As the bill that would expand school choice advances through the Iowa Legislature, many Iowans may be asking themselves what are charter schools?
The bill, Senate File 159, expands school choice by allowing the use of public funds for private and charter schools. It was approved by the Senate last week and will move over to the Iowa House for consideration.
Charter schools are public, non-religious schools that can be created by a governing board and sponsoring school board. If they are not successful, charter schools can be closed.
The bill funds charter schools by shifting funding from the public school district where a charter student lives to the charter school they attend.
The bill also creates a mechanism by which students in districts with diversity programs can transfer out. For example, school districts with diversity programs such as Des Moines schools do not allow students to transfer out.
Charter schools are legal in Iowa, but rare under the current Iowa law.
There are currently only two charter schools in Iowa — Storm Lake/Iowa Central/Buena Vista Early College Charter High School in Storm Lake and West Central Charter High School in Maynard.
Meanwhile in Wisconsin, there are 244 charter schools, 145 charter schools in Illinois and 300 charter schools in Michigan.
Charter schools can be more flexible with open enrollment and can offer dual credit classes, said Steve Milder, West Central Charter High School counselor.
Charter schools are also held accountable for their goals and have to go to Des Moines every four years to present to the state Board of Education to justify keeping their charter, which West Central last did in 2019.
The goal of West Central Charter are to increase the percent of graduates who complete postsecondary training from the Community School District; continue to raise test scores for students in reading, math and science; provide special needs and at-risk students with the opportunity to develop individualized courses of study working toward a high school diploma; and increase the percentage of students that graduate with a dual concentration of vocational and academic credits.
West Central Community School District is small sizes — around 20 students in each grade. Making their high school a charter school allowed the district to offer its students more opportunities, Milder said.
In the last seven years, the district has had 129 out of 131 students graduate with college credits, and 30 percent of their students graduate with Associate of Arts degrees.
Some students have even graduated with college degrees before graduating from high school, Milder said, taking classes through the Northeast Iowa Community College in Calmar and other area community colleges.
The Cedar Rapids Community School District and Iowa State Education Association, however, oppose the new bill.
Under the bill, charter schools would be under the authority of the appointed State Board of Education in Des Moines instead of locally elected leaders or school boards.
The Cedar Rapids school board sent a letter to legislators last month opposing the bill, including charter schools.
“The establishment of charter schools serves to reallocate resources away from serving all students to serving the few,” the board stated.
“Charter schools have little accountability to the public. While public tax dollars provide their funding, there is not necessarily oversight by the local, publicly elected board of directors in that school district. This gives control of tax dollars to a few people, who may not be representative of the local school district.”
The Iowa State Education Association supports Iowa’s existing charter schools, President Mike Beranek said in a statement.
However, any additional charter schools should remain public and accountable like they are under current law, 256F, Beranek said. The bill as it is currently written doesn’t comply with the same standards and transparency set in place by the existing law, he said.
“From our perspective, any flexibility in curriculum and ideas for innovation can be accomplished through out existing public charter school law,” Beranek said in a statement. “ISEA supports the structured and equitable approach to public education that exists in current law.”
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