Merits Of Authorizing Public Charter Schools Debated Legislator Says Law Would Make Existing Schools More Responsive
Idaho House Education Chairman Fred Tilman on Tuesday staunchly defended his interim committee’s proposal for authorizing “charter schools” against questioning from skeptical Board of Education members.
Harold Davis of Idaho Falls said he saw no need for creating publicly funded charter schools that would be run by local parents and teachers free of most state regulations in an attempt to promote classroom innovation.
Davis said most of the freedoms that would be granted to such schools in the nine-page draft legislation could be had now through requests for waivers of certain rules or requirements from the Board of Education.
“I don’t care to add more lawyerese to this process if it’s not necessary,” he said.
But Tilman, R-Boise, said many local school boards do not respond adequately to patrons’ concerns or creative teachers’ proposals for improving education. The framework is there, he acknowledged “but the plain fact of the matter is, it is not happening. They do have the legal right to do something, but they don’t.”
Authorizing creation of charter schools not only would give local parents and teachers another avenue to pursue change, it also would provide an incentive for existing public schools to be more responsive, Tilman said.
“The whole public school system is so regimented and so locked into the way they do things that they are not responding to what people want,” he said. If critics of local schools have the option of creating their own charter school, “it does make school districts, the administration, really sit down and consider the options.”
The eight-member interim committee led by Tilman and Senate Education Chairman Gary Schroeder, R-Moscow, plans seven public hearings throughout the state in September to gather comments on its proposal before developing a final version to present to the Legislature in January.
The proposal calls for allowing creation of 10 charter schools during each of the first two years after the bill is enacted. More schools could be created after that.
An undetermined number of existing public school employees would have to win local school board permission before a charter school could be established within a public school district. Private schools could apply to either a local school board or state school Superintendent Anne Fox to become a charter school.
Decisions about allowing creation of a charter school could be appealed to the state Board of Education, and each school’s contract would have to be renewed every five years. The proposal also calls for charter school funding to be based on the statewide per-pupil average of property tax and state money allotted to public schools.
Tilman said the legislation was left flexible enough to allow more than one school district to jointly apply for creation of a charter school, or for post-secondary schools or even businesses to get involved.