The views expressed in this column are the views of the author as an educator and taxpayer, and are not intended to be a reflection of the views of the North Penn School District.

As we move into that time when the North Penn School District forms its 2014-2015 budget, a recurring issue is once again on the radar, as a charter school application now rests in the hands of the school board, who will accept or deny the charter initiative on February 20^th.

It is critical as we approach this deadline for people to understand the concept of a charter school and also the realities it imposes upon the school district in which it operates. In concept, a charter school is meant to give parents a free choice for their child’s education. In other words, if parents are not happy with the public schools where they live, but also do not possess the financial means to send their children to a private school, they would have another option in a charter school, whose operations must be funded by the school district in which they operate. In theory, this situation sounds productive and viable for families, but like many issues that involve education and funding, there are many layers that make the charter school system problematic for all stakeholders.

The North Penn School Board of School Directors is charged with accepting or denying the charter application. In that decision making process they must adhere to a strict set of criteria that allows them to deny or accept the charter. Unfortunately, due to charter school law, they cannot simply say, “we cannot afford a charter school at this time.”  So, in order for a charter school application to be blocked, the applying organization must fail to meet all designated standards, one of which is showing viable community support and interest in the school. It is under this category that a general public who is aware of the detrimental effects of a charter school, and its lack of necessity, can be a strong voice.

There are many questions and issues to consider in order to see the full breadth of a charter school movement in the North Penn School District.

IS NORTH PENN FAILING ITS STUDENTS?

According to section 1702 of the Pennsylvania Law for Charter Schools, the intent of a charter school is to benefit students with the following criteria:

(1)          Improve pupil learning.
(2)          Increase learning opportunities for all pupils.
(3)          Encourage the use of different and innovative teaching methods.
(4)          Create new professional opportunities for teachers, including the opportunity to be responsible              for the learning program at the school site.
(5)          Provide parents and pupils with expanded choices in the types of educational opportunities that             are available within the public school system.
(6)          Hold the schools established under this act accountable for meeting measurable academic          standards and provide the school with a method to establish accountability systems.

So, from a purely logical standpoint, the first thing a person should ask is, does the NPSD fail to meet any of the above objectives, thus warranting a need for a new school to be established. I am very confident that the answer to this question is “no.”

First off, items 3, 4, and 5 listed above are absolutely prevalent in the NPSD. The greatest difficulty with new academic programs and innovative technology implemented in the district each year is keeping up with it all. Furthermore, through the district’s curriculum development schedule, teachers and administrators are annually hands-on in the development of learning programs and curriculum revisions. Parental involvement in this process is encouraged and implemented wherever possible, and is enhanced with a superintendent who has made it a clear focus of his administration to hold community forums and opportunities to meet in small groups to discuss district issues and developments. Simply put, it is all there already.

While I may be biased as a teacher, I think any teacher in the district would be the first to admit if we believed our school was failing our students. I have taught for twelve years in the district and I have seen our resources for every variety of student imaginable expanded at every opportunity. The lengths the NPSD has gone in order to meet the needs of all learners (ESL, ELL, special education, advanced placement, etc.) has been nothing short of remarkable, if not, at times, even overwhelming.

When parents and educators both  get involved in the educational experiences of children, there is no limit to what they can make sure North Penn has available for their children. And, of course, the proof is in the results as well, both in the classroom and in extracurricular opportunities. According to published information, Newsweek,  The Washington Post, and US News and World Report all recognized North Penn High School as one of the top public high schools in the nation. These results are not just a reflection of the success occurring in NPHS, but in every school throughout the district, as our students are developed from kindergarten through grade twelve. At the advanced placement level, 700 NPHS students enrolled in at least one AP course, and the overall scores for NPHS students scoring a 3 or higher is 17.5% higher than the Pennsylvania average. Additionally, NPHS reading, math, and writing scores on the SAT are higher than both the state and national average, a statistic that has long been achieved by North  Penn.

For students whose academic levels require additional support and remediation, North Penn is also getting the job done with tremendous success. 61% of READ 180 students achieved at least a year’s reading growth as measured by the Scholastic Reading Inventory, and 38% demonstrated two years of growth . The statistical data on test results achieved in all elementary, middle, and high school students speaks for itself and can all be accessed through the NPSD. The numbers flat out indicate that the NPSD is succeeding in educating its students.

So, the question that the North Penn community should be raising is. “if my tax dollars are working, then why should I pay for other families to send their kids to a different school?” The charter school law exists so that dysfunctional schooling systems are held accountable and so that families are not forced to send their children to failing classrooms. However, when there is more than enough tangible evidence that a school system is succeeding, we have to consider that there may be other motives for those seeking to open a charter school – motives that go beyond merely creating effective educational opportunities for America’s youth.

WHAT IS THE ECONOMIC IMPACT OF A CHARTER SCHOOL?

The need for charter schools is understandably different depending on the school district in question, but regardless of the need for the alternative educational option, the issue remains that money for those schools comes directly from the school district budget. In the North Penn School District, like most districts across the commonwealth and the country, recent impacts from the economy have been felt through budget cuts, which ultimately manifest themselves in reductions in programs and staff.   While not wholly comparable to North Penn, the Philadelphia and Chester Upland School Districts are among the districts in PA that house the greatest number of charter schools. When one considers how much money those districts take out of their public schools and put into charter schools, it is rather difficult to ignore a connection between that allocation of funds and the current fiscal state of both districts.

While the economy is on the rebound now, the purse strings are still tight. At a recent NP school board meeting, finance director Bob Schoch presented speculations for the upcoming budget balancing challenge that the district faces. The estimated expenditure in the 2014-2015 budget for charter school operation is $4.2 million. That number only accounts for year one. A charter school would annually come with a price tag in excess of  an additional $1 million going forward.  To state that very simply, the NPSD must pay $4.2 million this year and possibly $5.2 million next year (and onward from there) to the group of people who want to start a charter school if that charter is approved .

If North Penn Schools were failing, were unsafe, did not provide special services and programs to those in need, and were not exceeding state and national standards, subsequently producing minimal academic success in their students, then we might be looking at the charter school movement through a  different lens. However, it does not take much digging around to realize that the schools within the NPSD are far from failing, and far from short on services and opportunities for all students. The groups who, over the last two years, have proposed charter schools in the NPSD have rallied interest in their movements, but what the community at large must realize is that when a family opts to send their children to a charter school, the result is that , essentially, the district’s taxpayers are paying for those families to attend a charter school, and at the same time are sending their own kids to a school that may now have to face reduced staffing or program offerings because money has been pulled out and placed in the hands of the charter school.

In addition to costs for infrastructure and other expenditures, the $4.2 million figure comes from the amount of money per pupil that the district must supply. Keep in mind, that figure is a fixed, non-refundable number. So if, for example, NPSD funds a charter school $10,000 per pupil (for the sake of a round figure), but the charter school actually only spends $7,000 per pupil, that money does not come back to the NPSD; it stays in the hands of the charter school. Additionally, some people believe that if the NPSD loses students to a charter school, the district can simply economize and, with fewer students, spend less money itself. That reasoning is flawed, however, because when students leave the NPSD for a charter school, it might be one kid from one school, a few from another, etc. The NPSD will not be able to reduce staffing or programs and therefore has minimal or no room to economize as part of the adoption of a charter.

$4.2 million is a lot of money. It is money that can fund many teaching positions, maintain and expand many arts and extracurricular programs, maintain and build first rate facilities, implement new and expanded academic programs, and in many other ways continue to keep NPSD well above the masses. But when that money is taken away to fund a school that operates independent of (other than financially) the NPSD and is attended by parents who simply want to send their kids somewhere else, it requires no complex accounting to figure out that money will not be here for the students, staff, and infrastructure of the NPSD.  Quite frankly, any student, parent, staff member,  and taxpayer should be outraged  and alarmed that a special interest group can come in and hold the NPSD hostage for over four million dollars so they can open their own school, pay themselves a salary, and do all of this with NP taxpayer dollars, all the while putting a severe dent into the fiscal standing of the North Penn School District.

In our current economic environment, I do not think we could reasonably argue that this would be a good time to open a brand new elementary school, hire a full slate of new teachers, administrators, and support staff to run that school, and really believe that would be a fiscally responsible solution to meeting the educational needs of our community at this time. Spending $4.2 million to operate a charter school would be essentially taking exactly that approach.

ISN’T IT TRUE, THOUGH, THAT THE APPLYING CHARTER SCHOOL GROUP HAS ALREADY HAD SUCCESS IN SOUDERTON?

Let us examine, briefly, how a charter school forms and how it is populated.  An organized group of people form a vision and design for a school  which they will operate for profit. That group covers all its bases, follows the charter school guidelines, rallies a specified minimum number of families to commit to apply to the charter school, and then presents its proposal to the school district in which it desires to operate.

So, who is it exactly that applies to have their children placed in a charter school? It may be parents who are not happy with their child’s educational experience, or it may be parents who simply are intrigued and interested in trying a new educational alternative. Regardless, it is parents who are closely involved in the education of their children. Parent involvement in a child’s education continues to clearly be a significant factor in a student’s success – an axiomatic principle that few could ever substantially refute.  Therefore, it only stands to reason that the students who attend a charter school have a very good chance at being successful – after all they are only there to begin with because they have families who are involved in their education. And that is much more so the answer to maintaining a successful school district than running away from it. I have been around long enough to know that parents in a school district have the most powerful voice. Parents pay taxes and vote – that is all it takes to have a voice. If parents see something wrong or lacking in their child’s educational experience, they have the power to get involved and help to change those shortcomings – that is the beauty of democracy and public education.

According to the National Education Association (www.nea.org), a 2002 report from the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory concluded that “When schools, families, and community groups work together to support learning, children tend to do better in school, stay in school longer, and like school more.” I think many people would find this to be obvious, but this finding is important to consider when dealing with the argument that the existing charter schools in nearby school districts have performed very well. Of course they have- they are made up of involved parents. If the parents of these students were not involved, they would have never applied for admission to the charter school to begin with.

The point is, if parents want more for their children in school, all they have to do is stay involved in their child’s education and in the developments of the school district that funds and runs it. That endeavor would be just as or more successful for a parent than forcing the district to pay for his or her child to attend a new school.  It may be easier to simply pack up and leave a North Penn elementary school for what is touted as a greener pasture, but what is easy is not always what is best or what is right. Our school district operates in such a way that it allows for student, parental, staff, and taxpayer involvement. Working within that public school system and keeping the money in the system as it has been throughout the long, successful, history of North Penn,  can have far more impact for far more people. Therefore, it becomes vital for community members to stand up and fight to keep their money where it belongs.

SO, WHAT DO WE DO NOW?

As an educator, I would be the first to agree that education is not one-size-fits-all, and we absolutely need to keep in mind that there are large populations of students out there who need to be taught differently, need to be motivated differently, and simply might not mesh with the current educational system as smoothly as others. Every child is different, every family is different, everyone’s finances are different, and everyone’s overall educational experience is different.  I think it is important in the world of education that we always keep these tenets in mind. But I also very strongly believe that allowing an independent group of people to swoop in and use taxpayer dollars to start their own for-profit school system is not the answer to differentiating students’ educational experiences.  The more money we keep in the system, the more resources we have available to ensure that every school in the district continues to be equipped with qualified personnel, innovative technology, and  every other resource needed to ensure a quality educational experience.

Just as the charter school groups bring their contingents to school board meetings with matching t-shirts and rally signs, it is important for those of us who would be funding their school to step up equally and be a voice to keep our school district in-tact.