Charter School Reform Bill Advances

Round 1 is over in what’s likely the big charter school issue of the year:  A bill, authored by Rep. Linda Slocumb (DFL — Richfield/Bloomington) and supported by the Minnesota Association of Charter Schools cleared the House Education Oversight Committee on Wednesday, with a recomendation to pass the bill after it has been examined by the House Finance Committee.  The bill is similar to one proposed earlier this year by MACS, and includes clarification of the relationship between charter schools and religious instruction – schools will be allowed to excuse students for up to three hours a week for religious instruction, but those class must not take place on school grounds.  

Photo: Flickr/Caveman 92223

This has been something of a grey area up until now.  Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy (better known as TIZA), in Inver Grove Heights, fell afoul of this ambiguity earlier this year when the Minnesota chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit against the school, aledging the school violated the seperation of church and state.  Under current legislation, churches are not allowed to sponsor charter schools, said Eugene Piccolo, the Executive Director of MCSA, when I interviewd him back in January.  On top of that, religious iconography is barred from charter school buildings.  However, charters are allowed to rent space from churches, creating a decided semblance of impropriety.  When I visited Nova Classical Academy earlier this month, I was taken aback by a HUGE steel cross topping Nova’s building, a rented former parochial school.

As with most pieces of legislation, this one got several amendments in committee.  One of these, sponsored by Rep. Sadra Peterson, proposes a ban on any new or existing charter schools moving in a mile or less from a public school that has been closed for 36 months after the closing, unless the local school board aproves of the move.

“For small towns, loosing a school is like the dying of the town,” Piccolo told me after the first hearing on Tuesday.  ”It’s a sign that you are giving up on the town.”

With an ongoing statewide decline in the number of school-aged children, many districts will have to close schools they don’t have the money to continue operating.  One school district has already folded completely.   

The problem, says both Peterson and Piccolo, is that when angry and grieving parents try to start a charter school to replace the closing public school, no-one benefits.

“When that happens,” said Peterson after Tuesday’s hearing, “you’ve just defeated the whole purpose of closing a school – the pulic school district looses studends [and therefore per-pupil funding from the state] to the charter school, and they’ll probably have to close another school” to make up for it.  The cost of the first school, she said, gets shifted to the state in the form of state lease aid to the new charter school. 

“Has this happened in the past? Sure.  But it will happen more in the future,” Peterson predicted.

Piccolo said he and MCSA opposes the proposed ban because the current approval process for charter schools should suffice.  ”That’s where the authorizer [currently called the sponsor] and the Department of Education need to do their due diligence,” he said, to make sure the charter school isn’t being started to take advantage of parents’ grief.

“This amendment gives veto power over new charter schools to local school boards,” Piccolo said.  These school boards, he said, would be tempted to oppose new charter schools in order to protect their enrollment numbers, and thus their state funding.

Filed under: Minnesota, St Paul, Charter Schools, Education, Education Reform, MCSA, Minnesota, Nova Classical Academy, TIZA

Charter school association proposes changes in governing laws

(Originally published in the Twin Cities Daily Planet 1/28/09)

It’s like clockwork: last Wednesday, a Twin Cities charter school was sued by the American Civil Liberties Union’s Minnesota chapter for allegedly violating the separation of church and state. last Thursday, the Minnesota Association of Charter Schools announced the details of their proposed reforms to the framework legislation that regulates charter schools.
At the press conference announcing the proposed legislation, the Executive Director of the Association, Eugene Piccolo, said the timing of the two events – and a section of the legislation that bans “organizations with church status” from sponsoring a charter school – was just a coincidence. The bulk of the MACS proposal is focused on clarifying, overhauling, and regulating several aspects of charter school governance, including the relationship of a charter school to its sponsor.

Filed under: Minnesota, St Paul, Achievement Gap, Charter Schools, Education, Education Policy, Education Reform, TIZA

Bombshell — MN ACLU sues TIZA charter school and MDE

Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy — better known to readers of former Star Tribune writer Katherin Kersten’s column  as TIZA — and its parent organization, Islamic Relief USA, are being hauled into federal court by the Minnesota chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union for violating the constitutional seperation of church and state.

Due to their oversight role of charter schools, the Minnesota Department of Education is also named as a plaintiff in the lawsuit that alleges TIZA funneled state money to organizations explicitly dedicated to promoting Islam.

“TIZA, its Board of Directors, and its sponsor Islamic Relief have set school policies that endorse and promote a single religion, Islam. They have used tax funds to sponsor and establish a school that is pervasively sectarian,” says the MN ACLU’s complaint, linked to from their press release.   (h/t Andy Birkey at the Minnesota Independent)

Filed under: Minnesota, St Paul, Achievement Gap, ACLU, Charter Schools, Education, Education Funding, Immigant education, Islam, Minnesota, multicultural education, TIZA