Marblehead board opposes charter school funding

MARBLEHEAD – Asked by the Department of Education for their input, the School Committee is opposing charter renewal for the Marblehead Community Charter Public School – but the vote to do so was not unanimous.Committee members Dick Nohelty, Amy Drinker, EuRim Chun and Patricia Blackmer voted to oppose the charter renewal Thursday evening in a joint letter. Committee member Jonathan Lederman, who enrolled a child at MCCPS this fall and served on the MCCPS Expansion Task Force, voted against the letter.Superintendent of Schools Paul Dulac and the Finance Committee have also been asked to write letters.Just under 100 of the MCCPS’s 230 children are from Marblehead, but their per-pupil cost is transferred from the town’s local aid to the MCCPS to fund the school, impacting the school and town budget.The School Committee letter says that financing method "siphoned just under $12 million from the town and school district’s budgets" in the past 15 years and generated some of the need for a successful Proposition 2 1/2 override in 2005.The committee points out that Marblehead is "a high-performing school district" and says that students at MCCPS receive a similar Grade 4-8 program to the district schools, only not as complete.The letter says charter schools are not held to fiscal accountability as town departments are and opposes the school’s proposed expansion to Grade 3, which the committee says is driven by financial need.Asked for his comments, Lederman said Monday that he voted against the letter because it is "full of inaccuracies, half-truths and misrepresentations."He said the Commonwealth reimburses the town 100 percent of the lost state aid in the first year a student attends MCCPS, 60 percent the second year and 40 percent the third year, so if a student attends the charter school for five years the town receives about 40 percent of the lost state aid."The reason we needed an override in 2005 is that the town was presented with raises and a budget we couldn’t afford," he said. "Had there been more fiscal responsibility we wouldn’t have needed an override."As for the student drain he said the town would have a hard time finding teachers and classroom space if all 90-plus Marblehead students returned to the district schools.Lederman said the Grade 3 expansion was driven by a desire to train students at an earlier age, not a need for more money, that the charter school fourth graders learn a foreign language and have separate teachers for science and math, and that there are 50 more Marblehead students on the 200-name charter school waiting list."If the students don’t go to the charter school, the charter school doesn’t get any money," he said. "That’s fiscal accountability."