Reform By Charter

School Administrator, August, 1997 by Donna Harrington-Lueker

And in Duluth, Minn., the school board has approved plans for the Edison Project, a proprietary firm, to run a charter school.

Bob Gilpatrick, superintendent of the Verona, Wis., Area School District, rejects both those options. "I draw the line at certain points," he says, and one of those points is allowing a private, for-profit company to run a charter school.

The Verona school board is ready to draw the line as well. Says Gilpatrick. "Our board just wouldn't consider [a program for] home-schoolers."

When a Charter Fails

Charter school advocates are candid: All charter schools aren't going to succeed. The strength of the charter school movement comes from the fact that if a school isn't successful, it will have its charter revoked.

To date, though, only a small number of charter schools have closed their doors, some quietly and some not.

Two cases have attracted national attention. In Los Angeles, the Edutrain charter school closed its doors, deeply in debt and rocked by allegations of financial mismanagement, when the Los Angeles school board revoked its charter in December 1994. Among the school's problems: inexperienced management, poor record keeping, and the discovery by state auditors that the school's enrollment reports allegedly exceeded the number of students regularly attending classes. (Like other charter schools, Edutrain received funding based on the number of students it enrolled.)

According to reports in The Los Angeles Times, the school also used some of its funding to lease a sports car and hire a bodyguard for its principal.

The closing put the Los Angeles Unified School District in a difficult position. Most of Edutrain's students were adjudicated youth who had failed or dropped out of programs in other city schools. ("These were hard-to-place youth," says one charter school advocate.) Some of the school district's own programs for at-risk youth were full.

Also hampering the student relocation efforts was the charter school's inadequate record-keeping system. "Kids still call and say they attended Edutrain, and we have to track down teachers to determine whether they were really there," observes Joe Rao, the district's administrative coordinator of charter schools. Still, a team of counselors sent to the school was finally able to place 75 percent of Edutrain's students in other programs within the school system.

Two and half years later, though, it is still unclear who will be held liable for Edutrain's debt, which The Los Angeles Times estimates at between $300,000 and $1 million, including the amount the school was overpaid for overestimating attendance and the amount owed to retailers and service providers. According to Rao, the school district and the state are still discussing the issue.

Misspent Money

Citizen 2000, a K-8 charter school in Phoenix, also had its charter revoked after charter organizers filed for bankruptcy late last year. This spring, a grand jury in Arizona charged Lawndia White Venerable, the school's founder and principal, with 31 counts of theft, fraud, and misuse of public moneys, including the use of Citizen 2000 funds to pay off her credit cards and to secure a loan on a $324,000 home for her mother. (The Arizona attorney general acknowledges that Venerable repaid all but $10,000 to Citizen 2000)