Small Schools Initiative -- News Articles

If you can't beat'em (Editorial 7/22/04) | School at COSI possible (Article 7/1/04)

The Columbus Dispatch - Editorials

If you can’t beat ’em . . .

Columbus Public Schools’ entry in charter-schools market is sensible
competitive response

Thursday, July 22, 2004

What in the world are Columbus Public Schools doing, starting charter
schools?
Happily, the district is doing just what supporters of charter schools
have long predicted: attempting to compete by offering something better.
Since the charter-school movement came to Ohio a decade ago, public school
districts have, for the most part, decried what they consider unfair
competition.
Charter schools don’t have to follow the burdensome state rules that
govern public schools. Operators of charter schools receive the per-pupil
state funding for each student who chooses their school. They use that
money, plus whatever they raise in grants and donations, to run their
schools. By law, families pay no tuition.
Every charter-school student represents a financial loss to the home
school district, though the district does save when it no longer is
responsible for educating those children. And each student’s departure is
a rebuke of that district’s programs.
Charter-school advocates have responded that the challenge they pose will
force poorly performing public schools to offer something better.
In Columbus, the impact has been significant.
During the past school year, 3,600 Columbus students chose charter schools
instead of the public schools, costing the district $18 million in state
aid and a 2.2-percent drop in enrollment, the largest single-year drop in
10 years. District planners think the loss could nearly double by 2008.
Having bemoaned the loss for the past several years, Columbus Public
Schools officials are taking a more productive approach, developing their
own charter schools.
An online high-school program for up to 125 students will open this fall,
and the district announced plans Sunday to create a Downtown, sciencebased
school in time for the 2005-06 school year.
For years, many of Columbus’ alternative schools have been among the
district’s best, and The Dispatch often has encouraged the school board to
replicate them.
By entering the charter-school fray, the district can enjoy freedom from
state regulations, while relying on its deeper pockets and vast support
system to boost its new efforts.
For example, students of the Columbus Internet school will have several
tutoring and practice centers around the city, staffed by teachers. Other
Internet charter schools offer only very limited teacher contact, via
large, regional conference sessions held every quarter or so.
Notably, one of the planners for the new science school has suggested that
its teachers will not belong to the Columbus Education Association, and
the school will be free from the teachers union contract that burdens so
many attempts to change and improve.
Board of Education members haven’t confirmed that the school will be
nonunion, but they should be giving it serious thought. Adopting the
union’s rules on seniority, transfer rights and many other aspects of
school operation would undermine the best-laid plans for innovation.

School at COSI possible
City schools envision charter academy Downtown

Thursday, July 01, 2004
Bill Bush
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

With their enrollments dipping because of a mushrooming number of charter schools,
the Columbus Public Schools announced yesterday that they are studying creation of
their own charter school — a 200-student operation to open Downtown in fall 2006.

Though many questions — including which Downtown site to use — remain
unanswered, Superintendent Gene Harris said the district is in talks with COSI
Columbus to house the new school.

It’s not yet clear what the charter school’s specialty would be, officials said.

The goal is to stem the tide of students fleeing the district for charter schools, which
numbered 4,000 statewide by the end of this past school year, and possibly to attract
new students.

The risk is that the new school would be governed by an independent board — not the
Columbus Board of Education — and that it might further drain students from existing
district buildings.

"We believe that we can attract kids back," Harris said after a special board meeting
where the plan was announced. "I’m not in the business of keeping schools open
because we’ve always kept them open."

The project will be seeded by a $200,000 planning grant from the Coalition of
Essential Schools.

The proposal calls for creating a school serving two grade levels — fifth and ninth —
because these levels represent the largest out-of-district-transfer and dropout rates,
respectively.

The school would add grade levels until, by fall 2009, it would break into a middle
school and a high school. One would be moved to a new site.

The COSI building wasn’t designed to include a school, but that shouldn’t represent a
problem, said Kathryn Sullivan, president of the science and industry museum.

The struggling museum announced in April that it would cut 67 jobs, close its doors two
days a week, reduce top administrators’ pay and pare exhibits to save $5 million a year.
In March, voters rejected an 0.5-mill property-tax levy that would have helped support
COSI.

Sullivan said the charterschool plan is still in its infancy, but that a school would fit with
COSI’s educational mission.

Harris said she is committed to a Downtown location for the new school but said the
COSI marriage might not work.

"What we don’t want to be bound by is the site," Harris said. "COSI is at the table,
along with Ohio State and others, but we really want the curriculum to determine the
site.

"What we know is that we’d like to do it Downtown."

The charter school is the second being considered by Columbus Public Schools.
Officials hope to open the Columbus Virtual Education Option Program, an
Internet-based school, this fall for up to 125 students who have passed proficiency tests
but lack credits to graduate.

The district’s partner in the charter-school idea is the Ohio branch of the
Coalition of Essential Schools, a national reform group. The chapter is run by
Dan Hoffman, a former principal at Reynoldsburg High School.

The district will qualify for an additional $200,000 grant to be used for professional
development after the school opens its doors.