Despite an upbeat Education Week story highlighting the support of big-city mayors - including D.C.'s Anthony Williams - for charter schools as a way of transforming urban education, the charter movement continues to hit road blocks in the form of moratoria, caps, budget restrictions, and referendum defeats (see "Education wrap re-wrap" above.) This week, the Buffalo board of education approved a one-year moratorium on district-sponsored charters and established a task force to study the fiscal impact of such schools upon the district. Further east, the Albany Common Council is going to ask the state legislature to approve a temporary moratorium on charter schools in that city. Council member Shawn Morris, who supports the moratorium, argues that Albany has "a disproportionate share of charter schools compared to other cities in the state, without any form of evaluation of their impact on the community." And, as an article in the Miami Herald this week notes, the four-fold increase in charter schools in Miami-Dade County in the last three years has the district's chief school auditor warning "about the district's increased financial exposure." As we noted last week (read it here), this is more proof that "the message from the system is, yes, let's have charters, so long as they don't represent real competition to us or threaten our chokehold on education."
"1-year moratorium on charter schools OK'd," by Peter Simon, Buffalo News, October 28, 2004
"City Mayors turn to charter schools," by Caroline Hendrie, Education Week, October 27, 2004 (registration required)
"Dade schools feel pinch of competitors," by Daniel A. Ricker, Miami Herald, November 1, 2004 (registration required)