City IS Going to Give K-12 Education Dollars to Charter Schools
Update 4:
Update 3: There is a newly scheduled Work Session today on the FEPP levy. It wasn't scheduled on Sunday when I last looked. This should be a good one, given the district has now learned that the City wants to give K-12 dollars to charter schools.
Update 2: I believe that the City may be interpreting the charter school law to favor giving FEPP levy dollars to Seattle charter schools.
The law cites charters as being ineligible for "local levies." Is that school levies or "local" city levies? It's unclear. It looks like the City is saying no one knows so they can do this. It would take the Legislature to clear this up (and I advocate for that) or a lawsuit.
The State Board of Education says this in their FAQs on charter schools:
Are charter schools eligible for local levies?
No. There is no provision in Chapter 28A.710 RCW, as amended by Chapter 241, Laws of 2016, for charter schools to receive monies from local levies.
This could get interesting.
Update: It is Director Mack on the Oversight Committee now; Director Burke previously served. (Councilperson's Gonzalez' office had this in her newsletter and I assumed they checked these kinds of things.)
To note, the Committee itself did not vote; they were just told by DEEL staff that the City had decided to share Families, Education, Preschool and Promise levy dollars with charter schools in Seattle.
BUT the City Council has to vote on the Implementation Plan. I urge you to write to them and say a big NO to this idea. It's close to disgraceful for person after person at City Hall to be questioned about this before the election and only now, after the levy is voted in, say yeah, we'll be doing this.
Council@seattle.gov.
End of update
I will be writing more about this in the coming days but for now, I told you so.
I attended the press conference about the Mayor signing the City Council's resolution of support for the SPS levies. I asked the Mayor directly whether the City's oversight committee for its education levy had voted to share levy dollars with charter schools. She waved the question off and said we could talk "offline."
I had asked Dwane Chappelle before the press conference and he told me we could talk afterwards.
Both of them exited the room before I could talk to either of them. Here's what I was later told in an email:
Dwane Chappelle, Director of the Department of Education and Early Learning.
Some of them are running for office again - maybe it should be pointed out to them that Seattle did not vote for charter schools and that this move - given that they were asked over and over during the levy campaign about it - is wrong.
I have no issue with giving a pre-K in a charter building money. But sharing K-12 dollars with charter schools? The same group of schools that didn't lift a finger to pass those levies (my own non-support notwithstanding)?
Interesting group of people on that oversight committee:
After talking with SBE and the WA State Charter School Commission, I find that the law is worded in a clever manner.
Charter schools cannot themselves raise money thru levies. Meaning, they can't have their own levy election.
And, there is no provision in the current law for them to receive levy dollars.
However, there is also no provision that they can't, if offered, receive levy dollars.
I believe the meaning is that they can't expect to receive levy dollars if a levy passes but, if some kind soul (or city) wanted to give them levy dollars, they can accept them.]
Also, the old charter school law said that only charters that existed when a levy passes were eligible for funds. That portion of the law is now gone, meaning, that as more charters come online, the smaller the number of K-12 dollars for SPS.
Also, the old charter school law said that only charters that existed when a levy passes were eligible for funds. That portion of the law is now gone, meaning, that as more charters come online, the smaller the number of K-12 dollars for SPS.
Update 3: There is a newly scheduled Work Session today on the FEPP levy. It wasn't scheduled on Sunday when I last looked. This should be a good one, given the district has now learned that the City wants to give K-12 dollars to charter schools.
Update 2: I believe that the City may be interpreting the charter school law to favor giving FEPP levy dollars to Seattle charter schools.
The law cites charters as being ineligible for "local levies." Is that school levies or "local" city levies? It's unclear. It looks like the City is saying no one knows so they can do this. It would take the Legislature to clear this up (and I advocate for that) or a lawsuit.
The State Board of Education says this in their FAQs on charter schools:
Are charter schools eligible for local levies?
No. There is no provision in Chapter 28A.710 RCW, as amended by Chapter 241, Laws of 2016, for charter schools to receive monies from local levies.
This could get interesting.
Update: It is Director Mack on the Oversight Committee now; Director Burke previously served. (Councilperson's Gonzalez' office had this in her newsletter and I assumed they checked these kinds of things.)
To note, the Committee itself did not vote; they were just told by DEEL staff that the City had decided to share Families, Education, Preschool and Promise levy dollars with charter schools in Seattle.
BUT the City Council has to vote on the Implementation Plan. I urge you to write to them and say a big NO to this idea. It's close to disgraceful for person after person at City Hall to be questioned about this before the election and only now, after the levy is voted in, say yeah, we'll be doing this.
Council@seattle.gov.
End of update
I will be writing more about this in the coming days but for now, I told you so.
I attended the press conference about the Mayor signing the City Council's resolution of support for the SPS levies. I asked the Mayor directly whether the City's oversight committee for its education levy had voted to share levy dollars with charter schools. She waved the question off and said we could talk "offline."
I had asked Dwane Chappelle before the press conference and he told me we could talk afterwards.
Both of them exited the room before I could talk to either of them. Here's what I was later told in an email:
Dwane Chappelle, Director of the Department of Education and Early Learning.
“The Families, Education, Preschool, and Promise plan invests to close the opportunity gap across our City. The Department of Education and Early Learning will allow all public schools and all public school students to apply for levy funds. This decision includes public charter schools in Seattle, which represent approximately 800 students at public charter schools, and the more than 54,000 students at Seattle Public Schools. This decision was made after consulting with the City’s lawyers and is consistent with past precedent which allowed a preschool organization affiliated with the public charter school to apply for Levy funding and ultimately receive funds. We look forward to continuing our critical work through a strong partnership with the City and District’s to advance our shared vision and values.”
On background for your other questions. This decision is part of the of the Implementation and Evaluation Plan for the Families, Education, Preschool and Promise Levy which will be transmitted to Council for approval in the coming weeks.So my thought for now is to write the City Council and say no to this. Council@seattle.gov.
Some of them are running for office again - maybe it should be pointed out to them that Seattle did not vote for charter schools and that this move - given that they were asked over and over during the levy campaign about it - is wrong.
I have no issue with giving a pre-K in a charter building money. But sharing K-12 dollars with charter schools? The same group of schools that didn't lift a finger to pass those levies (my own non-support notwithstanding)?
Interesting group of people on that oversight committee:
- Constance Rice (former Mayor Norm Rice's wife)
- Denise Juneau
- Donald Felder - Educational Consultant
- Erin Okuno - SE Seattle Education Coalition
- Greg Wong, lawyer
- Mayor Durkan
- Kimberly Walker - Soar of King County
- City Councilperson Lorena Gonzalez
- Mackenzie Chase, Chamber of Commerce
- Nicole Grant - MLK Labor
- Phyllis Campano - SEA
- Rachael Steward - SHA
Director Rick Burke- Director Eden Mack SPS- Shouan Pan - Seattle Colleges
- Stephan Blanford
- Trish Dziko
Comments
Warned you.
Now sleep in the house you asked for!
Weary
Jeremy, I didn't say individual schools campaigned; it was the efforts of SCPTSA to have member schools advocate for ALL Seattle Schools and nearly every single school is impacted by those dollars. There will now be fewer dollars to go around.
Stuart, very few other cities have education levies.
--Getting older
HP
Public schools in LA outperform charter schools about half the time - showing there is little to no advantage to sending your children to charter schools. So what is the point of taking valuable and needed money from public schools to fund them?
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/28/us/charter-schools-los-angeles.html?action=click&module=News&pgtype=Homepage
-Anti
This is also partially why several prominent/influential African American celebrities are huge supporters of charters (Ludacris, Sean Combs, Deion Sanders, Keisha Knight Pulliam, and most influentially Oprah Winfrey, among others). The anti-charter argument doesn't usually hold sway in communities of color, who feel locked into substandard schools. Left-leaning white people seem to have a harder time reconciling minority support of charters with support of public schools.
Even if charters don't perform better (and half the time, they actually do - that is not insignificant), families still want choices. Seattle Public Schools has little to show for its racial equity initiatives over the years, which is why we find charters more popular among local politicians than we otherwise might, even on the left.
There has also been a slight but meaningful gender gap in charter enrollment nationally (https://phys.org/news/2016-11-charter-schools-enroll-girls-boys.html). More girls than boys attend charter schools, and boys are more likely to "leave" them (often, that means be kicked out). This is a double-edged thing: on the one hand, families want African American boys to have educational choices like charters and to succeed where other public schools fail them. One the other hand, but parents who know they have academically talented girls will usually go to greater lengths to give them academic options like charters, especially seeing the "prioritization" of African American boys over girls by the school district.
Not Clearcut
I'm not big on charters myself, but your statement that "public schools in LA outperform charter schools about half the time - showing there is little to no advantage to sending your children to charter schools" isn't quite accurate based on the article to which you linked. It appears you misinterpreted the results. The article says:
A 2014 Stanford study that compared traditional and charter schools in Los Angeles found that 48 percent of charters outperformed traditional schools in reading and 44 percent of charters outperformed traditional schools in math; the rest of the charter schools were either similar to public schools or lower performing.
So, they OUTPERFORMED traditional schools in reading 48 percent of the time. True, that's about half the time. However, it's important to look at the rest of the results--what happens in those of 52%? Looking at the actual study, it shows that for 39% there was no significant difference, and for 13% the results were significantly worse. If I'm a parent considering a charter school and looking at nearly a 50% chance it's better than my traditional options and only a 13% chance it's worse, I'm likely to give it a try. The pattern is similar but not quite as strong re: math (44% significantly better, 34% no sig diff, 22% sig worse).
messy
Anti, I'm not even going to start with "charters aren't so bad." They are flawed, they are losing space in public education and I hope more and more people and electeds see/get that message.
"Ludacris, Sean Combs, Deion Sanders, Keisha Knight Pulliam, and most influentially Oprah Winfrey, among others"
Very funny - I get all my best ideas from rappers and athletes. As for Oprah, like Obama, she's listening to the wrong people (just like listening to Jenny McCarthy about vaccinations).
As Charlie used to say, there aren't failing schools; there are schools that have a lot of struggling kids. We need to drive resources to those schools (and the district is). As for Option schools, all regions of the city have Option schools.
Charters represent a choice and not much else. You can't be on a charter board as a parent. You can't make changes in how your school is run. Curriculum? Nope. Hours? Nope. Size of school? Nope.
Charters are significantly more segregated than traditionals. When did that become a good thing? (I have a talk I gave on charters; I'll have to put that up soon.)
Eric, it is Mack on the committee; Burke was on it previously. I read Councilperson's Gonzalez' newsletter and she had it wrong.
The Oversight Committee did not vote. They were merely told by DEEL staffers that this had been decided.
Again, write the Council and tell them no.
Fruitcake cornhole
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/judge-orders-seattle-to-turn-over-internal-records-on-head-tax-repeal-ed-murray-by-sept-28/
800 students is a SIGNIFICANT percentage of SPS enrollment shortfall. For the last 5 years enrollment has been significantly lower than projected with TOTAL enrollment actually declining this year.
SPS's failure to honor their own enrollment rules is continuing to push students out of SPS, with PUBLIC charters becoming a very viable option for families. With those enrollment numbers, I would expect other charter operators to find Seattle to be a very attractive location.
My personal opinion is that Public Charter schools are toxic to public schools. Charter schools practice of cherry picking students weakens the public system, in profound and dramatic ways.
That said, families need choices. Period. If SPS is going to simply refuse to enroll families in their legal public options of public schools that have space available as well as place dramatically artificial enrollment caps on option school like Cleveland, then we can expect SPS to continue to lose enrollment and charter schools to gain traction.
Charter schools do NOT need to educate all members of the public, in the same way that the public system is required to enroll all students. Charters have dramatic control over their enrollment practices and they use this control. They have to use this control because the only way for a charter school to be "profitable" is to enroll a substantial percentage of "less expensive" students.
Charters do not need to enroll students with significant needs and therefore the definition of "least-restrictive-environment" is very different. If a student's IEP requires two full time aides, (and that does happen), then SPS has to provide those aides. The charter school can just opt to not enroll that student because they are "unable to provide services."
Because of this, there is no excuse for charter schools doing the "same." Because of the dramatic control over enrollment, Charters should be outperforming public schools. But they don't.
The charter experiment has been operating for decades now and the data is pretty straightforward. Charter schools weaken the public system.
That said, the enrollment practices that were championed by Tolley and Herdon were ill conceived and have left Seattle ripe for charters. Seattle's choice system and option schools are a viable alternative to Public Charters. That said, SPS has created its own nightmare by refusing to support their own system, I fully expect Charters to grow in strength and numbers over the next decade because choice matters.
Thank you for pointing out the big picture issue of charters versus public education. They are problematic. You are spot on. Our public education system is the foundation of a (relative) democracy. When I was in college years ago, I studied the history of public education in the US. My professors liked to point out that historically in the US, and also in places where public education does not exist, we have evidence of it causing massive inequality in societies on a much larger scale. IMO charters undermine and take money away from our public system without the same accountability. Business interests have been trying very hard to infiltrate and exploit our public education system in the US.
HJ
Kellie, the Washington State charters seem to be sensitive to the charge of not supporting many Sped students. Interestingly, they didn't do much publicly to support McCleary funding (which they benefit from) nor the Families and Ed levy (which they will now benefit from) but, out of nowhere, comes this new pop-up group for Sped funding. And who's part of the group's founders? The Washington Charter Schools Association.
Kellie is onto a post I am in the process of writing,given what is currently happening in Seattle and the rest of the country. If we don't watch out, we'll be LA or Denver in 10 years. It's not pretty.
This claim is common among charter school opponents in our state. This is understandable, given some other states' laws and longevity. With that said, this claim is inaccurate nonetheless.
Francis
https://www.gimletmedia.com/startup/success-academy-1-the-problem#episode-player
Personally, I find it very troubling that our city leaders seem to be fine with promoting charters while undermining the existing school choice system.
LakeCityMom
Yes, Washington State Charters are more sensitive to sped issues. However, that doesn't necessarily mean anything, because of the way funding and reporting is handled.
The P223 reports all students with an IEP as sped but does not distinguish the severity of needs in that category. Likewise, the funding is based on the "average costs" with the presumption that school district will serve both students from "resource room" to severe needs. This enables charter schools to cherry pick "resource room" students who will bring full sped funding but only require a few hours per week in a group setting.
While that is problematic, I think the challenges regarding medically fragile students and homeless students are even more striking. There is only extra funding for IEPs.
SPS is required to serve all student regardless of their medical or home status. This can get very expensive and needs to be done with the funding constraints of "average cost." For example, SPS operates at school at Fred Hutch for students undergoing cancer treatment. Charters are not likely to try to serve these students.
It is fairy tale magic to claim that Public Charter Schools are subject to the same types of enrollment requirements as true public schools. It may be technically true that "Charter public schools are open to ALL students in our state. They are prohibited by law from discriminating in enrollment based on race, ethnicity, disability, or any other category"
However, discrimination against a specific student and the requirement to serve ALL students is dramatically different. How many homeless students do charter schools serve? How many medially fragile? How does a charter school handle a student who requires a feeding tube?
Charter schools are good businesses that turn healthy profits. They don't do this by serving everyone. It is not possible.
Francis
SPS SPED record is terrible and always has been.
SPED Parent
SPED Parent
Profit is often a misunderstood concept. It really doesn't matter whether or not a charter school is technically intended to make a profit for the shareholders or a non-profit. Both concepts need to work on a healthy margin, in order to cover their operating expenses. For-profit charters may distribute "the profit" to shareholders (or not), Non-profits "reinvest" their profit elsewhere, either in salaries or other operational costs.
Education funding is based on the average costs. As such there is an expectation that some students will cost more and some students will cost less but that the average payment will cover all the expenses.
School districts amortize those costs across multiple building and multiple programs. Charters need to make decisions that will generate enough revenue to cover their overhead. The overhead of many non-profits are ridiculous on their face.
Washington's Charter Law is definitely more strict and has learned from some of the most egregious and blatant abuses of charter schools elsewhere. That said, it is beyond naive to treat them as equivalent.
Public schools must serve any student who arrives on the doorstep. Charter schools do not.
For all the problems we have had in SPS, including bringing a due process case, I would never risk what we currently have by moving my student to a charter school.
One Parent
For the record, I not an anti-charter advocate. I think the challenges with charters are not as black and white as many advocates claim.
I am simply illustrating the basic math of the situation and the basic math dictates that charters must cherry pick students to be economically viable and that public school districts do not have that luxury. To claim anything else is folly.
Because of this basic math, I would really like to be anti-charter. I do not believe charters are good for public education, in the aggregate. That said, SPS's active hostility towards parent choice has created fertile ground for charter schools and I fully expect charter schools to fully exploit SPS' lack of respect towards families.
SPS had pushed this dialogue of somehow choice and privilege are synonymous. While there is overlap, they are not the same. If charters give families some choices, that SPS is unwilling to provide, then I'm happy that some families are getting that choice.
The artificial enrollment caps at Cleveland is an illustrative case. Cleveland is 80% FRL. This is not a school of privilege. At the time Cleveland was converted to an option school the plan was to admit cohorts of 300 students per grade. SPS has artificially capped enrollment every year. There is space at Cleveland for more students and yet every year SPS refuses to admit students to enrollment capacity.
SPS has systematically and repeatedly denied choice to poor families. Because of that, I am glad that charters are giving some families some choices.
I think SPS does not want to expand Cleveland for a couple of reasons. One, it's expensive giving every kid a laptop. Two, it might further hurt Rainier Beach enrollment.
But yes, SPS sometimes shoots itself in the foot with its thinking.
Charter will capitalize on that.
There is plenty of data to show the systemic lack of measurable improvement like lack of improving test scores equating that 90% of students with IEPs are not at grade level. On top of those facts are people's anecdotal beliefs that if SPS were providing effective measurable educational IEP services SPS would be shouting it from the rooftop and not blaming it's failures on the state.
I know many of the insightful and informed SPED parents have moved on out SPS and there's a whole new group of SPED parents who unfortunately are going to endure the usual SPS SPED runaround. SPED parent groups will once again form and be seeded with pro SPS administration plants and now the circle is complete.
It's like the movie ground hogs day expect it's on a 10 year cycle and real people get hurt.
SPED Parent
Non-profits do want to show efficiency and success and growth. Would a non-profit prefer to save $3K on a purchase of laptops? Sure, and would a non-profit prefer to have the student who takes $3K less staff time to educate to the same evaluated standard? Sure. Even if that $3K is purely spent to benefit students, that spending makes the school more attractive! Charter schools want students who are cheaper and who evaluate well. They will compete in sophistication of cherrypicking those students to whatever extent we let them. Only after that easy path is stopped will they have to compete on providing better education choices to a given student.
If you just bar explicit discrimination on race as a variable, you are leaving the door wide open to systematically racist outcomes, even unintended. It's easy these days to train an opaque machine learning system to do your optimization dirty work. "We never even told it who's what race, so we're in the clear!" The school probably doesn't want to be biased, hell they might even prefer a playing field where all charters do have to optimize for justice, but they're not going to be the only loser who does justice while everyone else skims off the best return-on-investment students.
Schools generally wouldn't explicitly choose "white students if we can get them", but you'd better believe they'd explicitly choose "fewer SpEd students if we can". To shave off a fractional probabilistic SpEd student they will optimize on any fuzzy proxy input you allow. Or if you made them accept equal SpEd percentage, they will cherrypick within the SpEd student population. The incentives are huge. Look, if you were a national charter nonprofit, you'd do it too or competitors would wipe the floor with you. These corporations are big money and it's worth it to them to have a SpEdlining analytics team.
And all that is talking purely about well-run nonprofits that aren't being used to pay out excessive salaries or to buy services from the CEO's nephew. Those obviously make a more direct incentive to take in money and not spend it on students.
I know charter schools are required to use a lottery process (in all states with them, I believe?), but that's a lottery among completed applications that meet the school's criteria, and it's not a uniform lottery -- schools can add preferences, as long as these can pass the state's non-discrimination criteria. Here's one summary of what California wrote, which sounds pretty good here, right? Analyses of results aren't as rosy from what limited looking I've done.
http://www.ccsa.org/2018-4-12-Admissions%20and%20Enrollment%20Practices%20Knowledge%20Brief.pdf
As far as I'm aware (let me know otherwise) there are zero constraints on how you target your advertising, like to Facebook's demographic filters.
If you want fairness, I think you just need to go for a zero-barrier fair lottery. Anyone can apply, and preferences are… look I don't think you can get past sibling preferences, but preferences are minimized. Including on proximity, and if you're at all serious we need to provide transportation. I can't say that I'd enjoy busing but you can see how its rise and fall affected de facto segregation, say in Seattle schools. And you know charters will be location-optimized for proximity to cheap high-evaluating students.
The district has access to statewide safety net funds to cover high cost students, do charter schools have that same funding source? I hope so. The district has for years been so unaccountable with its records and its operations that nobody is responsible for securing safety net funds. It’s a whole lot easier to just blame the kids and raise an underfunded flag.
Another SPED
Francis
P.S. It would be helpful if people educated themselves on Washington charter laws and practices before speculating intent. I know this is a tall order but I ask just the same.
Tolley/Herdon pushed a narrative that "hurting Cleveland was helping Rainier Beach." That narrative was never accurate and highlights once again a profound lack of institutional memory and understanding of how systems work.
SPS has always had a bad habit of treating students like widgets, with the notion that any student can be assigned to any building. This was really evident during the closures when the "seat analysis" was not even sensitized to either grade bands or regions.
The closures were based on this notion that SPS could close this school and redirect all the enrollment to this location. However, the after analysis showed that only 50% of the students were actually redirected to where SPS wanted them and the other 50% went elsewhere, with the majority leaving the district entirely.
The mechanism has been used for the last 6 six years with waitlist management. Downtown has this idea that if we just don't move the waitlist, then student will go where we tell them. But the data does not support this at all. Since this policy has been implemented, there have been annual enrollment shortfalls.
And guess what ... the shortfalls correspond directly to the parts of town where waitlist movement is most restricted. And the enrollment shortfalls also corresponds directly with schools that have unused capacity. The entire situation is utterly maddening.
Artificially limiting Cleveland's enrollment does not support Rainier Beach. It is a cheap and disrespectful narrative.
I am unclear about what you think I am "trying." I am not stating anything about the quality or quantity of sped services. I am simply stating the distinction between the accountability of the charter system and the accountability of a public school district.
Everything you list in your narrative is actually supporting the point I am trying to make.
All of the ways you list that individual schools are able to "move" sped students is also true for charter schools. The distinction is that Public Charter schools "move" these students OUT of the charter and to the local Public School District. A school district can move students within their own network but the student still needs to be served within that network. That's a huge difference.
SPS operates over 100 schools and is by far the largest district in State of Washington. This means that way SPS has to provide services is very different from most districts. Tukwilla has three elementary schools, one middle and one high schools. In that network all services need to be provided at all schools.
It is simply not possible or economically reasonable for every service to be provided at every schools for a network of over 100 schools. SPS schools needs to have some specialization in order to get the same economy of scale that a smaller district gets naturally.
Charter schools may be "sensitive" to the criticisms around sped and Washington Charter Law might be "sensitive" about this as well. It does not mean they are going to do anything about it.
You may be surprised by the number of people who have a different point of view, because they have taken the time to "educate themselves" on the issue.
There is a huge distinction between overt discrimination and the cherry picking that is being discussed here.
There are 1,000s of way to communicate to a family that they are "not welcome here" and they should "get services elsewhere." Once upon a time, there were multiple SPS elementary schools that were "notorious" for their 100% pass rates on the WASL and other standardized tests. It was an open-secret, that any student who was not going to pass was "counseled out" and passed to another public school.
That practice became much more challenging under the NSAP but it still exists as most sped families will be happy to tell you.
Charter schools simply do not have the same accountability as a school district. Plain and simple. Washington's charter law is better than most but the nature of the accountability is the entire point of charter schools. They operate OUTSIDE of a mandate to serve all students and they routinely pass students back to the public district.
This story about the closure of SOAR academy in Tacoma, should illustrate both our points.
https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/education/article225264320.html
SOAR is clearly following the mandate as laid out in the law and as you have stated. They are serving 20% sped, 77% FRL, 15% homeless, 80% families of color. AND they are closing their doors because it is not economically viable to operate the school.
Charter schools have that option. If they are not economically viable, they can close their doors and send the students back to the public district. Public district do not have that option. Public districts need to soldier on.
These statements of yours are beyond the pale. Present evidence (as Melissa likes to say) or drop this line of accusation.
I won't respond to you further.
Francis
I'm sorry you do not like my evidence, but I presented as straightforwardly as I can.
Charter schools simply operate with a different type of accountability than school districts. That should not be a controversial statement as the different type of accountability was part of the design of charters.
The example of SOAR academy makes that point. SOAR academy did serve a diverse and high needs population, and clearly has followed Washington State Charter Law. SOAR Academy is closing their doors because they are not economically viable. Those same students will now need to return to the public district, regardless of the economics.
The public school district needs to provide a seat, regardless of the economics. Charter schools have options that public schools just do not, including just closing their doors.
The basic math is still the basic math. Charter schools need to be economically viable to survive. The only way to be economically viable is to serve student who make the economics work or to secure substantial outside funding.
unclear
Precisely!
SPS needs to operate, period. No matter how poor the funding. The levies bring things up to "basic" or "functional" or "luxurious" depending on your point of view.
Another Sped
Thank you for taking the time to lay out the argument you think I'm making. Once again, I agree with the vast majority of your data points and your logic, but the narrative you have constructed is not mine. So I will try to clarify.
There are four distinct terms with four distinct levels of accountability. These often get conflated but the distinction matters. - Charter operator, charter school, School district and Individual Public School.
I used Tukwilla as an example because the vast majority of districts in the State of Washington look much more like Tukwilla than Seattle. Tukwilla has 5 schools in total - 3 elementary, 1 middle and 1 high school. In that case the accountability of the individual schools the school district is the same. They can't shuffle students between schools because they don't have enough schools to shuffle.
Because they can't shuffle students, their accountability is different, than a district like Seattle with over 100 schools. With over 100 schools it is simply impossible to do everything at every school, in the same way, as if you had only ONE school.
For me, the problem with Charters is that they have the option of shuffling students out of the Charter system and back to the DISTRICT. This is what will happen in Tacoma. SOAR Academy is just going to shut their doors and the Tacoma school DISTRICT needs to manage this.
That is the accountability I am highlighting. For better or worse, a school district has to be prepared for every.single.student that arrives. They don't have to do this well but they do need to provide a seat. Charter schools do not need to do this.
Francis took offense at my comment about "outside the the mandate to serve all students". She interpreted this as some type of speculative discrimination. It was not. It was a simple statement that the PUBLIC SCHOOL DISTRICT has to serve all students. Charter Schools can say "We're full" and pass that student to the school DISTRICT. Charter Schools can close their doors and cease to exist. School Districts do not have the option to say we are full or stop operating.
Within a district, individual schools may be full and enrollment at any specific school may be severely restricted but the DISTRICT has to enroll ALL students. Charter schools and Charter Operators have drastically different types of accountability.
My comments started with my being impressed that there are already 800 students enrolled in Seattle Public Charter Schools and my belief that this number was likely to grow swiftly based on SPS's ongoing and routine disrespect to families and SPS's own choice process which SPS has chosen to disregard. I also stated that I am very glad that families have a choice and SPS is making it very easy for charters to gain market share.
If any charter operator wanted to focus on either resource room services or advanced learning, I am confident they would make a small fortune, and would be very happily received by the many families that have just had enough of SPS.
Utter ignorant bs. If Tukwila can serve every student without shuffling them, then so can Seattle. And they should. It is an IDEA mandate. All districts can place students in Utah. You speak as someone who has glibly been shuffled to the top, and that wouldn’t be Sped.
Another Sped
A district with more than 100 schools is different from a district with 5. That is just a simple statement. The systems need to operate differently.
That does not change the IDEA mandate and it does not excuse SPS poor execution of that mandate.
Once again, I am discussing the topic of this thread and the distinction between the accountably of charter schools vs the accountability of a public DISTRICT. SPS poor execution on sped is well documented. Charter schools in Washington are new enough that their execution is not documented.
I am well aware of how sped (and medically fragile) is shuffled to the bottom. I am also very well aware that neighboring districts do a much better job with the same level of resources. I agree with you completely on that topic.
But nobody cares about that. It is not relevant. The only relevant comparison people care about is your basic local or option school vs your theoretical nearby charter. Theoretical, because we don’t have them yet. And we all know neither can be infinitely welcoming. Most writers here simply don’t realize the depth of antagonism and basic injustice many people experience at their local schools. And I don’t mean AL. Will charters be better? I don’t know. I don’t think the charter option needs to be seen as the enemy or as a toxic mooching charlatan.
Another Sped
https://www.seattleschools.org/UserFiles/Servers/Server_543/File/District/Departments/School%20Board/18-19%20agendas/January%2030/20190130_Agenda_With%20Materials.pdf
s
Yes, this is not the first time that I have been utterly pedantic about some distinction that "nobody cares about" and "is not relevant."
As I have stated multiple times on this threat, I am not anti-charter. I think the charter conversation is far more nuanced. About 15 years ago, I saw an interview about charter schools with the NAACP. They stated that they didn't think charters really worked and were unlikely to be good for education. BUT that the 2,000 worst schools in America were the same "worst schools" as 10 years ago and 20 years ago and that families should not have to wait for some relief.
I found the honesty and complexity in that statement to be very compelling. Public Charter Schools have already enrolled 800 students in Seattle and I fully expect that number to grow, precisely because of the "depth of antagonism" that you mention.
That said, I still think it is important to be clear that schools DISTRICTS operate under completely different rules and expectations than Charter schools.
Chicken Little
Of course charters are prohibited from all of that. But they also use their applications to figure out who might cost them more and then figure out ways to exit them once they are in. The attrition rate at many charters shows that.
"Also, it really is irrelevant that a charter might go out of business or close. That also happens repeatedly with neighborhood and other public schools. So no. "
Not here it doesn't. Out of just 14 charter schools in what? five years, one has closed and another one is going to.
"Middle College High School? Closed her up already."
Nope. https://middlecollegehs.seattleschools.org/
"My comments started with my being impressed that there are already 800 students enrolled in Seattle Public Charter Schools and my belief that this number was likely to grow swiftly based on SPS's ongoing and routine disrespect to families and SPS's own choice process which SPS has chosen to disregard. I also stated that I am very glad that families have a choice and SPS is making it very easy for charters to gain market share.
If any charter operator wanted to focus on either resource room services or advanced learning, I am confident they would make a small fortune, and would be very happily received by the many families that have just had enough of SPS."
Yup and yup.
I concur with Kellie and Chicken Little; the district seems to think they are the only game in town - no matter how they treat parents - and are universally beloved.
Chicken Little, I don't think we are quite there as far as a run to charters. I'll expand on this on a separate post but charters are not running as full as they like to advertise.
All types