Guest Post: Rep Gerry Pollet Meets with Charter School Parents and Students

By Representative Gerry Pollet, 46th District:

Thursday offered a “learning moment” for students in charter schools, parents and legislators.

Blue-shirted charter school students and parents came to the state capital to urge that legislators “save” their schools. Ironically, the Supreme Court released its opinion the same day reaffirming its prior unanimous opinion that charter schools were not “common schools” and its majority opinion striking down the entire charter school initiative as unconstitutional.

A group of 8 or 9 Summit Sierra Charter HS 9th graders and two parents were leaving my office as I returned from committee hearings. Although I had a large group waiting for their scheduled appointment with me, I didn’t want to disappoint high school students who had made the trek – and, were eager to tell me about the “unique” learning experience offered by their school.

So, I stopped to engage them. It was a learning moment for me, and I hope for the students as well – as students and I found some pre-established notions challenged by thought provoking questions. There are questions which legislators should be asking – and, they have surprising answers.

First, it’s important to know that Summit Sierra was pitched as a charter school to serve “a diverse group of students and families in South Seattle, with a particular focus on either Southwest or Southeast communities, helping to close the significant demographic achievement gap.”(from their own website.)

The political and educational policy pitch for charters, and Summit in particular, is about serving the students in that high need area.

However, I had received numerous emails from constituents in North and NE Seattle (served by excellent, but horribly overcrowded schools, I should note) complaining that their children who had just started attending Summit would be losing their excellent new educational opportunity. Out of the 120 newly enrolled ninth graders at this charter school, pitched as deserving public investment to help close the achievement gap for SE and SW Seattle’s diverse populations, it seemed odd that at least five families from in or around the 46th District in North Seattle had children enrolled. Was this an anomaly?

I asked the students who were in Olympia where they lived and where they had previously gone to school.

The students who had stopped by my office included one from Ravenna in NE Seattle, students from Queen Anne and other points north, and from as far south as Des Moines – with two from S and SE Seattle.

Two of the students had previously attended private schools, plus one attended TOPS, and one had attendedOrca K-8.

They were eager to tell me about the unique educational experience at Summit, which features project-based, self-paced and experiential learning. Their zeal for this educational experience was infectious. They told me that this educational experience was unique and could only be offered by the charter school experience.

As a parent activist in Seattle Public Schools for many years, their passion reminded me of exactly the same zeal of students seeking to save alternative elementary and K-8 programs featuring the same type of curriculum and pedagogy over the years.

So, I turned to the student who had attended Orca and asked if his alternative school experience in a Seattle public school had featured the same type of learning?

To the surprise of his fellow students, he turned to them and said yes, that the style of teaching and learning was a continuation of his experience at the alternative public school he had attended.

This was a “learning moment” for the students. Their experience was not unique to a charter school.

Since alternative schools with similar learning styles exist in public schools, and in Seattle, I asked, did the students and parents see that perhaps their parents and others could work to have their alternative high school within the Seattle Public School system? This would be within the constitutional framework of public schools as the Supreme Court has defined it.

Rather than letting the students answer this, one of the parents replied that this “was impossible because of the teachers’ union.” Further, the individualized attention her daughter receives – including for special needs and dyslexia - was not possible in Seattle Public Schools due to the union, she opined.

WEA is the greatest advocate in Olympia for providing the training needed for special needs students, I responded.This parent chose this emphasis because she knows that I have championed this issue since I arrived in Olympia (Seattle will have to spend $28 million of local funding to meet Special Ed needs not funded by the State this school year. That’s nearly the full amount of “new” funding added to Seattle for lower class sizes in 2015, and is a major reason why Seattle’s classes remain so overcrowded). Who fights for investing in professional development, I asked her, or the investment in properly staffing classrooms? It’s the union which her new school’s teachers are barred from joining by the charter school law. If she is moving her child to take advantage of the low student-to-teacher ratio which enables individualized time with every student, who had led the fight to provide that same opportunity for every child in our state?

This was the students’ day in Olympia and their opportunity to discuss their education with a legislator.

So, I turned to the students and asked if they thought it was fair that their school could cap enrollment and turn away every student over their class of 120, in order to preserve their low class sizes – while every other school was overcrowded? Was that fair? Was it fair that their lower class sizes meant that other schools would have to have 150% more students in a class?

The students know they benefit from individualized attention – similar to that in a private school – from having much lower class sizes, and a much smaller school, than in the surrounding public schools. I could see them pondering the fairness of their privilege. It was clear that this was a new light for the students – a learning moment.

The students’ sense of fairness and equity had bumped into their own privilege.

One of the two parents came with her daughter to my drop-in discussion time on Saturday. I was fortunate to also be joined by a well-informed parent organizer for Washington’s Paramount Duty, as we continued this discussion. What I found was that the charter parents did not know that the Charter School Commission, when it met the week before school opened, allowed their charter to open with only 4 of 7 teachers being credentialed in Washington, or with a board answerable to a California corporate board. Nor are they informed about how the local school district has to provide services for every student out or local levy funds, including the higher cost of special ed, bilingual and highly capable – while the charter is entitled to local levy funding. We discussed how this provides a charter school an economic advantage and higher per student funding than the public schools in the district - under the now unconstitutional initiative.

Are the Summit charter parents willing to put this energy into working with Seattle Public Schools to have an alternative learning program high school, the same way other parents before them have worked to open or continue alternative elementaries and K-8 schools, or new programs like IB for high schools? Or is this only about working for their children and not working to have an option for all Seattle high school students?

Lessons and Options:

The Supreme Court has finalized its order. Its decision lays out a clear path for parents who want to have their school continue: work with the local district to have the curriculum and pedagogy incorporated into a public school.

The private corporate planning process that led to Summit corporation’s school’s opening with this particular curriculum, however, cannot be allowed to supplant the public planning process assessing what high school curriculum is being sought by parents and educators in Seattle. There are other programs with high demand that may be compatible with, or may have higher priority than, the program which these 120 students enrolled in. It is important to recognize in this discussion that some of these 120 students are not from Seattle, and many are not from the geographic area which Summit said it was focused on closing the achievement gap for.

Steps if the path laid out by the Supreme Court is followed:

Parents and legislators should recognize that the school will not get to cap enrollment outside of the capacity plans adopted by the district. In working out agreements with the district, determine if legislation is needed. The charter school advocates in Seattle have apparently spent the past three months seeking to “save” their charter school as it existed under the unconstitutional law, rather than beginning a discussion with Seattle Public Schools.

Recognize that the needs of SE and SW Seattle and the SPS assignment plan may not enable students from other areas with numerous high school options to attend this program.

Recognize that levy funding priorities may not include an automatic allocation any longer to Summit charter high school. The Summit community will have to advocate that it is more deserving than the schools that just lost teachers and special educators.  

For districts with severe overcrowding and too little capacity, such as Seattle, the notion of SPS or another district spending its woefully inadequate capital funding to take over a lease or capital investment in a building which is way too small for a public high school is not a meaningful long-term option. Using that capacity for a year or two, however, may be an option if the full capacity is available to alleviate other overcrowding, provide early learning program space, or to provide “swing’” space while renovating other public schools to increase their capacity.

Recognize that Seattle Public Schools have far higher capacity needs – including meeting the Supreme Court decision to lower class sizes – than taking over a location on S King Street which is not well suited for a public high school, and was not chosen to serve SPS populations.

First Place presents different challenges. This school was in existence serving a unique high need population of children who come from homes with domestic violence, incarcerated or drug abusive parents, foster homes… Approval as a charter school has been widely recognized as having been premature, including by its own board members. Private funding sources were proving inadequate. A special funding allocation apart from a prototypical school may be appropriate if the school seeks to come within the umbrella of SPS public schools, rather than returning to its non-profit roots.

Hard questions need to be asked: Who are the 120 students at Summit high school in Seattle? How do we serve thousands of high school students whose needs are not fully served today, who are in overcrowded classrooms (often with 35-40 students)? Is it appropriate to expend more resources per student on 120 students who applied for a much more individualized learning experience? How do we justify expending scarce district funds for Summit after the District found it could not afford to continue serving the high needs “Middle College” high school students at High Point who were overcoming severe challenges, e.g., teen age mothers, students who were not allowed to return to other high schools, students who dropped out and returned…?

Our first obligation is to provide EVERY child the full opportunity to learn by fully funding basic education. That includes the state paying for:

•Lower class sizes – for real (not just allocating more in the prototypical school model while students continue to sit in overcrowded classrooms because the state does not pay for the teachers’ and educators’ full salaries);
oDespite the increase in funding from the Legislature this year, there are still first grade classes with 25-29 students, and per student funding level is barely above the level provided by the state in 2009.•Special Education for all children in need, not just an arbitrary 12.7% of students;
•Bilingual and ELL for all students who need instruction
•Increased pay for our teachers and educators, not just the $3.5 billion needed to take over the local levy funded portion of their inadequate salaries;
•Training and recruiting enough teachers and educators to fill the current shortages and reduce class sizes and improve staffing ratios (e.g., special educators and ELL) in the next several years.  

•Closing the educational achievement gap for so many of our students.

Where does bailing out private corporate opened charter schools and 120 students in an alternative learning program fit into this set of priorities for Seattle legislators? The answer may be in creatively seeking to incorporate these students and their school’s learning model into a broader expansion of Seattle public high school capacity and offerings, to reduce overall teacher – student ratios, reduce overcrowding, and increase options. The ball is in the parents’ and school community’s court to engage with the Seattle school district. It’s unlikely that this would involve the same physical space – but, as most Seattle public school parents know, we often have to expect our children to shift physical location of their school while being renovated or due to shifts in assignment plans. Jumping the line for levy funding while other schools have just lost 53 teachers, bilingual and special ed instructional aide positions is not an equitable option – a value that the students may understand.