New charter-schools bill faces old barriers

RICHMOND — A formidable, and diverse, lineup of educators stepped to the microphone Thursday to tell a Senate committee why it should be easier to start up charter schools in the state.

Virginia’s segregated past also was present.

The top lobbyist for local school boards, the chief spokesman for the teachers association, and the state superintendent of public instruction all put their political muscle behind a bill they didn’t like two weeks earlier.

“It was clear this is about the quality of education,” said Sen. Steve Newman, R-Lynchburg, after guiding Gov. Bob McDonnell’s charter-schools proposal and two other education bills through their first hearing before the Senate Education and Health Committee.

The bill also is aimed at making Virginia eligible for a share of $350 million in federal Race to the Top funds for schools, Newman and McDonnell said.

The governor’s education bills face other hearings this week in both houses of the General Assembly.

Equally clear at Thursday’s hearing was skepticism from members of the General Assembly’s Black Caucus and the NAACP, who said they feared charter schools could erode funds and support for public education.

Charter schools are public schools that accept students who may be struggling in regular classes, and use the public funding designated for each student. Virginia has only three charter schools, the fewest in the nation.

Sen. Mamie Locke, D-Hampton, said, “I am very concerned about this legislation. How do we guard against marginalization of kids who are not selected to be part of charter schools?”

Newman answered that students who apply to attend charter schools are selected by lotteries for the available spaces, and state funding follows each student to go to either a charter school or conventional public school.

Newman said later that he had attended meetings of the Black Caucus and hoped to persuade some of its members to support the governor’s education bills.

“I think individuals in that caucus need to remind us of what happened before,” Newman said, referring to Virginia’s history of segregated schools.

“They are standing as a sentinel against going back. I admire them for that. It is something we should support,” Newman said.

King Salim Khalfani of the Virginia State Conference NAACP said public schools should be improved across the board. “Every school should be a governor’s school, a magnet school, an alternative school. There should be no separation,” Khalfani said.

The lineup of supporters Newman paraded before the Senate committee Thursday was made possible through 40 hours of meeting with them to discuss how the bills McDonnell proposed could be improved.

Probably the key change in those meetings gave local school boards, rather than the state Board of Education, the final say in whether a charter school is approved in a locality.

Patrick Lacy of the Virginia School Boards Association said, “We did not do anything (to the bills) that would in any way give rise to resegregation. We are very sensitive to that. We don’t want it.”

Robert Jones, lobbyist for the Virginia Education Association, echoed Lacy.

“The most important issue is that protections against discrimination remain” in the legislation, Jones told the committee.

“I would like to ask you to consider this bill on its own merits, because it does have merit, and not on the dangling federal dollars,” Jones said.

Patricia Wright, state secretary of education, told the committee she didn’t come to sell it on the idea of charter schools, because it had authorized charter schools in Virginia several years ago.

“I am here to talk about shoring up the process to make sure we have quality charter schools,” Wright said. “I am a firm believer in the public school system, and charter schools are public schools.”

State Sen. Henry Marsh, D-Richmond and a civil rights lawyer, said he had several problems with the bill.

Even though the bill was amended to give local school boards the final say on charter-school applications from groups outside the public system, “it is going to create an opportunity for those forces in a community to be unleashed on the school board,” Marsh said.

“A local school board has to have the support of its constituents, and if a major portion of that constituency is fighting against public schools, that is going to create difficulties,” Marsh said.