Officials on edge over charter school

LYNN – There will be a public hearing in City Hall Chambers on the Fenix Charter School, which is seeking to open in Lynn and will likely only heighten the already tense relationship school officials have with the alternative education systems.”It’s a tough, complex issue,” said Lynn Teachers Union President Brant Duncan. “Everyone wants the best for kids but this is an extreme cause for concern.”Roughly $11 million was redirected from the School Department’s budget via state and federal funding this year to pay for public school students who are attending charter schools. If the Fenix is approved along with KIPP Academy’s planned expansion, $15 million could be added to that number, Duncan explained.Per pupil spending is roughly $12,000; multiply that by 1,247 students and it comes up just shy of $15 million.School Committee member Patricia Capano said that is why she worries when new charter schools pop up because it has the potential to be a financial burden on the city.”I don’t like pulling ?student versus money,’ but until they come up with a better formula I feel there’s no choice,” she said.Capano said she would never question a parent’s decision to do what’s best for his or her child, but the state formula that takes money away from traditional public schools for every student who attends a charter school puts both entities on the defensive and that isn’t good for anyone.The argument has been made that if a student isn’t attending one of the traditional schools then the loss of funding should be a wash but both Duncan and Capano said it’s not that simple.”That’s an argument at its weakest link,” Capano said.Duncan said if 65 students shifted from middle school to a charter school it would represent nearly $800,000.”We’ll still be running three middle schools though, so where does the money come from?” he said. “We’re still staffing them with principals and teachers, we still want libraries but when we pull kids out the money is pulled out with them.”Charter schools were designed to be laboratories where creative educational ideas could be explored and then shared with other schools but Duncan said that hasn’t happened.Last week a group of new and veteran teachers gathered in the Teachers Union hall for a classroom management class. Duncan called the program a good tool for new teachers and a good refresher for veteran teachers, and is just one of the professional development programs offered through the year. He also pointed out the added benefit of teachers being able to collaborate and share their best practices – something that doesn’t happen with charter schools.The Department of Education’s website states that charter schools have increased freedom coupled with increased accountability, but again both Capano and Duncan say that is not true.The state has developed license requirements for traditional public school teachers and a new time-consuming teacher evaluation process, neither of which apply to charter schools.”If the evaluations are that important why don’t they apply to everyone?” Duncan said.According to Duncan, 96 percent of Lynn’s traditional public school teachers are licensed and the other four percent are working toward their required licenses but only 60 percent of KIPP Academy teachers are licensed.Duncan said it would also be nice if the charter schools were required to serve what they refer to as the special population in a proportion equal to the traditional schools. Special population can mean anything from students with special needs to English language learners.Shoemaker Elementary School has a strong autistic program at its school but you don’t see programs like that at KIPP, he said.Another puzzlement is that traditional schools have a School Committee that oversees the tax dollars being spent by the schools but charter schools are not beholden to the School Committee.”They get tax dollars but where is the local oversight?” Duncan asked.Duncan and Capano both said they have brought their con