Local Charter Schools Take Extra Hits in a Tough Financial Year
BY KAITLIN MUTH
“It’s a considerable challenge,” says Simon Tyler, director of the Northfield School of Arts and Technology (ARTech). “We’re going to need to borrow money,” adds Nalani McCutcheon, the executive director of the Cannon River STEM School in Faribault.
In interviews last week, these two local charter school directors spoke about the challenges they faced following Gov. Pawlenty’s decision earlier this year to hold back 27.5 percent of Minnesota schools’ 2009 budgets, not paying that amount until 2010, to help balance the state’s 2009 budget.
While the hold back is a hardship for all public schools around the state, charter schools — which also receive public funds — in particular face unique challenges, both directors said. Charter schools differ from other public schools in that in return for meeting achievement standards, they are exempted from following some rules and regulations.
Fund-raising options for charter schools are more limited than for other types of public schools because charter schools use “open enrollment,” which allows students to attend schools outside of the school districts in which they live.
As a result, “we don’t have that tax base that a traditional district does,” Tyler said. “We can’t enact levies or bonds. Because of the recession it’s a tough time to go to your community for that, but it’s an option [traditional public schools] have.”
The Basics
Charter schools also don’t have access to the low-interest loan rates that traditional public school districts typically enjoy, McCutcheon said.
“We have to go out and find traditional borrowing opportunities,” McCutcheon said. “For us, our local bank is our banker. We’ll pay the market loan rates, as opposed to a public school. The Faribault public schools will be able to go out, should they need it, and get lower-interest loans.”
The Cannon River STEM School opened just this year.
“With a new charter school, the state does give you some start-up funds,” McCutcheon said. “But generally speaking, as a brand new school, we have to purchase everything from scratch, so start-up funds really just help us get the basics going.”
“We’ll still have the same issues as other charter schools or public schools, in the spring,” she added. “We’re going to need a line of credit.”
Pay Freeze
Tyler, too, will be looking to take out loans in order to keep up ARTech’s cash flow.
“We’re protecting our program as much as we can,” he said. “The quality of the program is the most important piece. If we don’t provide a quality program, we won’t get the enrollment. Enrollment drives the revenue.”
But cuts will have to be made. “It’s a lot of sacrifice in the program for the staff who work here,” Tyler said. “We had a pay freeze this past year. The staff are taking on more responsibilities throughout the school in order to save the school money, without being compensated for that work.”
ARTech has also had to implement “a lot of internal controls, for things like our meal program. We’re very careful not to let families run up a deficit in their meal balance, because we can’t afford to carry that,” Tyler said.
For an upcoming weeklong poetry artist-in-residence program, ARTech staff and students worked together to write a grant, and bagged groceries at Econofoods to raise money.
Challenging Times
The biggest visible impact in the classrooms of her school, McCutcheon says, are the things that will have to be put off.
“There are going to be, perhaps, additional books that we might like to have, that now we’re going to wait on,” she said. “There may be field trip opportunities that we have to defer.”
But challenging economic times have also brought good things to her school, McCutcheon believes.
“Parents feel it’s part of our role to make sure that this school thrives,” she said. “I’ve had a number of parents who have said, you know, we’re laid off. What do you need here? I can come in and I can help. I can build stuff. I can put coat hooks up. Those are great gifts. Those are gifts we wouldn’t necessarily have if we didn’t have an economic downturn.”
Cool Things
Ultimately, McCutcheon says, the value of a school is not measured in its access to expensive educational tools.
“If I’ve got great teachers in the classroom—and I do have great teachers in the classroom—there’s going to be wonderful learning that happens. And it’s not going to matter one iota if there’s a Smart Board in the classroom, or if there are whiteboards, or if they’ve got a computer in the classroom. Because really, the magic of education is, it really is all about the classroom.”
“That’s not to make light of the fact that this is a painful time for many people,” she adds. “But I do think that in the whole system dynamic, when the going gets tough, that’s when people band together and actually do some pretty cool things.
“The communities that are able to do that well are the ones that thrive. And my intention is that this will be one that thrives.”
To contact the author: muthk@carleton.edu
Copyright @ 2009 Pressville
Clarification: Due to an editing decision, an earlier version of this story did not specify that charter schools are public schools, in that they receive public funding. In other respects, they are not like other public schools. The article above includes clarified wording.
UPDATE:
At least one Minnesota charter school will have to close because of the governor’s hold backs.
A Tuesday Pioneer Press article announced that the St. Paul charter school Skills for Tomorrow will close at the end of the calendar year.
Read the full article here: http://www.twincities.com/ci_13862053?nclick_check=1
Thanks for the great article, Kaitlin!
Hi Kaitin,
There are two problems with this paragraph:
Charter schools ARE public schools. I see that later in your article you make a distinction by using the phrase “traditional schools” when referring to the ‘district schools’ (a much better phrase, IMHO) run by local school boards. But your first sentence perpepuates the error that charter schools constantly try to correct.
Open enrollment is available to ALL students who want to attend public schools in MN, not just charter schools. It has nothing to do with levies or bonds. See the state’s open enrollment page.
I see that the Northfield News has published your article online and in print: Local charter schools take extra hits in a tough economy. I’m curious to see what you’ll do to correct the errors there and here.
Hi, Doug McGill here.
I’m commenting because I edited Kaitlin’s piece and because, on your point Griff about charter schools and public schools, I am the one responsible for any failure to communicate.
Indeed, during the editing process, I interjected an unclear phrase on this particular point, which Kaitlin immediately corrected and clarified. This resulted in the improved “traditional public school” wording subsequently used in the final piece, as you noted.
As for the particular sentence you that you still find problematic, which begins with “Fund-raising options,” again, any lack of clarity is my fault as editor and not Kaitlin’s. I believed there was justification for leaving that line unchanged because the sentence just prior says: “While the hold back is a hardship for all public schools around the state, charter schools in particular face unique challenges.”
To me this sentence suggests that charter schools are a subset of public schools, at least in regard to their public funding. Of course, there is also a sense in which charter schools are not like other public schools, i.e. they don’t have to follow some rules and regulations.
In retrospect, it would have been clearer to spell out this distinction explicitly and not inferentially, high in the piece, and also to use the construction “other public schools” any time “charter schools” and “public schools” are used in the same sentence. I’ve gone ahead and made those changes in the Pressville story, plus added a clarification at the end of the piece.
I’m sure this comment thread will also help underscore the similarities and differences between charter and public schools for readers.
Best,
Doug
Griff, thanks for sharing your concerns.
One of the greatest challenges in discussing the differences between charter schools and other public schools is using the proper terminology, since there isn’t yet a standard phrase for non-charter public schools. I noticed this same error occasionally being made by those I spoke to in the charter schools, simply because there isn’t a better word.
With that said, I’m disappointed that I failed to catch this particular error in the article before it went to print. As Doug mentioned, I was adamant that a similar error be corrected before the article was published through the Northfield News, but I guess I missed this one.
With regard to open enrollment, I’m aware that the policy is not unique to charter schools. The way Tyler explained it to me was that “we don’t have the tax base, as charter schools, because there’s open enrollment….about 25% of our students come from outside Northfield… so we don’t have that tax base that a traditional district does.” I was simply reporting his explanation; my kind editor added a description of open enrollment for those who are unfamiliar with the policy. I apologize if you felt this was misleading; I was merely trying to accurately reproduce what Tyler had to say.
Doug/Kaitlin,
Thanks for the prompt replies!
Kaitlin, your sentence miscontrues what Simon likely said to you. You wrote:
It should be ‘because charter schools CAN ONLY use open enrollment…” or alternately, “because charter schools CAN’T LEVY…”
I also think the word “fund raising” is inappropriate in this context. Grants and donor activities are typically associated with the word whereas ‘funding’ and ‘revenue’ are terms associated with.
Here’s a version that would be accurate:
Hope that helps. Thanks for considering it and for your diligence!
Griff
Griff,
I agree that out of context, your sentence certainly sounds better than mine. However, the point about charter schools not being able to levy taxes comes up in the next sentence of my article; I think adding it in again would be repetitive.
The distinction that you make, that charter schools must recruit ALL of their students through open enrollment, is important, and I wish I had found a better way to integrate that into my article. However, the purpose of the sentence that you’re questioning was to explain the open enrollment policy, which your suggestion fails to do.
I think ultimately the sentence best reads: “Fund-raising options for charter schools are more limited than for other types of public schools because charter schools must attract all of their students through “open enrollment,” which allows students to attend schools outside of the school districts in which they live.”
But even this is a little misleading, since often the majority of students at a charter school live in the surrounding area– about 3/4 of ARTech’s student body comes from Northfield.
While it’s certainly important to me to avoid giving readers erroneous or misleading information, the focus of my article is not on open enrollment policy–or even the more general questions of what are charter schools and how do they work. What I’m much more interested in is the financial situations that these schools find themselves in in this moment– and, hopefully, how they will survive it.
Okay, Kaitlin, I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree. Thanks for considering my feedback.