This is a clarion call to all who believe in public education! Now is the time to support Moratoria on Commonwealth Charter Schools: the O'Brien Floor Amendment bill is 781 and the Blumer bill is 450. The bills mandate a three-year waiting period to work out a fairer funding mechanism before opening additional charter schools. They will not close existing charter schools but they will prevent them from opening in September 2004 in Salem and North Adams, where residents opposed opening charter schools.
    The current funding mechanism punishes the local public school system when it reduces the funds available to educate students in our schools. From Salem’s Chapter 70 education fund, we currently spend over $8,500 in tuition to send Salem students to the Marblehead Community Charter School, while Salem school students are allotted less than $2,400 from the same source. Salem taxpayers provide the additional monies to fully educate Salem students. The state’s funding formula favors charter schools above the needs of the traditional schools. If the Salem Academy Charter School opens, even more funds will be siphoned off from the public schools - at the same inflated rate. And educational reform money that Salem has used to lower class size, improve programs, and support students will face devastating reductions. Many of our advances may be lost altogether.
    Why would the state open a new school at this time when we need to tighten our belts? The Board of Education is callous in its willingness to allow Salem’s 5,200 students to be deprived of scarce resources in order to begin a new charter school. This is unfair to students and parents; unjust to teachers who are successfully helping students achieve; and undemocratic to Salem taxpayers who have paid for the improvement in the local schools yet whose commitment to their children is brushed aside by the Board of Education. With a mere vote, the Board can redirect state funds intended to support local schools, thereby increasing the demands on the Salem taxpayer. That is taxation without representation because no Salem referendum is required for such autocratic redirection of program monies. One further outrage is that charter schools do not have to answer to any elected officials at any time. When the City Council and the School Committee wrestle their way through the budget process, there will be a silent presence in the chamber: the charter school will get the tuition designated for it by the state without having to speak a word. No local elected official will have any control over the invisible depletion of school funds.
    Statewide, charter schools are licensed through a suspect process. The Massachusetts Resource Center for Charter Schools, privately funded but allied with the Board of Education, trains prospective charter school administrators in every step of completing the application and pays trainees a salary of $50,000—whether or not local citizens initiated the charter school process. The MRC is a subsidiary of the Pioneer Institute, a conservative think tank well represented on the Massachusetts Board of Education. Of nine board members, Chairman James Peyser, Charles Baker of Swampscott, Abigail Thernstrom, and Henry Thomas all revealed their association with either the Pioneer Institute or with charter schools. Indeed, Mayor John Barrett of North Adams said repeatedly during his testimony to the Board of Education that he saw that "the fix was in" since the MRC had found a trainee to write an application for a charter school in North Adams. A MRC graduate also wrote Salem’s new charter school application. Twenty-two more charters are available statewide and no one knows which cities are on the Resource Center’s target list for charter school applications.
    Charter School applications are supposed to demonstrate how those schools will be different from existing schools. The rationale for creating separate schools within a community is "to stimulate the development of innovative programs within public education; to provide opportunities for innovative learning and assessments; and to provide models for replication in other public schools." (Board of Education’s "Criteria for Assessment and Approval of Charter Applications.") Yet the Salem Academy Charter School unabashedly copied the Collins Middle School programs! Lisa Jacobowitz, one of the Salem Academy Charter School’s founders, said at the Board of Education Lexington hearing: "We are not saying that these are brand new, never been used before programs. Obviously, we wanted to use programs that we know are tried and true." In fact, Salem is known for its many educational innovations, WITHIN the existing public schools. No wonder the proposed Charter School replicates so many of our programs!     Why open new charter schools in North Adams and Salem where there was strong opposition? The Board based its approval simply on the completeness of the applications and that boards of trustees had been assembled to run the charter schools. The fact that half of the Salem Academy Charter School trustees do not live in Salem and that only five of the nine proposed trustees were interviewed during the application process was not a deterrent to the Board of Education in granting the charter. Nor did the Board consider that authors of application support letters rescinded their support when the funding formula was at last explained to them.     Is a new charter school opened because the local public schools are failing? No, it was quite evident that the copious reports made to the Department of Education recording Salem’s educational progress were not considered appropriate evidence in the case. What was admissible was a misleading report of Salem’s MCAS scores included in the charter school application. Salem’s true success story is recorded on the Rotary Bulletin Board in downtown Salem: The Class of 2003 has achieved a 95.6%** passing rate on the MCAS test and those students will graduate this spring with Salem High School diplomas. The subsequent class has done even better, having achieved the most improved MCAS scores statewide.
    Where do we go from here? The O’Brien / Pacheco and Blumer moratorium amendments lead to a fairer funding system. If passed, the Salem Public Schools will be given the opportunity to continue its work on behalf of all its students as we weather these next few financially challenging years. Fortunately, we have a talented staff and administrative team who will work hard to maintain standards during this difficult time—and to continue to set them even higher.     The Salem School Committee urges you to contact your legislators to support the O’Brien/ Pacheco and Blumer moratorium bills and ask your relatives around Massachusetts to do the same. The Legislature’s budget hearings begin at the end of April, so please act NOW!
Thank you for your support.

Sincerely,

Darleen D. Melis
with
Margaret M. Voss, Ph.D.
for the
Salem School Committee
May 2003

For more information on charter schools and the funding formula, please visit the Salem Public Schools website at: http://salem.mec.edu/sps/ or see the material available at the Salem Public Library. Additionally, SATV has been running a series of videotapes showing the public hearings on charter schools.

**Salem's Class of 2003 has since passed this figure and is now at a 99% passing rate.