Are charter schools the new bargaining chips in parent/school board negotiations? It would seem so. After the Palo Alto school board told parents that, sorry, they weren't going to start a Mandarin-immersion program, the parents threatened to start their own Mandarin charter school. The superintendent figured that a charter school, of which Palo Alto currently has none, would cost the district $1,100 to $5,000 per student (legal bills would be extra). Money talks; the school board reversed itself and the immersion program was approved. School board candidate Melissa Caswell wasn't pleased, though. She said starting charter schools just to appeal to affluent parents isn't "in the spirit of why charter schools were established." No? Are charter schools not a way for parents, of any income bracket, to exercise choice, especially when school officials aren't meeting a perceived need? Certainly authorizers shouldn't approve charter schools willy-nilly. But giving power to the parents is what school choice is all about.
"Charter schools loom large over cushy districts," by Patty Fisher, San Jose Mercury News, September 24, 2007
