Back To MCPSA News

What Massachusetts schools will Question 2 affect? Urban, not suburban

Date Published: November 1, 2016

Author: Michelle Williams, Springfield Republican

Voters will be asked next week if Massachusetts should lift the cap and allow more charter schools to operate in the state.

While this is an issue that voters from across the state will be asked to vote upon, it’s not one all have experience with. Charters are an urban and rural issue, not a suburban one.

Massachusetts legislators voted more than two decades ago to allow charters schools to open within the state. Charter schools operate as independent public schools that operate under five-year charters and are typically opened by teachers, school leaders and not-for-profit organizations.

The current law allows up to 120 charter schools to operate within Massachusetts, a cap the state is nowhere near hitting.

What charters are currently limited by is in-district caps on charter spending.

No more than 9 percent of a public school district’s budget can be reallocated to students who opt into a charter school, 18 percent if the district is considered underperforming by state officials.

Once this budget cap it reached, charters cannot open in the community, or expand their student enrollment figures. This limit has already been reached in several Massachusetts communities, including Boston, Holyoke, Lawrence and Lowell. Springfield and Worcester are close to hitting the in-district limit as well.

Educators and not-for-profits have not and will not seek to open charters in the majority of Massachusetts towns, communities satisfied with their traditional school offerings. If they wanted to, charters could have sought to open in such communities already.

Question 2 would allow the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to approve up to a dozen new charters or expand the student population of existing charters every year.

A “Yes” vote on Question 2 would give Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education the authority to lift the cap in such communities and allow up to 12 new charters or expansions of existing schools to open each year, up to 1 percent of the total statewide public school enrollment each year.

A “No” vote would leave the cap as it stands today.

If passed, the proposed law would take effect Jan. 1, 2017.

Charter advocates say the ballot will give operators more flexibility to open and expand while opponents believe it will lead to underfunded school districts.

“It definitely puts a strain on being able to operate,” said Anthony Soto, chief finance and operations officer for Holyoke Public Schools.

At the start of the school year, there were just above 5,400 students in the district’s 11 schools, a significant difference to how many children live in Holyoke.

At one time, Holyoke Public Schools had around 9,000 students in the district.

Now more than a thousand students in Holyoke every year choose educational options beyond Holyoke Public Schools.

Just over 850 students have opted out of HPS to enroll in charter schools, primarily Holyoke Community Charter School and Paulo Freire Social Justice Charter School. An additional 339 students choice out to other public school districts and others choose parochial schools and homeschooling options.

“When we lose five students in a building we lose the revenue for those kids but our utility bill stays the same. We still need to have custodians. We still have to have a principal in the building,” Soto said. “It puts a strain on being able to offer a diverse amount of programming when you have smaller student bodies.”

When a student choses to leave a traditional school for a charter, both the charter and school district receive 100 percent of funding for that student from the state for a year. The following year, state educational funds transfer to the charter for that student. The student’s former school can receive up to 25 percent funding for the next five years after a student has left to help close gaps in the budget.

Holyoke schools – like other urban school districts in Massachusetts – are heavily reliant on state funds for their budget. Specifically, 87 percent of the district budget comes from the state.

“For every student we have, they give us a certain dollar amount. And when we lose students, we lose dollars,” Soto said. “A community like Longmeadow wouldn’t be impacted as much because they don’t rely on state funding. We rely heavily on state funding. As kids leave, we lose revenue and we have to rightsize.”

What rightsizing looks like has yet to be determined.

“We have to adjust our economies of scale and efficiencies when that happens,” Holyoke Public Schools Receiver Stephen Zrike said.

Holyoke is in talks with a consultant to look at best practices for operation, to prepare a plan for the budget if the cap is lifted and other means to ease the budget.

“Our goal is to again be the choice district in Holyoke,” Zrike said. “Right now, we’re not. Some families believe charters are a better option and our attention is focused on giving good reasons to choose our district.”

Charters are options many families seek – especially those living in urban communities. More than 32,000 children are on the waiting lists of at least one charter school across the state. In Boston, 10,308 are on at least one waiting list. Just under four thousand children in Springfield seek to attend a charter school.

Operators say for far too long poor and minority populations have not had access to adequate educational opportunities.

“There are wide, wide disparities between the poor and rich communities of Massachusetts,” said Dominic Slowey, a spokesperson for the Massachusetts Charter Public School Association.

Charters, he said, “target underserved communities” and seek to close achievement gaps between the top and lowest performing schools in the state.

This is a goal charters are achieving, says Rachel Romano, the founder of Veritas Prep Charter School in Springfield.

She opened Veritas after working as a teacher for several years in Springfield Public Schools. The South End charter has just over 300 students enrolled in grades 5 through 8 and typically receives twice the number of applications to spots available every year before its annual enrollment lottery.

In its fifth year of operation, Veritas touts student achievement growth figures and PARCC scores higher than both the city and state average.

While traditional districts are given years to turnaround stagnant student achievement, Romano argues that this is a luxury not given to charters. “If underperforming, they close,” she said. “There’s no excuse for us. We have to do better.”

The majority of Veritas student body attended Springfield Public Schools before enrolling in the charter and return to traditional district options for high school.

If the question is passed, Romano is interested in expanding her charter – first replicating the five through eight grade school in another location – then expanding Veritas enrollment to kindergarten through high school.

View Article