Charter schools showdown set

Nevada parents want the option of sending their children to charter schools.

State and local education officials say they won’t approve charter schools unless they can ensure the schools meet standards.

That’s all good, right? Well, it has educators and lawmakers in the bureaucratic equivalent of a schoolyard shoving match.

Following the Clark County School District’s lead, the State Board of Education in November said it was suspending approval of new charter school applications. The education officials said they did not have the staff to handle the workload. So, they said, until they can handle new charter schools properly, they aren’t going to handle them at all.

There were some tense exchanges among state board members and lawmakers in the days leading up to and following the moratorium vote.

Some lawmakers were infuriated, alleging the motives had more to do with turf protection than logistical challenges. A few legislators suggested the vote had violated the state’s open meeting law.

Others said the board had no authority to put a moratorium in place and is required by statute to review every application submitted.

That may be the one aspect of the debate that has been hashed out.

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Keith Rheault said Tuesday that he spoke with Legislative Counsel Bureau staff and was told, “as long as the moratorium doesn’t go on forever, and it’s really temporary, it looks like that’s OK. If they flat-out said they weren’t going to approve any more charter schools ever, that would be a problem.”

The board members’ authority is still being challenged by some of their fellow elected officials. Charter schools are the only topic on the agenda for the Legislative Committee on Education’s meeting Thursday morning.

The committee gave the board some homework to complete before the meeting — a list of pointed questions that had to be answered in writing. One question was: “Where is the confusion in Nevada law relative to the board’s obligation to accept charter applications?”

The answers are just as pointed: No confusion, the board said in its written response. People can keep submitting applications — they just won’t be reviewed or approved until the moratorium is lifted.

Assemblywoman Bonnie Parnell, D-Carson City, the committee’s chairwoman, said she expects cooler heads will prevail at Thursday’s showdown.

“The real question is where do we go from here,” Parnell said. “This is the time to see how we can fix what appears to be a bit of broken policy in this state.”

Parnell said she didn’t realize how much oversight charter schools require.

“We need to make sure that if we are telling our parents that the state or a district has sponsored a charter school, there’s as much of a guarantee that we can muster that those children will receive a quality education,” Parnell said. “That’s our legislative mandate.”

Charter schools have a mixed track record on performance locally and nationwide. Several studies have found no significant difference in student performance at charter schools compared with traditional campuses. But in a 2006 study released by the National Center for Education Statistics, charter school students scored lower than their traditional-school peers in reading and math.

In Clark County, charter schools have wound up at both ends of the No Child Left Behind spectrum, with some campuses identified as “exemplary” while others are “in need of improvement.”

Supporters — including many educators — point out that when charter schools are done right, they often serve as incubators for the best and most innovative educational practices.

The workload for the charter school’s sponsor can be overwhelming, however. The Nevada Education Department believes it needs two more full-time employees to handle charter school applications before the moratorium is lifted, twice the staff currently assigned to handle the duties. Given that Gov. Jim Gibbons is calling for a 4.5 percent cut to K-12 education, finding funding for those new employees might be difficult, if not impossible.

State Board of Education President Marcia Washington says she and her colleagues are being wrongly painted as anti-charter school, when it’s a lack of resources that motivated the moratorium.

“We asked for funding for more staff in 2005 and they (the Legislature) didn’t do anything to help us,” Washington said. “We can’t approve new applications when we don’t have a way to meet our responsibility to properly monitor the schools.”

While charter schools have greater flexibility in staffing, scheduling and instructional methods, they are still public schools and subject to many of the same requirements as traditional campuses. That means buildings must be up to code, special education and counseling services must be provided and meticulous financial and student records must be maintained.

The charter school’s sponsor, which must be a local school district, the State Board of Education or the Nevada System of Higher Education, is responsible for oversight. Charter schools receive the same per-pupil funding as traditional schools, although many programs supplement budgets with help from public grants and private donors.

Citing the work and expense involved in reviewing, approving and monitoring charter schools, Washoe County was the first school district to stop sponsoring new charter schools, capping its total at eight in June 2004. In March of the following year, the Douglas County School District decided it had enough work with the one charter school it already sponsored. And in October 2007, the Clark County School Board notified the Nevada Education Department that it would not be reviewing any new applications because it was already struggling to supervise the eight charter schools it sponsored.

It was Clark County’s moratorium that spurred the state board to action. Because Clark County accounts for roughly 70 percent of the state’s K-12 enrollment, it’s the most fertile territory for charter school growth. With the local district no longer interested in serving as a sponsor, the applications would go directly to the State Board of Education for approval.

At Andre Agassi College Preparatory Academy in Las Vegas, the waiting list is 1,000 names strong for a school that has room for only 600 students. That’s one of the reasons Roy Parker, principal of Agassi Prep’s K-8 program, is troubled by the moratorium.

“We can’t meet the needs of every family that wants to send their children here,” Parker said. “If no other charter schools are being licensed, then there are families seeking educational alternatives who cannot fulfill that aspiration.”

Thursday’s meeting will take place at 9:30 a.m. at Agassi Prep, which has become the state’s showpiece charter school by virtue of its track record for student achievement, innovative programs and community support.

Olympic tennis gold medalist Agassi himself might be the first to concede, as he did to Oprah Winfrey in an interview last year, that his namesake campus is unique. With significant outside financial support, the school is able to spend thousands of dollars more per student than is allocated by the state. But money aside, the school represents what charter school proponents say can be done when the state encourages alternatives.

And there is public support for such endeavors, according to a recent survey commissioned by the Nevada Policy Research Institute, a conservative think tank. In the December poll, 60 percent of those surveyed described themselves as either “not at all” or “not very” familiar with charter schools. But when the pollster explained the premise, 55 percent said they felt either somewhat or strongly favorable toward the idea.

To be sure, Nevada’s appetite for charter schools appears strong, particularly when it comes to those that offer “distance education”: online classes supplemented by telephone and computer help from licensed teachers. The two newest state-sponsored charter schools, K12 Academy and Nevada Virtual Academy, are that type of school. They opened in the fall and are already full for the year.

Emily Richmond can be reached at 259-8829 or at [e-mail].