Lawmakers were given another week to review proposed tweaks to Alabama's charter school law in the House education policy committee today, after the bill's sponsor, Rep. Terri Collins, R-Decatur, said the state department of education is working to clarify confusion about funding for charter schools.
Collins, who chairs the committee, sponsored HB245, the first bill to alter the 2015 law authorizing operation of public charter schools in Alabama.
Opponents questioned why changes are needed when the first charter school hasn't even opened yet.
The changes were needed, Collins said, because authorizers and applicants have run into problems when processes and timelines weren't well defined. Additionally, the mechanism for funding public charter schools is confusing. Collins said state department of education officials have committed to providing the necessary language on funding by Friday to allow committee members to study it over the weekend.
Emily Schultz, state policy director for the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, serves in an advisory role for lawmakers and the state department of education. Schultz said the changes were needed to "clarify processes to ensure that we are supporting the opening of quality public charter schools through a transparent authorizing process."
The proposed changes strengthen accountability, Schultz said, and provide a smoother path for authorizers and applicants.
It's the very strength of that law that made committee members and participants in the public hearing held during the meeting question whether it was a good idea to change it.
During the hearing, even traditional charter school opponents, such as the Alabama Education Association agreed the original law provides strong accountability.
Though the AEA is philosophically opposed to charter schools, Ashley McLain said, "if we're going to have charter schools, we want to have high-quality charter schools. The charter school bill we currently have gives us assurance of that."
Committee member Rep. Danny Garrett, R-Trussville, asked whether the changes were really incentives to attract more charter school applicants, a claim Collins denied. Collins reiterated the changes were necessary because of problems already encountered by authorizers and applicants.
Jeremiah Newell of the Mobile Area Education Foundation will open the state's first public charter school in Mobile in August. During the hearing, Newell said he was unsure what to budget for operations for the school as there were no numbers to work from. When he obtained official numbers from the state department, the amount was less than he aniticipated, and it caused problems. "If we can't know what budget we're going to operate off of, how can we serve our kids," Newell asked.
Two representatives from charter hopeful STAR Academy in Birmingham spoke at the hearing. Birmingham City's board of education recently denied STAR Academy's applications to open a charter school in Birmingham because the Academy did not meet the requirement stated in Birmingham's request for proposals to operate a dual language Spanish immersion school.
Thomas Beavers, pastor at New Rising Star Church in Birmingham, criticized Birmingham's narrow request, saying, "Our kids need to be able to read, write and do arithmetic." Beavers said that is a high need in their community, but by specifying such a narrow proposal, "they've taken the bill and turned it upside down in order to keep charters out."
STAR Academy plans to appeal to the Commission.
Proposed changes to the law encourage local authorizers to state a preference for programming, but should not automatically deny an applicant that doesn't meet that preference. One opponent of the proposal called that the "Birmingham clause."
Rep. Barbara Drummond, D-Mobile, said she is concerned that public charter schools take money away from traditional public schools. "Every time I look around, we're taking more and more money," she said.
Drummond asked why changes are needed when no data has been collected on whether charter schools work. She said it sounded like some of the changes were proposed because of a problem in Birmingham, and didn't want students in Mobile to suffer because of that.
Rep. Anthony Daniels, D-Huntsville, said his concern is that lawmakers haven't "introduced anything to improve the quality of public education. We keep focusing on these alternative methods," adding, "as lawmakers, we have a responsibility to help improve the quality of public education because that is what has been around for a long time."
Daniels asked, "How do we prop up our public schools?" He said public schools shouldn't have to operate with "one hand tied behind their back" when charter schools are given flexibility.
Collins countered Daniels' claim that public schools want the same flexibility, saying, "A lot of the regulations that you're talking about are ones that the school systems are not wanting to get rid of." Collins said the original Alabama Accountability Act gave school districts flexibility.
To date, only 26 of Alabama's 137 school districts have received approval from the state department of education for innovations they've requested and made available through the flexibility afforded school districts in the 2013 Accountability Act.
The committee will meet next week to consider the changes to the language about funding. Collins told members she is open to changing other language if need be.
"We know we need to get this right," Collins said.
Proposed changes
The state board of education asked to be removed from the duty of appointing future members of the commission, Collins said, so these changes remove the board from that duty.
The bill authorizes the Alabama Public Charter School Commission to employ staff. [The proposed budget authorizes a $200,000 allocation to the Commission.]
The public charter school commission can consider an appeal from an applicant rejected by a local authorizer based on the merits of the application, notwithstanding the local authorizer's preference stated in their request for proposal.
The bill sets September 1 as the deadline for the state department of education to publish a list of all local boards of education who have completed registration as charter authorizers. Currently, only four districts have registered to serve as authorizers: Athens City, Birmingham City, Greene County, and Macon County. If a local board is not listed as an authorizer, a charter school applicant can apply directly to the statewide Commission. Collins said this allows charter school applicants to know ahead of time which authorizer they need to contact.
The bill calls for a 12-month planning period prior to opening a charter school, because it takes about that long to open one, Collins said.
Local authorizers must report denial of an application to the state department of education within seven, rather than 30, days.
Contract negotiations between the authorizer and the charter school operator are extended from 60 to 120 days in case the extra days are needed, Collins said.
Language in the bill related to desegregation orders will be eliminated, because the federal government controls desegregation orders, Collins said.
Funding will be disbursed to public charter schools on a monthly, rather than a quarterly basis. All public schools in Alabama currently receive funding on a monthly basis.
Other charter school news
The process for appeal was not spelled out in the 2015 law. The state department's Office of Public Charter Schools published a timeline and process for appeal on Tuesday.
On Friday, Feb. 24, the state department of education is hosting an all-day symposium at their offices in Montgomery for those who want to learn more about charter schools in Alabama.
Logan Searcy coordinates information in the state's public charter schools office and said, "The purpose of the symposium is to inform stakeholders about charter schools, charter school authorizing, and charter school development."
More than 100 people have registered for the symposium. Contact Searcy at lsearcy@alsde.edu if you want to register to attend.
Note: this post was updated on 2/23/2017 at 10 a.m. to correctly identify Rep. Anthony Daniels as being from Huntsville and to clarify comments made by Jeremiah Newell regarding budget numbers.