermediate school districts can sponsor a charter.

And having a significant number of charter schools is what's crucial, they say. "The goal isn't just to create isolated schools. It's to use charter schools as tools to bring a real and appropriate level of pressure on the [education] system as a whole," says Eric Premack, director of the Charter Schools Project at the Institute for Education Reform at California State University-Sacramento.

"I've had superintendents tell me, 'I can't get my schools to do what they need to do until they know that charter schools will do it if they don't.' ... Charters are just a powerful way to leverage change in a school system," Premack says.

Drawing Limits

And what about superintendents who've decided to take the plunge? Most don't talk about the need to put pressure on other schools in the school system. In fact, many reject that premise of the charter school movement. Instead, they focus on the importance of providing students and their families with public school choice.

"I'm a proponent of choices for families and children," says Mary Lou McGrath, who recently retired from the superintendency in Cambridge, Mass."

Harold Larson, superintendent of the LeSueur-Henderson Community Schools in LeSueur, Minn., takes a similar stance. "We view [our charter school] as providing our parents with the opportunity to choose nontraditional learning environment," he says of the district's New Century Charter School, which provides 95 students in grades 7-12 with an innovative hands-on curriculum that emphasizes community-based learning.

But the choices one superintendent might be comfortable with, another might shun. After California passed its charter school law in 1992, a group of parents approached the tiny Hickman School District (enrollment 900) with a proposed home-schooling program that enrolled 75 students in its first year. This year, Superintendent Richard Ferriera expects that number to soar to 650 when the three-school district opens a site 90 minutes away in Berkeley.

"The question is, [as a charter school] can we set up a site in another district's domain?" says Ferriera. He's arguing that they can, though, he allows, "we'll know when we end up in litigation."

And in Duluth, Minn., the school board has approved plans for the Edison Project, a proprietary firm, to run a charter school.

Bob Gilpatrick, superintendent of the Verona, Wis., Area School District, rejects both those options. "I draw the line at certain points," he says, and one of those points is allowing a private, for-profit company to run a charter school.

The Verona school board is ready to draw the line as well. Says Gilpatrick. "Our board just wouldn't consider [a program for] home-schoolers."

When a Charter Fails

Charter school advocates are candid: All charter schools aren't going to succeed. The strength of the charter school movement comes from the fact that if a school isn't successful, it will have its charter revoked.

To date, though, only a small number of charter schools have closed their doors, some quietly and some not.

Two cases have attracted national attention. In Los Angeles, the Edutrain charter school closed its doors, deeply in debt and rocked by allegations of financial mismanagement, when the Los Angeles school board revoked its charter in December 1994. Among the school's problems: inexperienced management, poor record keeping, and the discovery by state auditors that the school's enrollment reports allegedly exceeded the number of students regularly attending classes. (Like other charter schools, Edutrain received funding based on the number of students it enrolled.)

According to reports in The Los Angeles Times, the school also used some of its funding to lease a sports car and hire a bodyguard for its principal.

The closing put the Los Angeles Unified School District in a difficult position. Most of Edutrain's students were adjudicated youth who had failed or dropped out of programs in other city schools. ("These were hard-to-place youth," says one charter school advocate.) Some of the school district's own programs for at-risk youth were full.

Also hampering the student relocation efforts was the charter school's inadequate record-keeping system. "Kids still call and say they attended Edutrain, and we have to track down teachers to determine whether they were really there," observes Joe Rao, the district's administrative coordinator of charter schools. Still, a team of counselors sent to the school was finally able to place 75 percent of Edutrain's students in other programs within the school system.

Two and half years later, though, it is still unclear who will be held liable for Edutrain's debt, which The Los Angeles Times estimates at between $300,000 and $1 million, including the amount the school was overpaid for overestimating attendance and the amount owed to retailers and service providers. According to Rao, the school district and the state are still discussing the issue.

Misspent Money

Citizen 2000, a K-8 charter school in Phoenix, also had its charter revoked after charter organizers filed for bankruptcy late last year. This spring, a grand jury in Arizona charged Lawndia White Venerable, the school's founder and principal, with 31 counts of theft, fraud, and misuse of public moneys, including the use of Citizen 2000 funds to pay off her credit cards and to secure a loan on a $324,000 home for her mother. (The Arizona attorney general acknowledges that Venerable repaid all but $10,000 to Citizen 2000)

The indictment against Venerable also alleges that Citizen 2000 intentionally inflated its attendance figures by 100 students last year in an attempt to keep a $250,000 overpayment of state funds. Earlier, the state's auditor general found that the school's accounting procedures were "practically nonexistent," according to the Arizona attorney general's office.

Despite the mid-year closing, the majority of Citizen 2000 parents asked that their children be moved to other charter schools.

Two other schools also have had their charters revoked, both in San Diego. One school, a charter middle school, was cited for safety violations and failure to meet its enrollment goals. The other, a K-6 elementary school developed in partnership with the Urban League, was plagued by a power struggle between teachers and members of the Urban League.

Planning Problems

Other charter schools have closed their doors with less fan fare. A small number, for example, stopped operating at the end of the school year because their organizers had given up, says Alex Medler, formerly with the Education Commission of the States now working with the U.S. Department of Education's Charter Schools Project.

A few others have had their charter taken over by another sponsor, Medler says.

Some charters never open their doors in the first place. Last January, Central Michigan University revoked 14 of the 43 charters it had granted. All 14 charters had been awarded in 1995, yet two years later, largely due to the difficulties involved in securing start-up funds and finding appropriate buildings, none had opened. The revocations meant that CMU could then make these charters available to other interested groups.

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