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by Julie Roy
WBTW News13
April 5, 2013

The Palmetto Gold and Silver Awards for the 2012-2013 school year showed six schools of the South Carolina Public Charter School District being recognized by the South Carolina Department of Education. The recognition comes as the District creates a new non-profit foundation to help support the schools of the District, including the nine additional schools that are scheduled to open in August 2013.

The Palmetto awards are based on the criteria in the statewide Accountability Manual as approved by the state Education Oversight Committee. Calhoun Falls Charter School received a gold award for general performance.

Palmetto Scholars Academy secured gold in general performance and gold for closing the achievement gap.

South Carolina Connections Academy, an online virtual school for K-12 students, merited a silver award for closing the achievement gap. This is the second year that South Carolina Connections Academy secured recognition. Also building on previous success, Spartanburg Charter School won gold for general performance and silver for closing the achievement gap. York Preparatory Academy won gold for general performance in the elementary grades and won silver for the middle school grades. Fox Creek High School won gold for the fourth time (that school transferred to the state-wide district from the Edgefield County School District in 2012).

“We are extremely pleased with these results,” stated South Carolina Public Charter School District Superintendent Wayne Brazell, Ph. D. “The families, teachers, and administrators in these schools have worked very hard, and I’m glad to see that these six school communities are being recognized,” he added. “We are really beginning to see the academic improvements in our public charter schools.”

The state nod comes after several national organizations have likewise noted success in the state’s charter school community. Earlier this year, the Center for Education Reform in Washington, D. C. announced that South Carolina had moved from seventeenth to twelfth in the nation regarding the best state public charter school laws.

That improved ranking came after the South Carolina General Assembly worked to enhance the state law last year, which Governor Haley signed last spring. In addition, the National Association of Charter School Authorizers noted the state-wide charter school district’s commitment to creating parent-choice options. “A high-performing charter school network is dependent on strong charter school authorizing. We commend the South Carolina Public Charter School District for working to fulfill the charter school promise by providing schools with the autonomy to innovate and the accountability necessary for charter schools to thrive,” comments Greg Richmond, president and CEO of NACSA, which supports and monitors public charter school authorizers.

The recent success arrives as the state-wide district launches a non-profit foundation. The board of that foundation hired the inaugural executive director on March 25, 2013. Daniel J. Cassidy is now leading the efforts of the SC Foundation for Public Charter Schools to build additional financial support for the schools of the state-wide district. “I’m very excited about furthering the well-being of these schools,” said Cassidy. “Our goal is to develop a support system for these schools that will empower the entire professional learning community in each school to provide the highest quality public education that they can.” Cassidy, who was appointed to federal education work by two previous US Presidents, is no stranger to public school choice and public charter schools, in particular. His efforts will reinforce the current seventeen schools of the District and the additional nine schools coming in August 2013.

South Carolina Public Charter School District Opening this year will be Lowcountry Leadership Charter School in Hollywood, South Carolina with a projectbased learning model and an emphasis on the heritage of the Lowcountry. The school will serve students in grades K-9 in its first year, adding additional grades over the next three years. Fairfield Charter School in the nearby West Ashley area of Charleston will be a blended school, offering both traditional classroom courses and virtual learning courses over the Internet to address the needs of local high school students who seek scheduling flexibility. Also in that area of the state will be Bridges Preparatory School in Beaufort; the school will offer grades K-6 initially and add a grade each year to become a K-12 school. Bridges will offer a curriculum that has a heavy emphasis on science, technology, engineering, and math, as presented through the Paideia model of whole-child learning.

Further north, Coastal Leadership Academy will be located in Myrtle Beach and offer grades 9-12. The school will provide a project-based learning approach with an emphasis on community service and stewardship of the environment.

In the Midlands area, two schools will join the state-wide district. Midlands Middle College will offer grades 11 and 12 on the Airport Campus of Midlands Technical College in Lexington. Midlands Middle College is becoming a public charter school after years of being a very successful regional choice program for several school districts in the area. In Columbia, the SC Science Academy plans to offer middle school grades and plans to add additional higher grade levels each year until offering grades 6-12. The school is committed to offer a curriculum with a heavy emphasis on science, technology, engineering, and math.

The Pee Dee Math, Science, and Technology Academy will be located in Lee County and serve students in K-2 in the initial year of school operations with additional grades being added until the school offers grades K-6.

In the Upstate, one new school will join the district. The GREEN Charter School will be located in Greenville and will offer grades K-6 in the initial year with additional grades being added until the school is a K-12 school.

The GREEN name is an acronym for Greenville Renewable Energy EducatioN. The school will offer a curriculum that is rich in math and science, especially as related to energy studies and renewable resources.

Cyber Academy of South Carolina will offer a fully online virtual school program beginning with students in grades K-9 and adding three more grade levels over the next three years. The fully virtual program will be available to students anywhere in South Carolina who have routine access to the Internet.

The SC Public Charter School District currently has approximately 11,500 students in seventeen schools, including more than 8,000 students who are learning virtually online in grades K-12. The virtual learning students can be found in every county of the state. Each charter school agrees to operate under a charter, which is a legal contract between the governing board of every school and the authorizing office. Accountability is an important aspect of the charter school approach. Like traditional public schools, charter schools do not charge tuition, and charter schools must address the entire state curriculum for all grade levels offered. Students are required to meet all state graduation requirements, and the schools are required to administer all state standardized testing, which is conducted under monitored conditions. All public charter schools are subject to state laws regarding professional licensure for school staff, though in public charter schools, such staff members are at-will employees of the school. This means that teachers can be released from employment without regard to complex hiring and dismissal practices. The schools are supervised by a governing board that includes parents and other members of the community who are ultimately responsible for the operations and performance of the school. Unlike a magnet school, public charter schools are open to all students as long as space permits.

For more information about the South Carolina Public Charter School District, please access the district web site at www.sccharter.org or call the district office at (803) 734-8322. That web site also has links to the web sites of the current schools of the district and to the schools opening in August 2013. For additional information about the newly created SC Foundation for Public Charter Schools, please access the foundation’s web site at www.fundingexcellence.org or call Dan Cassidy at (803) 546-4955.

by Susan McMillan
Morning Sentinel
March 29, 2013

The Legislature’s education committee on Monday will hear a handful of bills to cut school district payments to charter schools and require local voter approval of new charter schools.

Supporters of charter schools will rally at the State House before the committee hearings to oppose the bills, which one advocate said will jeopardize the establishment and operation of charter schools in Maine.

“These bills have really touched a nerve,” said Judith Jones, chairwoman of the Maine Association for Charter Schools. “It’s so mean-spirited. This legislation is designed to kill the schools.”

The bills’ sponsors said they are trying to protect local school districts, their students and the taxpayers who elect school board members and vote on local school budgets.

Charter schools are funded by money transferred from the school districts where their students live. They are privately operated, but are considered public schools and do not charge tuition.

Education and Cultural Affairs Committee Co-Chairman Rep. Bruce MacDonald said he and many of his fellow Democrats are concerned about budget cuts already facing traditional public schools and the state’s failure to live up to a voter mandate to pay 55 percent of public education costs.

“Our view in general is that we should be supporting the public schools up to that level at least before we start siphoning off money to other schools,” MacDonald said.

MacDonald, of Boothbay, sponsored one of the bills the committee will hear on Monday, L.D. 533, which would bar charter schools from receiving any of the local tax money raised by a school district.

Current law requires a school district to send its state-determined per-pupil allocation to a charter school for every resident student that enrolls there. The state subsidizes part of that allocation based on a district’s property valuation, then local taxes make up the rest.

MacDonald’s bill would require the school district to transfer only the portion of the per-pupil allocation funded by the state and not any money raised locally.

Another bill before the education committee on Monday would cut the amount transferred to half of the total per-pupil allocation, and school districts would not have to pay anything for students who previously attended a private school or were home-schooled. That bill is L.D. 889, sponsored by Paul Bennett, R-Kennebunk.

State subsidy covers most of the allocation for many school districts, but almost none of it for others. For low subsidy receivers, therefore, most of the money going to a charter school would be local tax dollars.

MacDonald said he is thinking of amending his bill to further reduce payments to charter schools because it would not be helpful to high subsidy receivers such as Skowhegan-based Regional School Unit 54. The district has paid about $450,000 to two charter schools this year.

MacDonald’s bill also targets virtual charter schools, which would receive only 20 percent of a district’s per-pupil allocation. He said he doesn’t want public money supporting the dubious success of out-of-state virtual education companies that have applied to run virtual charter schools in Maine.

“That’s my tax money as a local taxpayer going out into a private, for-profit corporation, and approved by the unelected state charter commission,” MacDonald said.

The Maine Charter School Commission has also shown skepticism about virtual charter schools, twice rejecting applications for two schools to be run by Virginia-based K12 Inc. and Maryland-based Connections Education. Several Democratic legislators are sponsoring bills this session to restrict the establishment or funding of such schools.

Maine law on funding charter schools is already considered weak by charter advocates such as the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools and the Center for Education Reform. It does not give charter schools access to the additional local funding voters can approve for school districts or state funds for facilities.

Jones, of the Maine Association for Charter Schools, expressed dismay at legislators’ attempts to cut charter school funding. The four charter schools that have been approved built their financial plans based on current law, Jones said, and it’s also a matter of equity for students attending different types of schools.

“If these were your grandchildren, would you want to see one grandchild have half the resources or less of another grandchild?” she said.

Rep. Karen Kusiak, D-Fairfield, said her bill, L.D. 1057, is not intended to harm charter schools, although it would end all transfers of money from school districts.

Kusiak’s bill would require the state to create a funding source for charter schools separate from the General Purpose Aid provided to school districts.

In addition, virtual charter schools would be barred from receiving any state or local funds except for students who enroll because of an educational disruption, such as homelessness, a medical emergency or foster care placement.

“I do not want to have local tax dollars go out of a school district’s jurisdiction or go out of (a school administrative unit) to support a school over which the taxpayers have no say — no way to address curriculum, instruction, class sizes, any of the kinds of things that local taxpayers do when they come to their local district budget meeting,” Kusiak said.

The bill recognizes the funding needs of charter schools, Kusiak said, and is intended to provide more money to go around.

Local control is also a concern for Rep. Justin Chenette, D-Saco. His bill, L.D. 1056, would make charter school authorizations by the Maine Charter School Commission subject to voter approval in a referendum in the municipalities where the school would recruit students.

Jones said that would make it almost impossible for charter schools to open and that local residents have a say during the public hearing portion of the existing application process and in the decision on where to enroll their children in school.

“People vote with their feet because this is an entirely voluntary model,” she said. “If they don’t like the option that has been created through the public charter school model, they don’t choose to send their kids. This is the real voting.”

Chenette said a public hearing isn’t sufficient because only a few people may attend, and the Charter School Commission is not bound by their input. He said he would support any charter school approved by local voters because then it’s clear what the community wants.

“This has nothing to do with whether you like or dislike charter schools,” he said. “This is all about local control.”