Save Our Public Schools coalition
fights effort to lift cap on charters
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Photo by Eric Haynes
By Laura Barrett
R etired Chicopee teacher Diane Jensen- Olszewski is deeply concerned about the impact of charter schools on early education
and other services in districts such as hers.
Chicopee is losing more than $1.7 million to
charters this year.
“I think about how a lot of communities don’t
have full-day kindergarten, so parents have to pay
for the other half of the day,” Jensen-Olszewski said
during an interview at a recent MTA event. “Schools
lose programs. They lose wraparound services. If we
had more money staying in the public school system,
we could give all kids a really good start.”
Jensen-Olszewski captured why a growing
number of parents, educators and other residents
of communities across Massachusetts are pushing
back against the latest attempts to greatly expand
the number of privately run, publicly funded
charter schools that are not accountable to the local
taxpayers who are required to pay for them.
Seeking to lift the cap, the pro-charter forces
have filed a lawsuit, are pushing legislation and
have collected signatures for a ballot initiative. It is
likely the issue will be resolved at the ballot box in
November.
Charters are already draining more than $400
million from public schools this year, and lifting the
cap would cause that number to skyrocket.
The MTA has joined the Save Our Public
Schools campaign, a coalition of education, parent
and community groups fighting the ballot initiative.
If passed, the measure could eventually lead to the
loss of billions of dollars in public school funding
to charters, along with thousands of public school
educators’ jobs. The initiative would:
Even Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, a charter
school supporter, said of the ballot question,
“It would wreak havoc on municipal finances,
undermining our ability to support either new or
Walsh has good reason to be concerned. Moody’s
Investors Service noted in 2013: “Charter schools can
pull students and revenues away from districts faster
than the districts can reduce their costs. As some of
these districts trim costs to balance out declining
revenues, cuts in programs and services will further
drive students to seek alternative institutions,
including charter schools.”
It’s a downward spiral that the charter industry
promotes by frequently referring to “failing” public
schools. The Save Our Public Schools campaign
is thus not only fighting the cap lift, but also the
pernicious narrative that schools run by private,
corporate-style boards and staffed by employees at
will who don’t have to be licensed are better able to
serve the interests of low-income children than are
public schools.
Paid for by communities
The debate in Massachusetts centers on
Commonwealth charter schools, the type of charters
approved and overseen by the state but paid for
by the communities whose students attend them.
They operate free of many state and school district
regulations, and their employees do not have rights
and benefits under the district’s collective bargaining
agreement.
In 1993, the first 25 Commonwealth charters
were allowed under the omnibus Education Reform
Act. Their primary purpose was to be laboratories of
innovation. Four years later, the cap was raised to 37.
Three years after that, it climbed to 72.
Franklin Education Association President Donna Grady spoke during the launch of the Save Our
Public Schools campaign on March 16. Worcester City Councilor Khrystian E. King, center, and
Marlena Rose, coordinator for the Boston Education Justice Alliance, at right in the front row,
also addressed the crowd.
bill: Charter schools opened in the lowest-performing
districts don’t count against the cap of 72, and the
amount of funding those districts can lose to charters
was raised from 9 percent to 18 percent of district
spending.
Just six years later, the charter industry is back
again, demanding yet another “compromise” —
essentially seeking no effective cap.
The members of the Save Our Public Schools
campaign have said “enough.”
“Any cap lift portends the destabilization of
public education in a profound way,” said MTA
President Barbara Madeloni. “Charters are parallel
school systems, using public funds for private
interests. Public education is about every child — not
a few. For the charter industry, ‘compromise’ means
forcing us to agree to divert even more funds from
our public schools by threatening to take the issue
to the ballot. This year, we and our allies are saying,
‘We are done compromising. Let the voters decide.’
We think the voters, once educated, will be outraged
by what charters are doing to public education in
Massachusetts.”
Although charter schools currently enroll only
about 4 percent of students statewide, their impact on
cash-strapped districts can be substantial.
