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JULY 28, 2010
www.cityhallnews.com
Snags Ahead For Rush To Approve New Charter Schools Under Raised Cap
Shortened timeline and staffing shortfalls create anxiety among education reformers BY JOHANNA BARR
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ecent legislation threatens to further convolute the already complicated process used to authorize the opening of new charter schools in New York. In an attempt to make New York’s application for the federal education grant program Race to the Top more competitive, the Legislature voted in May to raise the statewide charter school cap from 200 to 460 by 2014. Experts say that the higher cap will likely lead to an influx in applications— an influx that the two statewide charter authorizers, the State Board of Regents and the State University of New York’s Charter Schools Institute, may have difficulty handling. “Right now, everybody and their brother is thinking of opening a charter school,” said Dirk Tillotson, director of the New York Charter Schools Association’s New School Incubator Program. “Colleges and universities, like Fordham, are applying to open charters. There are more groups applying to open multiple schools, and there are more conversion schools,” or existing public schools that are transformed into charter schools. James Merriman, CEO of the New York City Charter Schools Center, also anticipates an increase in applications, though he questioned whether the new cap would cause that increase.
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“There was a lot of demand before the law was passed, and that demand will continue to build. We are seeing an increase that has been happening over the years.” As if the influx of new applications were not daunting enough, the two main authorizers are currently contending with major personnel shortages. Jennifer Sneed has recently left her post as the senior vice president of the SUNY Charter Schools Institute, while the State Education Department Charter School Office, which makes charter recommendations to the Board of Regents, currently lacks a director. Sally Bachofer has had to take on duties at the Charter School Office, which is under her purview as the Executive Director of the SED Office of Innovative School Models. In addition, Michael Duffy and Christina Grant have both recently left the City Department of Education’s Office of Charter Schools, where they served as executive director and deputy executive director, respectively. Merriman noted that the combination of the increase in applicants and the authorizer vacancies could spell trouble for those hoping to open a charter school. “Obviously when the number of charters increases, ideally you’ll have more personnel to handle them,” he said. “I think it will be challenging at each of the authorizers.” Tillotson agreed that increased strain
on the system was inevitable. “There’s going to be an increasing lack of quality oversight, because the authorizers just won’t have the ability to see what’s going on as the number of schools increases,” he said. Further complicating matters is the fact that the timeline that the new legislation mandates will necessitate a shorter application review process, which will potentially lead to the rejection of charters that would have otherwise been approved. The law requires both statewide authorizers to craft and submit a Request for Proposals by Aug. 1. The RFP will provide a rubric for charter applications to follow—for example, new charter schools must maintain a certain threshold of special-education students and English-language learners, while also proving a certain level of community support. These criteria have been criticized for varying reasons. Community support, for example, is nebulous and hard to grasp, some charter operators say. The required percentage of needier students, meanwhile, could also cause other problems. “There’s a charter school in Staten Island that serves mainly special-education students, but only 3 percent of its students are English-language learners,” said Tillotson. “This is the sort of strict bean counting that could get that school nailed down the road.” Applications must be submitted to one of the authorizers soon after the Aug. 1 deadline. The SUNY Charter Schools In-
CITY HALL stitute has announced that they are due Aug. 16, a mere two weeks after the RFP is made available. Though the Board of Regents has yet to announce a specific date, Jane Briggs, a spokesperson for the State Education Department, implied that a similar timeframe will be in place. “We anticipate a fall 2010 submission deadline,” she said in a statement. Both authorizers are currently rushing to finalize their RFPs, after opening them up for comments from the public. At the same time, SUNY is in the process of reviewing the 22 applications it received for the 12 charters it had left to award under the previous cap of 200. (The Board of Regents finished awarding its half of those charters in March.) Experts disagreed over which group of applicants was more likely to get shortchanged—those who applied for the 12 remaining SUNY charters, or those who will apply for the new group of charters in response to the RFP. “The compressed timeline, to me, raises questions about whether or not worthy applicants are unduly being denied,”said Peter Murphy, policy director for the NYCSA, referring to the 22 SUNY applicants. Murphy explained that SUNY usually goes back and forth with applicants, raising questions and asking for clarifications, before the final application is submitted for approval. But because of the rush to draft its RFP and prepare for the next round of applications, he believes the Charter Schools Association may not do many of these this year. “They have a whole new cycle to do in August, and if they approve something now, that’s more work for them,” he said. “They have rejected applications over trivial reasons that could have easily been addressed.” The draft RFP that the SUNY Charter Schools Institute published earlier this month highlights the anxiety felt by some charter school advocates. “Given the short window of time the Institute will have to review any proposals submitted in response to this RFP, the rate of proposals approved will no doubt be impacted,” an excerpt reads. “There simply will not be time to work with a proposal team that is deemed to be close to meeting the standard for approval through the back and forth Request for Amendment process that has historically been part of SUNY’s review process.” Some believe that the truncated timeline will not adversely affect the review process. Steve Sanders, former chair of the Assembly Education Committee, thinks the new deadlines are reasonable. Yet while Sanders thinks that the reforms will have positive long-term effects, he agreed that the upcoming round of applications might lead to some problems, as both authorizers and applicants work to adjust to the new system. “If there is some difficulty or confusion, it might be in this original year,” he said. “There’s bound to be compression.” jbarr@cityhallnews.com
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