State wants a breather, a cap on new charter schools

By Emily Richmond (contact)

Wednesday, Nov. 28, 2007 | 7:16 a.m.

Facing a shortage of staff and resources, the Nevada Education Department wants a moratorium on sponsorship of new charter schools.

The State Board of Education will consider the request when it meets Friday in Las Vegas. The discussion follows a Clark County School Board vote in October to curtail its sponsorship of new charter schools and shift the time-consuming and expensive burden of sponsorship to the state. Last year the Washoe County School Board, overseeing the state's second-largest district, issued a moratorium, capping its total at six.

"My concern is that we will have too many charters to give them proper oversight," said Cliff Ferry, president of the state education board. "I understand why the school districts don't want to do it."

Nevada has 22 charter schools. They receive the same per-pupil funding and must meet the same state standards for instruction as standard public schools, but they have greater freedom in staffing, instructional methods and daily operations.

State and local officials say their reluctance to sponsor charter schools is motivated solely by fiscal realities, rather than opposition to alternatives to public schools. Nevada spends less money than most states on education, leaving little funding for innovation. Other states have embraced charter schools, but have also allocated additional funding for their oversight. Nevada, state educators say, cannot afford to take the same risk.

The state board sponsors five charter schools. The eight Clark County sponsors include the Las Vegas Charter School for the Deaf, which has not yet opened. The Douglas County and Carson City school boards have each sponsored one charter school, as has the Nevada System of Higher Education.

The Nevada Education Department has seven applications for new charter schools in the 2008-09 academic year and just one employee assigned full time to review the applications. After giving the green light to an applicant, sponsors are required to monitor charter schools for compliance with state law, and often provide technical support and guidance with some student services.

"One of the reasons Clark County gave for dropping sponsorship was that they didn't have enough staff," Keith Rheault, state superintendent of public instruction, told the Sun on Tuesday. "We have even less than they do."

When a charter school fails, the sponsor is typically left to clean up the mess. In 2000, one of Clark County's first charter schools closed its doors with no warning, and the district had to scramble to find seats for the students and recover their records.

"It's not just whether we can get people through the application process in a timely manner - I'm looking ahead," Ferry said. "We could get into big trouble if we have a bunch of charter schools that are not working right."

In exchange for their services, sponsors are allowed to charge charter schools a fee. But the cost cannot exceed 2 percent of the total per-pupil state funding the school receives in its first year. Those dollars don't come close to covering the staff time it takes to get a charter school off the ground, district administrators say.

"We can't stop everything we're doing and just do charter schools, which is where we were heading, without additional resources," said Edward Goldman, associate superintendent of education services for the Clark County School District. "The responsibilities that come with sponsorship are tremendously time-consuming."

Greg Richmond, president of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, said the struggles of the Nevada Education Department and the local districts are not unique. But a moratorium might result in an unwelcome backlash, dividing the community into pro-charter and anti-charter factions.

One solution is a shift in attitude, Richmond said.

It's helpful if sponsors view charter schools as a potential solution to some of the problems facing school districts, rather than a burden, Richmond said.

Districts such as Chicago, New Orleans and New York have come to view charter schools "as a tool to help them get better," Richmond said.

In addition to considering a moratorium on charter school applications, the state board will consider a request by Nevada Virtual Academy to expand its program to kindergarten through third grade. The online charter school, which opened this fall, has about 300 students in grades four through eight.

The state board will also look at tightening the rules for organizing committees interested in starting charter schools by prohibiting those individuals from having personal or professional ties to for-profit education management organizations.