In praise of charter schools

When it came time to register Morgan for Kindergarten, I knew without a doubt that I wanted to apply for her to attend the local charter school. The driving factor was that I had heard some unsatisfactory things about our home school and knew that we would be more at home somewhere like the charter school.

Even before Morgan got placed at the charter school (she was first on the wait list after the lottery), I heard from so many different parents about all the bad publicity the charter school had gotten. And some of it was true -there were some not-s0-with-it administrators involved early on and there were also some overly engaged parents making the atmosphere too contentious. I weighed what I knew of both schools and decided that if Morgan got in to the charter school, that's where we would be. I figured that at least the parents were involved, which was far from what I had heard about our home school.

I can't tell you the happiness I felt when I went to the school and saw Morgan's name on the list of children who would be attending. It felt as if I had really hit the real lottery! All year long, we've been nothing but pleased with the school. Not just the involvement of the parents and community, and not just the education she is receiving (top notch!), but also the true care that each of the teachers has for their classes. I adore Morgan's teacher and Morgan has come so far is such a short time.

Tonight we had a town hall meeting to discuss the state of affairs. And I can honestly say that even in this economic climate where thousands upon thousands of teachers are losing their jobs, we sit back and breathe easy. Why? Well, as a charter school, we are used to having to make up for lost money. Also as a charter school, our class sizes are fixed, meaning that no matter what, we will have a 20:1 ratio. We are used to fundraising, as we already get roughly $1,000 less per student than other public schools. So, we have budgeted conservatively and have prepared to weather this economic storm. While other schools are losing teachers, we are hiring. The told us tonight about one of the teachers they are trying to hire - another art teacher. They interviewed someone from a nearby city who was working at a magnet school FOR ART. They are doing away with their art programs!! Unbelievable. Meanwhile, at the charter school, we are adding art teachers and keeping our music, science, Spanish, and PE teachers. We are adding a math specialist to help kids who need extra help in math (we already have a fabulous reading specialist). We have awesome programs for kids who want to do more outside of school. There will be intramural sports next fall and we already have a pseudo "Geek Squad" that helps repair the laptops for the middle schoolers (we have a laptop program when the kids hit 6th grade). They even presented a website that they coded from scratch this year. WOW! There's drama and choir and band. There's a gardening club and running club and lots of other interests out there for kids who want it. The teachers themselves commit to helping with these clubs and it shows the type of dedication that they have to the students.

The bottom line is, as it was put to us tonight, while other schools, administrators, and teachers are worried about their jobs and how they will make due, without, next year, our school and administrators and teachers are still only worried about the students. How wonderful and how fortunate for us!