State Education Commissioner Peter McWalters says the opposition to charter schools ultimately comes down to power and control.

01:00 AM EST on Thursday, January 20, 2005

BY LINDA BORG
Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE -- In South Kingstown, the national debate over charter schools is playing out on a local stage. Supt. Robert Hicks says the charters have drained valuable dollars from a cash-strapped system, the taxpayers are in revolt and charter schools are caught in the middle.

Yesterday, charter school supporters tried to figure out how to counter the us-versus-them mentality that has characterized the debate over charter schools in Rhode Island. A regional conference sponsored by the Rhode Island League of Charter Schools at the Providence Chamber of Commerce included guests from Maine and Maryland.

In South Kingstown, where 123 students have opted to attend two area charter schools, Hicks has said that the financial impact on his district is greater than the loss of roughly $8,000 per student because teachers and classes have to be reconfigured because of smaller student enrollments. Moreover, the district has to pay for the cost of busing these students to the charter schools.

"What we're hearing is that these students create a void in the public schools," said Rep. John P. Shanley, D-South Kingstown. "Everyone loves the idea of charter schools but it's like affordable housing: when they put it in your back yard, everyone goes crazy."

But former Cranston Mayor Michael Traficante, who serves on the board of the New England Laborers Construction Career Academy, said that just the opposite is true.

"They don't want those kids," he said of the public schools. Charter schools have "become a dumping ground for students with special needs."

Yesterday, the general consensus was that charter schools have gotten a bad rap. Their opponents -- teachers' unions and school superintendents -- say that charters siphon money away from the public schools and that they lure the best students from the local districts.

But, according to charter league president Robert Pilkington, 59 percent of charter school students are minorities and more than half qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, which means they are poor. Moreover, 18 percent of these students are children with special needs.

Supporters need to drive home that charter schools are public schools paid for with tax dollars and, in three Rhode Island schools, staffed with union members, Pilkington said. What separates charter schools from their traditional peers is that they operate outside most of the bureaucracy that governs district schools. They are also characterized by having small classes, innovative thinking and greater parental involvement.

Ron Wolk, the founder of Education Week, says the public school system is so entrenched that it can't be fixed by tinkering around the edges. What the nation needs is a parallel school system that challenges the bureaucracy. Charter schools, he said, could be a big part of that solution.

Wolk says that the odds of changing Providence's Hope High School from within are slim. (Hope faces a possible takeover by the state Education Department.) Educational leaders, he said, would be better off spending their political capital persuading the legislature to create alternatives to the existing school system.

Wolk said that charter schools have been linked -- incorrectly -- with vouchers and the so-called red or Republican states when, in fact, the movement's roots are radical in nature. He said that the charter movement needs to proclaim its progressive nature.

The charter schools have a staunch ally in Governor Carcieri, who wants to remove the year-long moratorium on charters as well as lift the cap, which limits Rhode Island to 20 charters. The state currently has 11 such schools.

Education Commissioner Peter McWalters said the opposition to charter schools ultimately comes down to power and control. Because they operate outside of the established bureaucracy, charter schools threaten the authority of unions and superintendents.

"I'm inclined to think that everything should be chartered," McWalters said, "so you can break it" when a program, even a school, isn't successful.

He also gave charter school leaders a bit of advice. The best people to sell charters to the legislature are the students themselves. Dennis Littky, whose small, alternative Met school has been replicated dozens of times across the country, is successful in part because he lets his students do the talking.

"What's kept the Met school alive?" McWalters said. "The kids and the parents."