School district not anti-charter so much as anti-competition

Re: the chairman of the School Board of Palm Beach County’s recent op-ed on charter schools.

I agree that the district is not anti-charter school. If that were true, why would the board have approved six charter schools managed by the Florida Charter Educational Foundation? The existing schools perform well and continue to improve. The applications for the new schools were basically the same as those already approved. The real question is why wouldn’t they continue to approve schools with a proven track record for success? I would venture to speculate that the district is actually anti-competition.

Although (Board Chairman) Chuck Shaw points to one charter school that is in direct competition with one of its existing specialty schools that received a 15-year renewal to prove otherwise, the real issue is the other charter schools that will stand in competition to all its schools. He points to the board’s obligation to defend its constitutional authority to provide for the education of the community’s students, however, he ignores the fact that the courts have repeatedly made it clear that the district is overstepping its boundary while trying to limit parental choice.

There are buzz words that often surface in the anti-school choice rhetoric, words like “for-profit management companies” and “transparency.” The truth is that charter schools must submit full accounting of public dollars that must be audited yearly.

The district’s frivolous lawsuits have cost taxpayers millions of dollars. Loss after loss after loss doesn’t seem to dissuade the board from spending tax dollars on a point that every court has denied or dismissed. Instead of determining whether charter schools are innovative, perhaps the board should determine why parents are choosing charter schools.

It could be the findings of the Florida Department of Education’s report that charter school students outperform students in traditional public schools in overall achievement and in learning gains. It also found that achievement gaps are lower among charter school students when gaps are studied between white students and African-American students, and between white students and Hispanic students. In 65 of 77 comparisons, charter school students showed higher rates of grade-level performance. LYNN NORMAN-TECK, MIAMI Editor’s note: Lynn Norman-Teck is executive director of the Florida Charter School Alliance (and a charter school parent of two).