Tulsa board should have nixed charter school suit

[Double A]

Tulsa board should have nixed charter school suit

The Oklahoman Editorial
Published: December 26, 2008

TULSA’S school board members had a great opportunity last week to swallow their pride and back off a misguided lawsuit targeting charter schools. Instead, they’ll keep playing Scrooge.


A year ago, the board voted to sue the state over the 1999 law that authorized the state’s first charter schools. Proponents of charter schools convinced lawmakers to curtail the number of districts that could sponsor charter schools, allowing for the operation of only a few districts in the Oklahoma City and Tulsa metropolitan areas. The school board’s primary argument is that limitation makes the law unconstitutional.

The legal gobbledygook glazes over what the lawsuit is really about: money and who’s getting it.

The law doesn’t give districts much wiggle room to turn down charter school proposals as long as they meet the criteria outlined in the law. How a charter school will impact a school district’s overall finances isn’t to be taken into account. That’s a long-festering sore point with some school administrators.

Charter schools are public schools but are free from much of the bureaucratic red tape that often hamstrings more traditional schools. They’re funded on a per-student basis, and the charter school sponsor is allowed to keep a percentage to cover administrative costs. As charter school enrollment has swelled, some public school officials have grown increasingly agitated at the amount of taxpayer money being directed at charter schools. The public needn’t shed tears.

Charter schools exist because many parents and educators aren’t happy with what they see at traditional schools. Some are in direct competition with traditional public schools; others have programs that serve students who have struggled in a traditional education setting. That’s not to say all charter schools are perfect and a great fit for every student. But we believe the marketplace will sort the good from the bad, and parents ultimately will vote with their children’s feet.

Charter schools were designed to be incubators for new ideas that could be replicated. Instead, we tend to hear excuses on why some of their innovations won’t work in regular schools. Even Oklahoma City, which has been a more welcoming environment for charter schools than Tulsa, has had tense and sometimes hostile relationships with charter schools.

We said when the lawsuit was filed that it was a waste of money. It still is. Schools â€" and school boards â€" would do better to embrace the competition as an opportunity for students to receive a better education and a challenge to do better. That’s not too much to ask.

[buck]

Regardless about how people on this forum feel about the charter school issue, I think most of us would agree that the Oklahoman needs to stick with worring about Oklahoma City issues and not so much what the Tulsa school board is up too.

[Hoss]

quote:Originally posted by buck

Regardless about how people on this forum feel about the charter school issue, I think most of us would agree that the Oklahoman needs to stick with worring about Oklahoma City issues and not so much what the Tulsa school board is up too.

Any chance that rag of newspaper down the pike gets to take a jab a her little brother it will do.

OKC...where you can see ALL of Oklahoma's tax dollars at work with the 3-28 Thunder.

[Red Arrow]

quote:Originally posted by Hoss

OKC...where you can see ALL of Oklahoma's tax dollars at work with the 3-28 Thunder.

Maybe it's good that we don't have to watch our taxe dollars being wasted up close.  (Just trying to make lemonade out of lemons.)

[MDepr2007]

quote:Originally posted by buck

Regardless about how people on this forum feel about the charter school issue, I think most of us would agree that the Oklahoman needs to stick with worring about Oklahoma City issues and not so much what the Tulsa school board is up too.

And the TW should do the same about other areas?
And neither should report on D.C.

[RecycleMichael]

"God made the idiot for practice. Then he made the school board."

Mark Twain

[RecycleMichael]

Oklahoma is 46th in spending per student on education.

Oklahoma has 537 school districts and only 77 counties.

I don't know much about charter schools, but wouldn't they just create more schools and more administration expenses and take more money away from the other underfunded schools?

[Jonette]

In my opinion.


The Oklahoman has made it their business to try to call the shots around Tulsa..


When the OSU Medical Center drama was hot and heavy they had an article stating it should be closed and let to die. State taxes should not be used for this purpose, but then we have the great OU Medical Center. OKC also has a sport team that's being paid for with state taxes and thats supposed to be okay.


It just enforces the idea that OKC just wants to remind us that although we are Tulsa and considered a major city in the state, we are not the Capitol of the state.

They seem to like slapping the smaller sibling around.


When some thing happens around Tulsa then The OKLAHOMAN just dumps their opinion on us and we are just supposed to take it for Holy and bow down.

Oh and the TW reporting on D.C. is not equal and cannot be compared to OKC reporting on Tulsa, not the same at all. It just seems that when the
Oklahoman reports on Tulsa's struggles they really don't seem to be reporting in support of positive resolutions to those struggles. Let it die seems to be the direction taken on so many subjects.


The Thunder=====makes me nauseated.



I will shut up now.




 [:O]

[Jonette]

quote: Originally posted by:RecycleMichael

I don't know much about charter schools, but wouldn't they just create more schools and more administration expenses and take more money away from the other underfunded schools?

Thank You Very Much,

We already have so many under performing schools in the state, lets just take some money away from them, although throwing money at problems hasn't always worked, we know taking money away from them sure doesn't help.

[rwarn17588]

quote:Originally posted by Jonette




We already have so many under performing schools in the state, lets just take some money away from them, although throwing money at problems hasn't always worked, we know taking money away from them sure doesn't help.

Thank you. I never understood that "throwing money at it didn't work, so maybe impoverishing would" stance.

[Double A]

quote:Originally posted by rwarn17588

quote:Originally posted by Jonette




We already have so many under performing schools in the state, lets just take some money away from them, although throwing money at problems hasn't always worked, we know taking money away from them sure doesn't help.

Thank you. I never understood that "throwing money at it didn't work, so maybe impoverishing would" stance.

I am not at all surprised by these typical, irrational, uneducated responses. I guess it's just human nature to fear what you don't understand.

You are all very misguided about how charter schools work. Magnet schools take more money away from other schools than charter schools, because they do not pay an administrative fee for nothing like charter schools do. At least with charter schools, the district could choose, if they so desired, to direct the administrative fees they collect back to the schools where these children would be attending if they weren't enrolled at a charter school. Under No Child Left Behind parents can transfer their children out of low performing schools. I would hope you hold as much, if not more antipathy for Magnet schools and No Child Left Behind Transfers as you do for charter schools because they take more money from under performing schools than charter schools ever have or will.

BTW, I've met many people who would otherwise be sending their children to private schools, if they did not have the option of enrolling their children in charter schools. Charter schools actually help keep more children in the public schools system who otherwise wouldn't be.

One more thing, the meat and potatoes of this issue is the fact this lawsuit is a waste of time and money. It doesn't take a law degree to see that this lawsuit is going down in flames. The school board should know damned well that an almost identical issue(Oklahoma Municipal Employee Collective Bargaining Act) was argued on the same grounds all the way to the Oklahoma Supreme Court and was ultimately found to be constitutional. If you are so concerned about schools losing money, why no outrage about TPS burning money on a bad lawsuit?

P.S. Bates has more info about this on his blog.

[RecycleMichael]

The school district keeps 5% of the money paid per student by the state and pay the charter school the 95% remaining.

These charter schools are not legal in most counties and only exist in Tulsa and Oklahoma counties. Last year, the administrative costs charter schools paid (that you say are so punitive) averaged $4,600 per school or $25 per day per school.  

[buck]

Well I am a teacher and work with someone who used to work in a charter school. All the administration did when he was there was whine and complain about how TPS shortchanged them. Yet he was paid about $3-5,000 less than the state minimum for a salary. They had to beg them to purchase a class set of new textbooks, and they would not spend any money for extracurricular activities so they were constantly having to do fundraisers to cover costs. The school was run by foreigners who had no administrative experience. The principals were teachers who got promoted, and there was very high turnover, with most of the foreign teachers leaving after a couple years to go home or to go to Texas to work in charter schools there. Many of the non-foreign teachers either left to better jobs or ran afoul of the administration and were fired. This same school recently had in incident that was in the news where a 17 year old boy was accused of raping an 11 year old girl.
Michael Bates' views on charter schools and vouchers are very well known, so I would not consider him to be much of a source. "Double A" I would be curious to know where your "many people" send their kids to school, either to the one I mentioned or to the one who on their website makes it clear they do not have any special education teachers on staff.

[buck]

It's interesting too that you bring up a case about collective barganing since teachers at charter schools do not have this option, they are at will employees. My collegue had signed a contract in April but was called in two weeks before the start of school and was told the board that runs the school had recinded the contract. In the contract it did say that it could be terminated at any time by either party for any reason with two weeks notice. So instead of informing him in April that he would not be back they wait unti two weeks before school, which put him in a bind to find another job. Pretty crappy treatment if you ask me.

With all that being said, I'd say the biggest advantage of a charter school is smaller class sizes and maybe specialization in a certain area. In some states charters actually pay more than a regular school which makes sense since I would think they would want to attract the best teachers. Not so much here though. Back to the lawsuit issue, I think it may be a moot point since charters can be sponsored by Universities now. The Brown school is sponsored by Langston and I heard the others are trying to get sponsored by OSU. If that happens then TPS would be clear of them and those schools would be left to themselves.

[MDepr2007]

There is more to the Dove story than the local news will cover Buck....It makes for a better story the way it's been reported.

Anyway just think if Charters could get the help that magnet schools get that also takes away from funding of our normal failling schools.
Why is it ok to take money away from other schools for the magnet schools?