Subject:
The Charter Industry
Message:
Dear Legislator,
As your constituent and someone who cares deeply about public education, I strongly urge you to reject the executive budget proposals that would both remove the regional cap on charter schools and permanently authorize the reissuance of any charter that has been closed due to surrender, revocation, termination or non-renewal ― otherwise known as “zombie” charter schools.
Regional caps were established to curtail the saturation of charter schools in an area and limit the financial burden on the public school district which must pay for these schools. Combining the caps and allowing for the reissuance of charter schools would be financially devastating to many public school communities that have no say as to whether a charter school can or should be in their community.
Charter schools have boards of trustees who are appointed by the charter management operator who have final authority for policy and operational decisions of the school. These boards are not accountable, transparent or democratically elected, unlike traditional public school boards. The location of a charter school within a school district has such an outsized effect on the finances of the district and the educational experience of its students, it only makes sense that the state provides traditional public school boards with the authority to vote on local charter school applications, revisions or modifications.
Under existing law, the Board of Regents and the SUNY Board of Trustees can approve and renew charter school applications. However, only the Board of Regents can authorize, issue approval of a charter and provide oversight. If the Board of Regents has concerns with a charter application or renewal, they can return it to the charter entity with comments for amendments to the submission.
Applications submitted to the SUNY Board of Trustees are shared with the Board of Regents for review. If the Board of Regents finds fault with the submission, the SUNY Board of Trustees and the charter entity can ignore the concerns raised and resubmit with no modifications. In this situation, the Board of Regents’ objections do not cause the process to stop, and the charter would go into effect thirty days after resubmission.
Currently, an authorized charter school can simply revise its original charter application to allow for grade level expansions beyond those currently offered, creating entirely new schools that were never part of their original application. For example, a charter school applies to serve grades k-6, and subsequently revises their application to expand to eighth grade. This would allow them to open a middle school, in addition to the original elementary school. This school could also expand up to the twelfth grade and create a high school. Therefore, that one charter school can become three without scrutiny by the charter authorizers, circumventing the charter school cap in law.
In 2014, the state began to provide charter facility aid in New York city to provide charter schools with rental assistance for private facility space. Since that time, these costs have risen from $10.2 million to $200 million — siphoning off millions of taxpayer dollars and funneling it directly to the real estate industry.
Accordingly, I urge you to work with your conference and your leadership to:
• Reject the executive budget proposals that would remove the regional charter cap and reauthorize the issuance of zombie charters;
• Pass legislation to allow local communities to have a voice in the creation of charter schools;
• Pass S.1395 (Liu)/A.4502 (Benedetto) to provide the Board of Regents with final approval authority over all proposed and renewed charter schools;
• Pass S.2974 (Mayer) to limit a charter school's ability to expand grade levels beyond its current grade configurations; and
• Pass S.2137 (Liu) to repeal the use of public funds to pay for private facility space rented by charter schools in New York city.
We must take these commonsense measures to maintain and to improve the quality of education for all public-school students.
Thank you for your consideration of these important issues. I look forward to a reply to my e-mail.
Sincerely,
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