Lawmakers this session might give would-be charter schools a third path to authorization – and charters in general a substantial bump in funding to boot.
Right now, only local school boards and the state board of education have the right to authorize charter school applicants to open up shop in New Hampshire. But House Bill 505 would establish a commission of political appointees with the power to authorize and oversee charters.
Its prime sponsor, Rep. Glenn Cordelli, thinks charter school applicants have been wrongly denied in the past and that this commission could give them a fairer shake.
“I believe that we need a third authorizing option for authorizing charter schools,” he said.
But the Tuftonboro Republican also believes the bill would strengthen accountability for charter schools. The bill would require the commission to file annual reports about the performance of the charter schools it authorizes, and follow the standards set by the National Association of Charter School Authorizers in approving and monitoring charters.
State law doesn’t currently require authorizers to report annually on how well charters are doing, but charters do publicly report their student test scores on standardized tests.
Not everybody thinks the bill is a good idea. Carl Ladd, the executive director of the New Hampshire School Administrators Association, has come out against the proposal, arguing it would create an unecessary new layer of bureaucracy making big decisions for the wrong reasons.
He takes issue with the fact that the nine-member commission would be made up of members appointed by the governor, House speaker, and Senate president, and that members could be voted off for “any cause” by a two-thirds vote on the commission.
“This proposed membership and process severely politicizes what should be a decision based on educational and fiscal merit rather than the politics of the day,” Ladd wrote in testimony to the House Education Committee.
A superintendent who helped start a charter school in the North Country, Ladd is an unlikely foe for a pro-charter bill. But he said he worries the bill could upend a thoughtful process he thinks works well.
Noting that the proposed legislation would allow the commission to “receive and expend gifts, grants, and donations of any kind from any public or private entity,” he believes it could allow for outside influence to corrupt the process.
“That is clearly an invitation for corporate and for-profit organizations, as well as wealthy single donors, to insert themselves into our public education system in a manner unprecedented by history and tradition,” Ladd said in his testimony.
Meanwhile, House Bill 584 would tie state aid to charters to the average per-pupil spending in the state. Currently, charters are set to get $6,735 per student in grades one through 12 in each year of the upcoming biennium. The bill would instead give charters 55 percent of however much public schools are currently spending per student.
Payments to the Virtual Learning Academy Charter would not change.
That would mean charters would get $8,196 per student in 2018 and $8,455 in 2019, according to Legislative Budget Assistant estimates. All told, the proposal would cost the state an extra $13.9 million for those two years.
The funding and commission bills both have backing from the Republican chairmen on the Senate and House education committees. House Majority Leader Dick Hinch is co-sponsoring the funding bill, but hasn’t weighed in on the commission proposal yet.
The state board hasn’t taken a position on HB 505 yet, but its chairman, Tom Raffio, plans to request a presentation about it at their Feb. 9 meeting.
(Lola Duffort can be reached at 369-3321 or lduffort@cmonitor.com.)