CAMom,
Do you think that what your charter is doing can be exported? Originally the idea was for charter schools to experiment and come up with effective models of instruction that could be brought into the other public schools. It sounds like you have a great program, but it already can't serve the number of students who would like to participate. Is there some reason your local school district isn't spreading what you're doing to other schools?
Our model is actually exported from a school in Minnesota that is running very similarly. It would be easy to export each program individually but the school as a whole would be more complex. We have a huge facility paid for by bonds that allows us to do what we do. Because our school district is crumbling, we have many students who are not interested in our particular programs but want to come because it's a safe school with a decent education. It's a hard sell when you have an 8th grade boy who has to take ballet... but it happens to us every year.
I am not at all opposed to public charters if they are funded through the same formula as the other local schools, but I am deeply concerned about public money being spent on private charters/private schools. Don't get me wrong, many public schools need a lot of work learning to effectively serve the full range of students who attend them. My main concern is that solutions which can only serve a few kids (not because only a few kids fit, as would be the case with services designed for children at "the tails", but because there isn't enough resource to go around)are problematic. A free appropriate public education can't be available only through lottery and I don't see any evidence that private schools can do better on a grand scale, so I don't want public money flowing out of the public schools and into the private (and sometimes for profit) education system.
I agree with you- but in CA nearly all charters are public schools, funded the same way as any other public school. The only difference in funding is complete local control over the money- as opposed to district decision makers deciding how to spend it. My principal makes all the financial decisions for us based on a teacher committee and recommendations of our local school board, not the district school board. This allows a direct control over contracts and vendors, negotiation at a level of minutiae that would bore me to tears and a focus on every penny being in the classroom.
Re: public schools expelling students for behavior. I would point out a) that students are not permanently expelled from public schools; b) the bar for expulsion is typically for much more extreme behaviors than those that can lead to the removal of a student from a charter program.
No easy answers, that's for sure!
Neither do we- any contract revocation is for one year and a student can reapply. We revoke contracts for behavior issues that are the same issues that a student would be suspended and then expelled for at any public school. We have to follow the disciplinary section of Ed.Code. We expel a student for drugs, violence, weapons on campus, sexual harassment, repeated fighting. We rarely have to do this because most of our students want to be at our school and work very hard to stay! Those that don't receive serious counseling (we're the only non-emotionally disturbed school in a 40 mile radius with a full time counselor), tutoring, home visits or whatever else it takes to turn them around.
I'm not saying that what we do is "normal" compared to other charters. But it just gets me all growly when I see charter schools getting the blame for all that might be wrong with public ed!