Pearl Creek charter will widen gap between 'haves and have-nots'
The Alaska State Board of Education, made up of Dunleavy appointees, will vote on whether to approve the Pearl Creek charter school over the objections of the Fairbanks North Star Borough School Board.
Here is the 620-page packet on the matter. The board begins its quarterly two-day meeting Tuesday in Juneau and is set to vote on the appeal Wednesday.
In a Facebook posting Sunday, Christina Turman, one of the leading advocates for establishing the Pearl Creek STEAM School, said she hears two major arguments against the proposal.
One is that the district can’t afford it and that opening the school would harm other kids.
The second argument is that it “would be a precedent for losing local control.”
The school would cost $2.7 million a year. There is a credible argument to be made that this will decrease services at other schools. I disagree with Turman’s claim that the school board has acted in bad faith.
As to local control, the elected school board unanimously denied the charter application last fall. The unelected state school board, whose members will not have to deal with the budget consequences, is under pressure from Dunleavy to approve any and all charter schools. This is a prescription for losing local control.
“Democratically elected local leaders with deep knowledge of the school district, its budget and operational challenges, the community, and the local context in which the proposed school would operate are uniquely well suited to understanding what success in that specific local context would look like and whether a charter application should be granted. The desire of a community group to open and operate a school does not relieve a school board of its duties to other students or its obligation to oversee the budget of the district as a whole,” the district told the state board.
“The school board also found that the plans in the application did not demonstrate a likelihood of success, including because there had been inadequate planning by the APC (Academic Planning Committee) and a likelihood that the proposed school would not be able to afford the costs of the educational programming that the APC indicated it hoped to provide,” the district said in a February 27 filing.
The school district says that Education Commissioner Deena Bishop “undermined the authority of the locally-elected School Board by rubberstamping an application that the School Board had appropriately found should not be approved.”
The district is correct that there are ambiguities in the application. The charter plan says the building can be maintained for $30,000 year, the district says. That number is at least $100,000 too low and it doesn’t take into consideration how deferred maintenance will become a bigger issue in time.
I hold Turman in high regard and I believe that she and the other promoters of this latest charter school plan have the best interests of their children and grandchildren at heart. I don’t question their motives, desires or dedication to seeking the best possible education.
I look at this situation differently than they do, however.
The Pearl Creek charter plan would exacerbate the growing gap in public education between the haves and have-nots. This trend is not a new one in Fairbanks.
I believe that nearly all of the charter schools in the Fairbanks area have tended to attract enrollment from families with higher incomes or families where the parents have the time, energy and ability to be directly involved in their children’s education. The ability to call on volunteers for many extras is one thing that sets the charter schools apart. The ability of parents to transport their kids to school and afford lunches is another.
The families who make the commitment to send their kids to charter schools and put in the volunteer hours see them as a good opportunity to improve the lives of their kids. No one can blame them for that.
I don’t believe there has been a study of this trend in Fairbanks or other Alaska cities, but I’d guess that the families enrolling their kids in charter schools are more likely to have had advanced education.
There are far fewer economically disadvantaged students in Alaska charter schools than neighborhood schools. There are also fewer students for whom English is a second language. Most charter schools do not have bus transportation for students, school lunch programs or other features that would make them more accessible to poor families.
I’m guessing, based on what I know about Fairbanks, that most charter school families have more flexibility built into their lives, whether it’s because of economic status, help from extended family members or the sense of mission that the best parents share.
I suspect the parents who don’t show up at parent-teacher conferences, don’t attend school events, don’t make their kids do homework, don’t volunteer at schools and don’t see themselves as key participants in education are far less likely to compete for a place in a charter school.
People with young children who struggle to survive in Fairbanks, and there are a lot of them, don’t have the money, time and/or energy to be charter school champions.
What concerns me is not that people are demanding a public school option that they think is superior to what is available elsewhere. I don’t blame anyone for that.
What concerns me is what happens to the culture of neighborhood schools where many families with the most resources, dedication and volunteer time choose the charter option. Volunteer help is required at charter schools. Neighborhood schools take what they can get. What happens when connections to school families weakens? What happens to those who are left behind?
Where are the groups of parents and grandparents organizing to demand lower class sizes and improvements in neighborhood schools throughout Fairbanks?
Where are the parents telling the governor and Legislature that the public schools need to be able to pay higher salaries to attract talented people to a field that is under constant assault from those who oppose public schools? Where are the parents organizing to get the borough more focused on public schools?
The proponents of the Pearl Creek charter school demanding improvements are building political momentum, but there is nothing comparable from other quarters in the community.
The Pearl Creek charter plan makes class size a priority, which is good.
The charter is proposing that kindergarten classes be kept to 18 students. The school district is proposing that neighborhood schools next year have kindergarten classes of 23 students, down from 26 this year.
The district is proposing that classes in grades 1 through 5 in neighborhood schools be reduced from 26 to 23 students next year, while the charter is proposing 22 students in grades 1 through 3 and 24 in grades 4 and 5.
Caroline Brown, a member of the school board budget committee, wrote a letter to the News-Miner saying that smaller class sizes, higher teacher salaries and bringing back music and art in neighborhood schools are only possible thanks to painful reductions made by closing five schools, including Pearl Creek.
“They will benefit all students in the district, not a single school,” Brown said.
“To add a school back is to go in the wrong direction. The PCSC (Pearl Creek STEAM Charter) will cost the district $2.7 million at a minimum every year. That annual cost would significantly reduce funds that could be used to restore programming, better compensate teachers, and strengthen all classrooms equitably,” she wrote.
There is a real possibility that starting this charter, with enrollment of up to 352 students, would lead to larger class sizes and perhaps the closure of another elementary school—possibly Woodriver, University Park or Anne Wien.
The gap between the haves and have-nots in Fairbanks schools is real. The Pearl Creek charter would make it wider.
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