The Urban League of Rhode Island planned to start a school in East Providence that would focus on math and science.

01:00 AM EDT on Friday, June 24, 2005

BY LINDA BORG
Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE -- The House Finance Committee's decision to impose a two-year moratorium on new charter schools has derailed plans to open such a school in East Providence this fall.

Dennis Langley, chief executive officer of the Urban League of Rhode Island, said his organization had planned to open a school with 140 students in grades 8 through 11, but the moratorium, approved Tuesday, has put plans on hold.

"We're very disappointed," he said yesterday. "When you see so many youngsters wanting a choice and wanting to reach the unreachable, it's very sad."

The Academy of Science, Art and Technology would place a heavy emphasis on math and science instruction and would enroll students from Providence and East Providence, Langley said. The school would eventually grow to 300 students in grades 8 through 12.

If the General Assembly concurs with the House Finance Committee, it appears that Rhode Island would be the only state in the country whose legislature has imposed a moratorium on charter schools, according to the Center for Education Reform, a national reform organization.

(The education bill goes to the full House on Monday.)

The Massachusetts legislature passed a similar measure last year but the governor vetoed it. In Arizona, the state Department of Education imposed a moratorium on new charter schools. And several states are trying to slow the expansion of charters.

"This is nothing new," said Anna Varghese, a spokeswoman for the Center for Education Reform. "At least half of the states have tried to pass moratoriums."

Charter schools are public schools paid for with public money. They tend to be small, innovative schools that are free of the bureaucracy that controls traditional schools. Rhode Island has 11 charter schools, four of them in Providence.

Yesterday, charter school leaders in Providence speculated about the fate of a movement that they say offers parents and children a valuable alternative to the traditional system.

Richard Landau, the outgoing CEO of the Textron Chamber of Commerce Academy, said, "It's obvious that the battlelines have been drawn and that a tremendous number of people who are entrenched" are trying to stall the momentum of charter schools. Textron was the first charter school in Rhode Island.

"Education is a huge industry," Landau said. "It's their livelihood and these people are threatened by change. Well, we better wake up. While we're feeling comfortable, all of these other countries are licking their chops. They're going right by us."

Jim Donahue, the CEO of the CVS Highlander Charter School, said that the tragedy is what a moratorium will do to the dozens of children who are waiting to get into charter schools.

While he isn't happy with the moratorium, Donahue said he can live with it provided the legislature uses the time to come up with a sensible way to pay for public schools in Rhode Island.

"But when you have a kid in third grade who can't read and who comes to you, you think, 'We could work with this kid. This could be a life-changing experience.' "

Stanley Thompson, academic dean of Times2 Academy, said there is a misconception that charter schools will replace traditional public schools. Charter schools, he said, are meant to be experiments, places where new ideas can be tried.

Thompson thinks that charter schools are encountering resistance partly because of their success.

"Charters are a force to be reckoned with," he said. "They are demonstrating that within their scope, kids can master skills that they haven't been able to do in schools that are large and overcrowded."

Thompson refuses to lose hope. He and Donahue see the moratorium as a bump in the road.

"I think that the people who are seeing the results of charter schools and who are truly committed are not going to give up," he said. "Regardless of the politics, this is working and we need to rally around it."