No need for charters in Lee County

Charter schools may find their place in Alabama in the near future. Gov. Robert Bentley intends to push for charter schools on a small scale in the state in the 2012 legislative session, said Bentley's press secretary Jennifer Ardis.

However, school superintendents in Lee County don't share Bentley's vision.

"The rationale you hear frequently from the proponents for charter schools is to give parents an alternative when they live in a community where the schools are 'failing' and the children really have no alternative," said Dr. Terry Jenkins, Auburn City Schools Superintendent. "The argument is that it is not fair to require children to go to schools that are failing when they may not have the financial means to send them to a private school."

Charter schools are public schools that exist through a contract with a state agency or local school board. They receive public money, but they are not subject to the same set of regulations as other public schools.

In exchange for this flexibility, the schools are held accountable for achieving the goals set out in the charter, including improving student performance.

Charter schools are still subject to the same state regulations as traditional public schools, including special education, bilingual education, academic standards and assessments, health and safety regulations.

"The flexibility that we need does not need to come from statutory relief, but from regulatory relief that the State Board of Education promulgates," said Mark Neighbors, Opelika City Schools Superintendent and legislative chair for the School of Superintendents of Alabama. "Just because you have a charter does not mean you can negate the constitution."

Local superintendents want to know why they can't they have the same flexibility in rules and regulations if it is effective for charter schools.

"Dr. Bice, our new state school superintendent, is putting together a proposal that would allow us to make application to get some rules waived," Jenkins said. "It may not be the kind of blanket flexibility that charter school's may get, but then again there are situations where there are for-profit charter schools or privately owned. But Stanford University research shows there is very little difference in the success of the charter schools."

Lack of regulations allows charter school teachers to become genuine professionals by taking the normal risks they would take in a private practice setting.

"The difference in the schools is public schools have to have teacher certification," Neighbors said. "If you have professional credentials, you can teach at a charter school.

"Some of the things we are held accountable to are from federal mandates from the Department of Education and a lot of people are concerned we are seeing a Washington (D.C.) model come down."

Acting as professionals instead of union laborers tends to motivate teachers to improve their skills and develop their creativity, but this could potentially take away from the quality of education existing schools could provide because of the certification required to be a teacher in a public school setting, according to Neighbors.

While charter schools can have a positive outlook for parents and students they will force the existing public schools to share funding.

"We live in a state that has a tremendously limited amount of revenue for public education as it is," Jenkins said. "I think what you will find in the state of Alabama is a real concern on the part of a lot of superintendents that they are afraid the revenue that is coming to them to provide the instructional programs they need to apply will be thinned even further to fund the charter school."

The final draft of the bill on the legislation of charter schools in Alabama is still not finalized, and local superintendents said they would like to see the bill tailored in a fashion to accommodate large metropolitan areas such as Birmingham, Montgomery and Mobile.

"With charter schools as well as public schools, it all depends on leadership, the kind of faculty they hire and how they are structured," said Dr. Stephen Nowlin, Lee County Superintendent. "I see no need to have charter schools in Alabama in places where you have successful public schools; it is just a duplication.

"However, I do think in some school systems that are chronically failing, this might be an alternative where they can have good schools, but I am not convinced they work on the large scale available everywhere for everybody and anybody."

Application for admission to charter schools would be open to any students, but the schools are not required to accept any student they do not want.

At present, 40 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have charter school legislation signed into law.