With the bruising battle over the charter schools amendment in the state’s rear-view mirror, educators and politicians are focusing on what they believe comes next.
Many educators fear the future will include more demonizing of and less funding for traditional public schools. They also worry that the amendment’s passage will mean more charter schools and the hiring of more non-certified teachers to work in them.
The politicians and others who backed the amendment see a back-to-the-future opportunity as it re-establishes a commission to consider charter school applications. They say the commission will spur local school boards to be more thoughtful about charter school applications and open the door to establishing more charter schools.
It’s not clear how many charter school applications the commission will consider or how the state will cope financially if there is a flood of new charter schools.
Georgia Superintendent John Barge estimated that the approval of seven charter schools per year — about as many as were approved by a similar charter commission that was killed by the Supreme Court in 2011 — would require the state to cough up $430 million over the next five years, based on per-pupil funding costs.
Barge opposed the amendment, but after voters gave it a big thumbs-up on Tuesday, he said he’d work with the new commission.
“As an ardent supporter of quality charter schools, I, for one, am putting aside my philosophical differences and stand ready to work with the Charter School Commission to ensure the children of Georgia have access to high quality charter schools,” he said.
The charter commission will be composed of seven members recommended by the governor, lieutenant governor and speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives. The members must be appointed by the state Board of Education no later than its February meeting.
They will serve 2-year terms and meet bi-monthly. Commission members will not be paid, but they can be reimbursed for expenses like travel costs. Staff members will be paid.
Like the state Board of Education, the commission will hear appeals from charter applicants who are rejected by their local school board. The commission will also consider applications for charter schools that would have a statewide attendance zone.
Proponents of the amendment have said charter schools — public schools that are allowed such flexibility as the hiring of non-certified teachers in exchange for meeting specific education goals laid out in their charters — give parents an alternative to traditional public schools that are failing.
Amendment opponents said the hiring of more non-certified teachers won’t improve education in Georgia.
“A lot of folks think they can teach, and they can’t,” said Verdalia Turner, president of the Georgia Federation of Teachers.
Charter school teachers must be rated as “highly qualified,” a federal designation.
Amendment supporters say that despite Georgia public schools’ reliance on certified teachers, too often they don’t get the job done. That view was embraced by many voters Tuesday, who approved the amendment by a large majority.
The reborn commission will get its funding from the charter schools it approves. It is entitled to retain up to 3 percent of the per-pupil state funding those charter schools receive. Local school boards have that same authority.
Before the 2011 Supreme Court ruling shut it down, the old charter schools commission had an annual budget of $520,000. That budget was set to triple as the commission approved more schools it would oversee.
No one knows how many charter applications the re-established commission will approve.
Mark Peevy, who was executive director of the old charter schools commission, said he expects six or seven applications to be approved during the re-established commission’s first few years. He said he believes local school boards, aware that charter applicants can turn to the commission if they are rejected, will approve more charters.
That’s one of the reasons Peevy disputes the $430 million figure Barge put forward. He also noted that whether the students are educated in charter schools or traditional public schools, the state will still have to pay to educate them.
Officials of traditional public schools who opposed the amendment say the bill for more charter schools won’t seem that big — at first.
“In this day and age of diminishing resources, it’s going to be difficult to grapple with,” said Michael Hinojosa, superintendent of Cobb County schools. Hinojosa said there will be less money for traditional public schools. “There’s no doubt about that,” he said. “It’s just a matter of when.”
Passage of the amendment is likely to move Georgia up in the national rankings of how “charter friendly” individual states are, according to the pro-charter groups that compile such rankings.
For-profit charter management companies made large contributions to the effort to pass the amendment and stand to gain if, as amendment supporters hope, more charter schools spring up in Georgia.
“It’s about putting public money into the hands of private folks,” Turner said. “That’s what this is about.”
Amendment supporters said there is nothing inherently wrong with for-profit charter companies profiting from their management of a public school — if the school is meeting the terms of its charter and raising student achievement. It’s not like traditional public school superintendents aren’t making big bucks, they say. They say the most important thing is improving the state’s education system, and charter schools will be part of that effort.
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