Representative John Kowalko Dissects Jaques' HB 165 - Charter School Law Revision

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John Kowalko sent this along ~

Lawmakers flunk the charter-school reform test

Historically, at the end of a session year, the General Assembly’s accomplish­ments are reviewed for their benefit to Delawar­eans. Assessments of achievements can dis­tract attention from the failure to meet some challenges. In the Gener­al Assembly’s haste to promote itself as effec­tive and judicious, we should temper any evalu­ation with an honest reflection on our mis­takes.

House Bill 165, the Charter School Reform Bill, is the biggest legislative failure of the 147th General Assembly.

Reform of the existing charter school laws was long overdue. A deliber­ate effort was necessary to place Delaware’s pub­lic schools, both “tradi­tional” and “charter,” on equal footing regarding admission criteria, ac­cessibility, diversity of student populations (so­cio- economic class, ra­cial minorities and spe­cial- needs students must be proportionately repre­sented), and equality of funding and funding access. HB 165 failed to improve existing law and, in fact, allows for a worsening of disparities that will cause long­standing harm to our public school system.

Before I withdrew my name from sponsorship of this bill, I offered a multi-pronged reform approach to ensure sta­bility and accountability for charter schools that would also enhance the quality and accessibility of various options for all children who wish to attend public schools in Delaware. These correc­tive options were wide­ranging and intended to strengthen all public schools.

Since approval of charter school startups and expansions, under existing law and reg­ulations, had virtually no public or local school district input until after the fact, I proposed that charter applications had to be first presented to the local district in which they were located. This would allow for a dis­cussion on the expected impact on existing schools and also provide an appropriate time for the public to weigh in before the decision. The local district would not be able to reject the applica­tion if it recommended against approval and the application would move to the state board and Department of Education for final disposition. This corrective action was not included in the bill and an amendment to include it was defeated.

Wording to verify that charters were, as dictat­ed by law, able to offer innovative techniques to traditional schools that could be replicated also was removed and at­tempts to amend defeat­ed.

Because a five-mile radius determines access to admission lotteries, Christina School Dis­trict’s matriculating eighth-graders residing in Wilmington are pre­cluded from inclusion in the lottery to attend the newly created Newark Charter High School.

This eliminates their “choice” option and re­sults in de-facto resegre­gation as Wilmington has no high school. Correc­tive action to eliminate the five-mile radius was taken out of the bill and attempts to amend were defeated on the floor.

These are a few of the more apparent flaws in HB 165, but the most egregious was creation of a revenue package avail­able only to charter schools. The fund would be administered by the education department, but no rules or regula­tions to govern disburse­ment have been created.

The funds would be avail­able to “high performing” charter schools via grant application. No legitimate effort was made to pro­vide this funding to the higher needs, more im­poverished, or “special” needs populations in either traditional or char­ter schools.

As with all competi­tion, if there are winners, then there must be losers. The biggest losers will be the more than 120,000 students in traditional schools (17,000 special needs) who experienced more than $40 million in net education cuts since 2009, as well as the tax­payers who must provide up to $5 million in fund­ing available only to a few of the 10,000 charter school students (845 spe­cial needs).

This “slush” fund lacks any specificity of use by the winning char­ter applicants and there­fore special-education students lose all protec­tion. The result is a lack of accountability to tax­payers and our children, which is an abdication of elected officials’ respon­sibility.

Charter schools are precluded by law from using taxpayer funds for capital costs or invest­ments for very logical reasons. Buildings in traditional and vocation­al- technical districts are taxpayer-owned, while charter facilities are owned by private or non­profit corporations. This unregulated and unac­countable fund will allow for taxpayer investment and funding to be deliv­ered to the private sector with absolutely no owner­ship or return on invest­ment to the taxpayers.

To add a more offen­sive gravity to the dam­age of this legislation, one only has to read the language in it to realize that well-performing charters will be qualified for the money and strug­gling charter schools will be excluded. Funding never should have been included in the reform measure but amendments offered to remove or regulate it were defeated. The pub­lic interest demands nothing less than a full repeal and rewrite of this law.

Rep Kowalko requested that the bloggers hold off on posting until the News Journal published as a Delaware Voice column.

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