MORGANTOWN — Proponents of charter schools here went into Thanksgiving counting their blessings.
Earlier in the month, the West Virginia Professional Charter School Board approved the applications of three brick-and-mortar charter schools across the Mountain State.
One of them is the West Virginia Academy, which says it will begin educating students next fall from its still-planned campus in the Cheat Lake area.
Just before the holiday, that same board also green-lit two applications for virtual charters, which no longer seem as foreign or indulgent, as in years’ past.
West Virginia students did have to sink or swim in the online sea last spring.
That was after Gov. Jim Justice ordered all schools shuttered in response to the then-looming threat of COVID-19.
Justice’s call, on March 13, 2020 – Friday, the 13th – meant 55 public school districts had a weekend to go totally remote for that coming Monday.
“It’s amazing what you can do when you have to,” Monongalia Schools Superintendent Eddie Campbell Jr. said then.
Students and teachers did tread water during the process. Test scores were down, and in the midst of it all, charter schools came calling via the passage of state legislation that opened the door.
With it came debates – especially ones about oversight.
Charting the charters
The West Virginia Academy’s 371-page application, for example, was initially denied by Mon and Preston’s school boards, who both said it fell short in seven-of-10 state-mandated benchmarks.
Said application was then approved by the state charter school board – only to be sued by two teachers in the state who said creation of that entity took away vote any elected BOE officials or tax-paying residents might have in the process.
Either way, the academy is still a homegrown endeavor with a homegrown governing board.
The other approved schools in the state aren’t – and that, Andrew Saultz said, bears watching.
Saultz, who teaches educational leadership at Pacific University in Oregon, studies equity and accountability in public schools and charter schools across the nation.
“Accountability,” is the watch-word for the former high school social studies teacher, who has also been an elected school board member.
Virtual charters, he told The Dominion Post previously, should be viewed with caution.
The largest online charter at the time in Ohio went dark in 2018, he said, causing 12,000 students to be set adrift – just like that.
And he always watches, he said, anytime an outside entity manages a charter school from a distance.
For example, how much money such an entity puts into its advertising and marketing budgets to recruit students, he said.
There’s also the practice of “cream-skimming,” or the recruitment of the best and brightest (read, the kids from the more affluent families) for the charter school, Saultz said.
Pre-pandemic, roughly 7,000 charter schools were operating in 44 states and the District of Columbia, according to the National Center for Educational Statistics. More than 3 million students across the U.S. were receiving education from charter schools at the time those numbers were compiled.
Levy is, as levy does
The nation’s first charter school was founded in St. Paul, Minn., in 1992.
There have been plenty of charter school success stories since then, the professor said.
Marquee failures, too, such as the charter in Arizona that performed zero background checks as it was interviewing and hiring teachers.
“You can imagine what happened,” the Saultz said.
Which, he said, brings it back to his watchword: “I personally don’t buy into charters as being a great thing or a terrible thing,” he said, “but you do need to have measurements and standards in place. It’s still about accountability.”
It’s also about choice, West Virginia Academy President John Treu said two weeks ago, when his school’s application was approved.
“Parents want choices in public education,” he wrote in a blog post on the school website.
“I am excited that our school will be able to offer students in our community a meaningful choice for the very first time in the history of West Virginia.”
Sam Brunett, a Morgantown High art teacher and one of the plaintiffs in the suit against the academy, countered, though.
Mon’s voters, he said, have already made their choice.
That was in September, he said, when they overwhelmingly approved renewal of the excess levy for education.
The levy, which is expected to bring $32 million into the district, is traditionally used for technology and Mon’s unique offerings, such as Mandarin language classes for elementary students.
TWEET@DominionPostWV
