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News :: Miscellaneous |
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Charter School rejected |
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by Dianne Haag
(No verified email address) |
21 Dec 2001
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this is a repost from the NewsGazette about the Charter School |
Charter school plan rejected
By DIANE HAAG
© 2001 THE NEWS-GAZETTE
Published Online December 21, 2001
CHAMPAIGN – One school was denied and another approved at a special Champaign school board meeting Thursday.
The Champaign-Urbana Charter School will be looking to the state for approval, after being denied by the board.
In other business, the board approved a lease that will allow the Early Childhood Center to proceed.
After months of debate and discussion, the school board decided the charter school could not meet conditions that would have made it more affordable for the district. The charter proposal was denied by a 5-1 vote with Mark Klaus voting to approve it.
“This should not have been a dollars-and-cents issue,” Charter School Board Chairman Nathaniel Banks said. “These children are not going to be served by a vote (to deny the charter).”
Although the charter school was approved by the Urbana school board, it needed approval from both districts to proceed. Now, it can appeal to the State Board of Education, but of 21 proposed charter schools to try that route, only two have been approved, according to Janet Allison of the state board.
On Nov. 29, the Champaign board approved the charter with four stipulations, which board members admitted would be tough to meet, and directed the administration to investigate them. The conditions included provisions that the school be economically sound for the district, be housed in a Unit 4 building and be made part of the legal agreements in the district's equity lawsuit.
School board President Scott Anderson specifically cited the building conditions, saying the administration could not find the space for a kindergarten-to-eighth-grade school, though it might have for a smaller program.
“We were trying to mold their initiative, and they have a right to their own initiative to make this work,” he said.
Lack of space also put a damper on the economics of the proposal. The board hoped to save money if the charter school did not have to pay rent to a separate entity. If the district paid what was in the proposal, the charter school would have cost the district about $1.2 million over the five years of the initial charter.
Some tension had been caused by the inclusion of the equity agreements, with members of the plaintiff class feeling like they were being set up against the charter school members. Anderson said space alone was enough to kill the issue.
“We didn't get past the first two” conditions, he said.
Charter school board members had worked on the proposal for about two years before it was officially brought before the school boards on Oct. 1. The initiative outlined a school with small classes and heavy parental involvement, with the goal of serving low-income and minority students who, historically, have not performed as well academically as their peers.
After their vote, board members decided they had much more to gain by approving the Early Childhood Center than by holding it up over details of the lease with Head Start that they had been debating.
Last week the lease – and in turn the rest of the project – was left in limbo when board members had questions about certain provisions.
Board members wanted to make sure Head Start was paying its fair share of the expenses.
“I think the positives outweigh the negatives,” board member Jeff Wampler said.
The multimillion-dollar project has received funding from a variety of sources, some of which are tied to Head Start's inclusion.
The new center, which will be located in the old Sunbeam Bakery Building on North Randolph Street, will serve at-risk and special needs preschool children, now served at Marquette. Bids were also let Thursday, and the school should open for the 2002-03 year. |
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