Three other charter schools set to open in 2005 are in jeopardy because of a moratorium.

01:00 AM EDT on Friday, July 9, 2004

BY LINDA BORG
Journal Staff Writer

A new charter school in Central Falls was approved last night but it may be the last one to go forward for quite some time. The General Assembly has imposed a moratorium on charter schools during the 2005-06 school year.

The moratorium was passed as part of the state budget. There were no bills and no public hearings on the proposal.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Stephen D. Alves, D-West Warwick, said yesterday that legislators responded to complaints from suburban communities, which feared that charter schools would take money away from their districts.

"The last thing we wanted is for 30 charters to come in and decimate school budgets" Alves said. When a child enrolls in a charter school, the public dollars that pay for his "tuition" follow him to that school.

The moratorium may jeopardize nearly $3 million in federal grants, according to Education Commissioner Peter McWalters, who said that the monies are used for planning.

"We're not in a crisis now," McWalters said, "but if [the Assembly] doesn't lift it in a year, it will jeopardize future federal funds."

Although the Central Falls school will open this fall, three charter schools currently in the pipeline may be delayed because of the moratorium. They are the "middle college" proposed by the Textron Chamber of Commerce Academy, a Providence charter school; the Urban League Academy in East Providence; and the Accelerated Learning Community in Coventry.

All three schools were supposed to open in the fall of 2005.

"I don't like it," McWalters said last night, "but it's the only choice we have."

He said he understands the pressure the legislature faces from cities and towns, which were up in arms this spring when Governor Carcieri proposed cutting nearly $8 million in education aid, giving most of it to the state's 20 charters and the Met, an alternative high school in Providence. The governor later restored the school aid after the state estimated that it will receive $45 million in new revenues.

The anti-charter message was not lost on the Senate Finance Committee. According to Alves, charter school proponents would rather open schools in Providence, but the city, with four existing charters, has reached its limit under state law. That cap is pushing charter schools into neighboring cities and towns, which often view charters as the competition, stealing students and education dollars.

Although charter schools are public schools, they are much more autonomous, with the power to hire their own teachers and experiment with curriculum. They also tend to be smaller and more innovative.

The Learning Community Charter School in Central Falls, approved by the Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Education last night, will open in September with 100 students in kindergarten and first grade. Seventy-six children, the majority from Central Falls and Pawtucket, have signed up.

The school has three missions: to serve as a training ground for new and veteran teachers, to embrace Latino culture with a strong bilingual focus, and to provide a very hands-on learning experience.

"We want to show children the way a good writer and mathematician actually work," said Marcia Uretsky, one of three founders. "We want to expose those invisible processes."

Progreso Latino, a community organization based in Central Falls, will be the school's sponsoring agency. The charter school also hopes to tap student teachers from Brown University's school of education.

The three founders bring years of educational experience to the project. Meg O'Leary works for the Education Partnership (formerly the Business Education Roundtable). She has also worked for the former HELP Coalition in Providence and Teaching for Tomorrow. Sarah Friedman directed health services at Hope High School in Providence. Uretsky has taught for many years and worked as an educational consultant.

The school plans on adding one grade a year, for a total of 420 students in grades K through 6. It is open to children from Central Falls, Pawtucket and Providence, because families typically move among these communities. The school will open in a former preschool on Roosevelt Avenue.

"Our goal is to make these kids as economically and politically successful as possible," Uretsky said. "We want to give them the tools of power."