COLUMN: CHARTER SCHOOLS - A REALLY BAD IDEA by John P. Flannery

Everybody wants a quick fix so Johnny can read and write and do ‘rithmetic, and several highly educated parents in Eastern Loudoun got together to start their own school, 6^th – 12^th grade, recruited some folk who had several charter schools in Maryland, and are asking us taxpayers to underwrite their school with our hard-earned tax dollars rather than support our own public schools.

They say their Loudoun Math and I.T. Academy Charter School (the “IT Charter School”) will enhance education for students who want to study science and math and cyber security, sounding a tad like a feeder school to their hi-tech enterprises, rather than an educational leg up for our young folk.

In a time of extremely tight budgetary constraints, you may fairly ask why aren’t we enhancing the schools and programs at the Loudoun Academy of Science, the Monroe Technology Center, or starting another program – if we really need one.  

The IT Charter School says students have to be transported to the schools we have where there is “limited” seating.  Of course, when and if, the IT Charter school erects a building for its students and staff in Eastern Loudoun, students will have to be transported there as well.  As for “limited” seating, the IT Charter School is limited as well, at 192 slots the first year (FY 2013-14), and your child will have to win a public lottery to be admitted, unless, of course, he’s the child of a founding board member or school employee who skips the lottery and enters automatically. 

Parents used to having a say in their schools through a PTO or PTA will have to forget it as the IT Charter School allows no such thing.  Instead the school will have “parent task forces,” and like the Maryland Charter Schools, from whence this school derives, the school will assign you parents “tasks to be accomplished.” 

The IT Charter School application is modeled after the Chesapeake Science Point Public Charter School in Maryland (the “Chesapeake School”).  Ali Bicak and Fatih Kandelas, founding members of the IT Charter School, were respectively a founding member and principal of the Chesapeake School. 

The Washington Post reported that the Chesapeake School was criticized for problems relating to hiring qualified teachers, reflecting the community, using appropriate procurement and bidding processes for outside contracts, and for how they hired foreign nationals.  Days afterwards, according to Maryland’s Capital Gazette, on June 21, 2012, the Chesapeake School sued the Anne Arundel County schools saying they were owed $737,000.  Our schools have no such charges, and can’t sue our school board.

Of course, the rub is what this all could cost us here in Loudoun.  Virginia Code, Section 22.1-212.14 directs our school board to negotiate a per pupil funding paid out of our taxes to any Charter School.  The IT Charter School (in Appendix F, attached to its 90 page application) claimed a total per pupil cost of $2.1 million for FY 2013-14, increasing, year by year, up to $8.6 million, in FY 2018-19.

We can spend our money better on our own existing schools, teachers and students

Charter Schools is an idea whose time has come and passed as unworkable and unworthy of our time and our resources. 

When first imagined in the 1990s, the notion was to take out of the regular public school system the lowest performing students, those who were unmotivated, and coaching them.  It wasn’t about testing and failing.  It wasn’t about opting out of the public school system and supporting alternative separate schools with taxpayer funds.  It was about educating.  Now we test to fail teachers, students, entire schools.  We teach to the test and so Johnny learns less or nothing at all about how to think. 

Charter schools insist they are public when it comes to paying them per pupil but are  private and unaccountable when you want a PTA or have a FOIA request asking what they are really doing.  

 They claim to be non-profit but then subcontract managing the school, making land deals, and have their schools built by for-profit entities.  We taxpayers underwrite the profits to these third party entities while compromising our own public schools. 

This IT Charter school is a bad idea -- as are all charter schools.