Charter school funding mess gets worse

The state’s loss of $6-million in expected federal money could wipe out every free-standing public charter school by this time next year, including the Franklin Career Academy. That’s seven tiny, hard-won, entrepreneurial public schools launched by risk-taking parents and teachers without the backing of school districts, on behalf of kids who fail to thrive in a traditional classroom.

In early June, the feds denied the state a $5.2-million grant it was counting on to start new charter schools. A second blow came three weeks later. The feds told the state to return more than $1-million in unspent funds from a $7.2-million charter school seed grant in 2003. That leaves four fledgling schools to perish after two or three years of planning and sacrifice by their kids, board members and teachers. Those programs face a $3,000-per-student hole in their operating budgets just seven weeks before classes begin.

The Franklin program is in somewhat better shape. It won a year’s reprieve by getting lawmakers to divert $800,000 already in the budget to a new purpose: save that school and two sister charter schools in the Seacoast. But their only guaranteed state aid in the second year of the biennium is $4,000 per child.

Last week the Golden Domes News quoted Rep. Marjorie Smith, the House Finance chairman, saying the $800,000 would start going to the three schools right away. She thought she had resolved a bureaucratic holdup in sending out the checks. It turns out she was wrong. The Joint Legislative Fiscal Committee will decide July 24 how to disperse that funding. The line item is frozen until then.

All three schools might have to wait two more weeks to rehire their staff and teachers from last term. Those employees have been in limbo since early June. Plans to admit new students are clouded too, seven weeks before the start of classes.

“The budget amendment didn’t spell out the basis for distributing the money,” Smith explained. “But the schools will know July 24 how much each is getting and when. We skipped some essential steps in our eagerness to help them.”

Rep. Ken Weyler, R-Kingston, crafted an 11th hour state budget deal that imposed a moratorium on starting new charter schools for two years, in exchange for the rescue funding. Weyler was disappointed the programs have to wait a little longer. He sent Education Commissioner Lyonel Tracy an email last week explaining the intent of the House/Senate committee of conference on the budget.

“It was determined the distribution would be on a per-pupil basis,” Weyler wrote to Tracy. “These funds would give each school approximately another $4,000 per pupil in addition to the adequacy grant.”

Unfortunately, Weyler’s understanding never became part of the final law. But that glitch is small compared to the bad news facing the Equestrian Charter School in Rochester, the Surrey Village School in Surrey, the Strong Foundations School in Pembroke and a proposed Science and Technology school in or near Nashua. State School Board member Fred Bramante was afraid all four schools may quickly fail. He’s just as worried about Franklin 12 months from now.

“It’s an absolute shame if it all goes down,” Bramante said. “They’re doing great work.”

Bramante hopes the legislature finds long-term funding for charter schools next spring when it decides how much to pay for a Supreme Court-ordered adequate education for every public school kid in the state. Lawmakers passed a definition of adequacy last month that promises extra money for enhanced-need communities, those with low median incomes and a small tax base per school child. He thought free-standing charter schools would qualify for the extra help. They have zero tax base per student and no taxing powers.

“The whole issue is with the free-standing charter schools,” Bramante said. “The ones started by school districts (like the North Country Charter School in Littleton and Lancaster) have no problem.”

He said the National Education Association and many local school districts have lobbied against charter schools for years.

“The unions and the public schools see them as competition,” Bramante explained. “It’s protecting their turf.”

Asked if Franklin, Equestrian and the other five schools have grounds for lawsuits, Bramante said they probably would. “But the lawyers would have to take the case on a pay-me-if-you-win basis,” he said.

Susan Hollins, a consultant to several charter schools, said the situation is unthinkable. When she helped push for the $800,000 appropriation, she thought all the federal money would be available.

“It’s thrown them into chaos,” Hollins said. “They’ve worked so hard to build these schools, and now they get the rug pulled out from under them.”

They can still apply directly to the feds for support, she said. But it takes time and thought to craft a winning 50-page proposal in a tough national competition. That effort has to come out of plans for a strong launch to the academic year, Hollins said.

David Thomas, a spokesman for the US Department of Education, sent the Golden Dome News e-mail copies of both New Hampshire rejection letters last week. In one dated June 5, John Fiegel, the federal director of Parental Options and Information, said the state scored too low in the national competition for a second major grant. In a notice dated June 25, he said the state must return its unspent money from the 2003 award because its objectives were not met.

Hollins called that claim absurd. Four schools already in operation or set to launch this fall are losing about half their operating budgets this summer, she said, with almost no time to make up the shortfall.

Thomas refused to set up a Golden Dome interview with Fiegel or with his boss, Dean Kern. Neither of them returned separate phone calls to their direct lines. Thomas advised filing a written Freedom of Information request seeking specific facts. A reply to that query is still awaited.

Equestrian enrolls a few kids from as far north as the Lakes Region, because the regional school provides a nationally unique education for young riders and animal trainers. Hollins said the feds are even counting the school’s $13,000 planning grant two years ago as one of its three full years of grant eligibility. The typical federal grant provides around $3,000 per student per year, so Equestrian unknowingly left $75,000 or more on the table at the outset.

“No school would want to trade that kind of money for only $13,000,” Hollins said. “But I know the Equestrian school will make it, somehow.”