Charter, choice debate hits district’s wallet

Shrewsbury -

 

With the combined charter and choice schools’ cost to the Shrewsbury school district for 2006-07 at $324,254, officials are asking questions about why students are leaving and what they can do to prevent it.

Statewide, school leaders are also calling for charter and choice schools, funded by public dollars, to start accounting for their expenses with the same level of detail their public counterparts do annually, Superintendent Anthony J. Bent said.

They also want to draw attention to the fact that charter schools, which espouse an open-door policy to all students, quietly shut their doors to many weaker candidates, such as students with a high level of special needs.

Nominally, charter schools are public institutions, but their restrictive admittance practices more closely mirror those of private schools, school committee members said at a recent meeting.

This school year, 49 Shrewsbury students are attending charter schools, and 18.5 go to choice schools, according to a report presented by Finance Director Patrick C. Collins.

The Advanced Math & Science Academy in Marlborough educates 31 Shrewsbury youths this year; Abbey Kelley Foster in Worcester, 14; and Francis Parker in Devens, four students.

Shrewsbury students opting for choice schools this year go to: Berlin-Boylston (5), Boylston (1), Clinton (2), Hudson (6), Leicester (3), Maynard (1), Northbridge (1), and West Boylston (2).

For each Shrewsbury student who attends choice over public schools here, the district loses $5,000, and for every student who leaves Shrewsbury for a charter school, the district loses $9,127, Collins said.

Choice school fees are a flat rate, and the charter school tab is based on a calculation of the sending school’s average cost per-pupil.

The first year a school loses students to charter schools, the state reimburses 100 percent of the cost, but by the fourth year (this year for Shrewsbury), the state pays nothing.

This year, the net impact of charter schools to Shrewsbury is projected to be $224,890, according to Collins.

Any “substantial exodus” of students to charters and choice schools is “more than a catch-22,” Bent said.

“It does give parents some choices, but it tends to force real problems on sending schools because they have fewer dollars now than they had before. It’s a big problem in districts where the perception is that schools in neighboring towns are stronger.

“To impoverish the sending schools, making them worse and weaker, is our issue,” Bent said.

The best recourse school districts have is to simply maintain the highest quality schools possible, Collins said.

“Whether philosophically, whether you believe in it our not, we live in a competitive marketplace in terms of providing a service.

“When Westborough opens up school choice, and you might be heading to Boston every morning, and you see certain class sizes in Shrewsbury, and you really value education, then you’re going to think twice. It behooves us to maintain a high quality district to compete against the Westboroughs of the world in terms of school choice,” Collins said.

Public schools will probably always lose students to charter and choice schools, Collins said, but reiterated maintaining quality education within the district can minimize loss. 

When the legislation for charter and choice schools was first written, Bent said, its advocates promised charter schools would be “great laboratories of innovation” that would enrich public schools by their example.

The Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents (MASS) is asking where that innovation and feedback to public education is, he said, “because we’re not seeing it.”

“We’re seeing that charter schools by-and-large are free-standing and separate and there is very little interface between charter schools and public schools, Bent said.

MASS is calling for a large scale evaluation of the entire initiative of charters, as well as an examination of their funding mechanisms, particularly since they do not seem to be fiscally accountable to any authority, he said.

For instance, charter school officials do not fill out the same detailed end-of-year financial reporting that public schools do, Bent said.

MASS wants to level the playing field with regards to public education – in both charter and public school districts, Bent said.

“It’s so apparent it’s a private school that’s being funded by public dollars. We’re paying for a private school – that’s ultimately what’s happening. Am I wrong?” said School Committee Chairman Mark Murray.

“Looks like one to me,” said School Committee member Virginia Winship.

No one in an official position at the Department of Education will officially call it that, Bent said.

Those schools that have impacted Shrewsbury public schools the most portray themselves as all-welcoming, make people think kids could successfully enroll there – not the case.

They’re not taking in the same of level of SPED students Shrewsbury public schools do, she said.

Public schools are keeping students with greater needs, likely because they have a greater capacity to serve those students, she believes.

Charter schools were “a great idea theoretically” for a program in the early 1990s, Winship said, but have been poorly executed by the state.

“Until something changes at a very high level, our best defense is to improve our situation,” she said.

She also suggested starting a dialogue between public school officials and parents who chose to send their children to charter schools, to learn why they’re “dissatisfied customers.”

Publicizing highlights and the advanced programs Shrewsbury schools offers (such as the High School’s math teams), should help combat the perception that the district is “just middle-of-the-road” and better enable Shrewsbury schools to compete with charters, suggested School Committee member Marian Smith.

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