School district-operated charter schools intrigue officials - Sun-Sentinel
Practically since the first charters were authorized in Florida in 1996, school districts have grumbled about the flexibility charter schools have compared with traditional public schools.
Now, some school districts in the state have decided to try to get in on some of the action.
Palm Beach County and other school districts throughout the state are looking to tap into some of the breaks that charter schools get by opening their own district-run charters.
In Palm Beach County, the idea of opening a district-operated charter school is still in its infancy, but it's one that district leaders appear enthusiastic about. They say they're watching other school districts, such as in Polk and Miami-Dade counties, that are opening district-operated charter schools.
"We've kicked the idea around a bit," said Judy Klinek, Palm Beach County School District's chief academic officer. "There may be some freedoms we could tap into."
Charter schools are public schools run by independent governing boards. The idea behind them is to allow them to innovate with ideas to improve academic performance; to that end, they've been given more freedom to operate.
Charter schools do have to adhere to state accountability measures — such as having all their students take the FCAT, employing state-certified teachers and receiving a school grade — but are exempt from a majority of the state's school laws.
They have more flexibility with their personnel, including salaries, benefits and rules on hiring and firing. They can change the length of the school day or year, create their own curricula and have less restrictive building requirements and looser restrictions on class sizes.
Miami-Dade County is leading the way by opening the Academy for International Education Charter School in Miami Springs. The charter's nonprofit board has hired the Miami-Dade school district to help run the school.
It is housed in a district-owned building, has district-hired custodians and district cafeteria workers and uses the district to run its finances and other back-end operations.
But it's a charter school, so the principal of the academy has the discretion to hire teachers and plan the curriculum.
Polk County also plans to open district-run charter schools next year. The district hopes to open Step Up Academy charter schools within seven of its district schools to serve students who are at risk of dropping out, said Carolyn Bridges, senior director of the Polk school district's Office of Magnet, Choice and Charter Schools.
"While there's some flexibility in a traditional school, a charter school offers so much more flexibility," Bridges said, noting more freedom with class-size requirements and teacher contracts.
Palm Beach County is watching how other district-run charter schools go and seeing how it can get into the game, said Pete Licata, Palm Beach County's assistant superintendent of choice options. The district has been working to offer more choice for years, Licata said, with career academies, international baccalaureate programs (which offer students advanced placement and college placement classes that can lead to college credit), technical schools or other options. But he said charter schools allow more flexibility from state regulation.
"We don't want to buy the first-year model; we want a model that's been perfected," Licata said of watching the progress of the Miami-Dade and Polk efforts.
Charter schools clearly are doing something right, and districts are following that lead, said Lynn Norman-Teck, director of communications for the Florida Consortium of Public Charter Schools. "I am thrilled that the districts are looking into this; we're supposed to be labs of innovation for others to follow."
But Norman-Teck expressed surprise that the district would want to open a charter school, since charter schools typically get less public money than traditional public schools.
"This is just a way to compete with charter schools," Norman-Teck said of district-run charter schools.
Tension between charter schools and traditional public schools has recently been evident. The Greater Florida Consortium of School Boards wants to discuss charter schools' flexibility and other key issues with state legislators in the next legislative session.
Among the consortium's proposed priority issues:
Whether to provide traditional schools with the same laws, rules and regulations as charter schools.
Whether to allow school boards to serve as the board of directors to establish their own charter schools within each district.
The Florida School Boards Association also is expected to ask the state Legislature this session to consider changing state law to lift some of the restrictions school districts have that charter schools do not.
"There's a growing disparity between what's considered a traditional public school, and the rigors and mandates that are imposed [on it], versus the broad flexibility offered to charters," said Ruth Melton, FSBA's director of legislative relations.
She said the disparity in rules on class sizes has been a major issue. While traditional schools must meet state-mandated class-size limits in each of their core classes, charter schools are required to meet them at a school-level average instead of by individual class.
Sen. David Simmons, R-Maitland, head of the education appropriations committee, said he has been approached by school districts proposing legislation to provide them with greater flexibility.
He noted that traditional public schools serve the "vast majority" of Florida's student population. About 2.65 million Florida students attend public schools, with less than 155,000 of those attending charter schools.
"We don't want to do anything that's going to diminish the accountability that school districts have," Simmons said. "At the same time, I want them to have as much flexibility as possible to do the same thing charter schools do, which is to innovate."
03 Oct, 2011--
Source: http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&usg=AFQjCNGnrPfa5RnPySWtEsbxSoAn1PaXrQ&url=http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/palm-beach/pb-charter-school-options-20111002,0,7352811.story
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