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Heading into summer and the future
Kudos to the Marion Star for providing this lovely coverage of Urban Community School’s recent graduation ceremonies. “I never gave up and was committed to finishing high school,” said one student speaker. “There were lots of ups and downs along the way, but I managed, with the help of my teachers and family, to keep going and turn in my exams. It wasn’t always easy, but I did it.” Congratulations to all the graduates. Meanwhile, summer activities are getting underway at the Academy of Urban Scholars High School in Youngstown. Tomorrow is their big Summer Bash, a day of fun and education for students, families, staff, and the whole community.
Big changes ahead for these folks too
We’ll have fuller coverage of charter school-related provisions in the new state budget when we return after July 4, but for today let’s talk about big changes ahead for the State Board of Education. The budget included a reduction in size for the board, cutting the number of members from the current 19 down to five, including the elimination of all elected members, and ultimately comprising only gubernatorial appointees. Importantly, the five members would represent specific constituencies, including a member from the charter school sector. A nice change indeed. This upgrade will likely happen slowly, as current elected members will be allowed to finish out their terms, which could take until 2028 unless they choose to leave sooner on their own.
Sticking with the theme…
Staying on the topic of big changes, the educational ecosystem across Indiana will look very different in the fall than it did just a few months ago, thanks to a flurry of policy changes enacted by the state legislature during its recent session. In Indianapolis, for example, the newly-created Local Education Alliance—a mayorally-appointed commission overseeing education which includes district and charter schools on equal footing—held its first meeting this week. The goal: greater efficiency among the myriad schools for the benefit of the students who choose them. The alliance plans to spend its first six months reviewing such topics as facility use, transportation networks, and funding overlaps. But it may not be the smoothest of sailing at first. “When you’re talking about things like collaboration or coherence or using resources,” said Indy Public Schools superintendent Aleesia Johnson while speaking at the meeting, “that means that everyone is likely going to have to give something up.” Prior to that meeting, IPS held its own community conversations where it seemed that district families were gloomy and district officials had not yet caught up with all the changes required of them by the new laws. Could be a bumpy summer.
“More traps to kill charter schools”
The organization Illinois Policy summed up recent moves by the Chicago Board of Education, as we have been following here, to try and cut off charter school expansion in the city. While all 21 schools whose charters were up for renewal were eventually approved, the approvals took far longer than usual, the renewal terms were shorter than in the past, the contracts included new language forcing schools to accept unionization efforts if they occur, and also incorporated limitations on where in the city school expansion could occur. Policy Analyst Hannah Schmid writes that the board and its allies in the teachers union are deliberately “creating instability” for students choosing charter schools and are “intentionally making it very tough for charter schools to plan for their futures when those futures are only two years away.”
Beautiful and historic, but also underused and in need of maintenance
Miami city commissioners would like to give an underused theater they own in the downtown area to Sports Leadership Arts Management, a charter school connected with rapper Pitbull, for much-needed expansion space. It’s a beautiful and historic place but expensive to maintain, long-underused, and in need of a lot of work to reach its full potential. Charter school opponents are rallying around the aesthetic and historic significance of the building—and ignoring all the other factors—in an attempt to block the ownership change. City Manager Arthur Noriega responded by saying, “People want the opportunity to reactivate the space the way it should be activated, but nobody has really had the resources to do that — now we have an opportunity to accomplish that.” And commissioner Joe Carollo said of the charter school leaders: “I think these are people that have shown that every project they take, they make a success out of it… They’ve got the pockets to accomplish this.” Despite all this support, however, the opponents are winning thus far, as the ownership transfer has been tabled until at least next month’s commission meeting.
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