Panel opposes lifting cap on startup charter schools
By Derrick DePledge
Advertiser Capitol Bureau
A task force that examined changes to the state's charter schools will not recommend lifting a cap on new startups, a disappointment for Gov. Linda Lingle, who wants the state Legislature to expand the experimental schools and give parents more choices in public education.
State lawmakers created the task force last session after a critical state audit found the charter school law was vague and led to a lack of oversight of the state's 27 charter schools. Charter school enrollment has surged over the past few years, and test scores show students often are doing as well or better than students in traditional public schools, but several of the schools have had management and operational difficulties.
The task force held public meetings statewide and heard strong support for raising the cap from the charter school community. Nine members of the 16-member task force wanted to encourage more new startups, but the task force had decided it would take at least 12 votes to approve a formal recommendation.
"There was a lot of sentiment in the charter school community based on waiting lists and based on the number of parents who want to send their children there," said Jim Shon, the executive director of the state's charter school office, who led the task force. "There is a lot of pressure out there."
But state lawmakers want to move cautiously and ensure that existing charter schools have enough money and administrative guidance before expanding. In the future, the number of charter schools will almost surely grow, lawmakers said, but they do not seem ready to approve any expansion soon.
"I'm not sure the existing ones are operating well, and it's kind of awkward to expand when some of the current ones, especially startups, are struggling," said state Sen. Norman Sakamoto, D-15th (Waimalu, Airport, Salt Lake), the chairman of the Senate Education and Military Affairs Committee.
Lingle, in her supplemental budget request Monday, called for $2.8 million in new operating and facilities costs for seven startup charter schools and about $15 million extra for existing charter schools. The governor would not detail her specific charter school plans, preferring to wait until her State of the State speech in January, but she believes the schools are ready to expand.
Linda Smith, the governor's senior policy adviser, said yesterday the administration was disappointed by the task force's decision. She suggested several schools that are not traditional public schools might be interested in coming under the charter umbrella but could not unless the Legislature lifts the cap.
"To put a cap on them, in our mind, just doesn't recognize that students and parents see this as a viable alternative," Smith said.
Lingle has placed much of her education focus on charter schools after her proposal to split the state Department of Education into local districts with elected school boards failed twice at the Legislature. The schools are technically part of the department and have to meet the same academic standards as other public schools but are encouraged to test new ideas in curriculum and operation. Many of the schools have Hawaiian themes and receive financial and management assistance from the private Kamehameha Schools.
The law allows 48 charter schools but caps startups at 23. The state has reached the cap, which means, for now, new charter schools would have to convert from traditional schools. Four charter schools are conversion schools — Waimea Middle, Wai'alae Elementary, Lanikai Elementary and Kualapu'u Elementary on Moloka'i — but they are typically among the best performing when it comes to test scores.
There has been some support for lifting the cap from outside the Lingle administration and the charter school community. In October, the Hawai'i State Parent Teacher Student Association, which represents parents, endorsed the idea at its annual legislative meeting. This week, the state's Economic Momentum Commission recommended a pilot program that would allow public schools on military bases to adopt the standard curriculum used at U.S. Department of Defense schools worldwide. The commission suggested the schools could convert to charter schools and that the cap should be raised.
Sharlene Chun-Lum, the project manager at Ho'olako Like, the charter school support program at Kamehameha, was one of the task force members who voted for the schools to expand. She said there were concerns a few years ago about whether people starting new charter schools were being adequately scrutinized, but believes there is much better oversight today.
"I don't think these are going to be fly-by-night people," Chun-Lum said. "I think there are a lot more questions being asked now than when this all started."
The task force looked at nearly 50 proposals and will recommend five changes to the Legislature, which are mostly technical but important to many involved with charter schools.
The recommendations would establish a new chapter of state law just for charter schools, include a new definition of who can authorize charters, clarify the powers of local school boards that govern charters, add current or local school board members to any state committees that review charters, and ask the attorney general's office for a list of state laws that charters must follow.
Reach Derrick DePledge at ddepledge@honoluluadvertiser.com.
Correction: A previous version of this story failed to include Waimea Middle on the Big Island in a list of the state's four conversion charter schools. The Education Laboratory, which was included, is not considered a conversion charter school by the state, although it is among the state's 27 charter schools.
