The Free Press, Mankato, MN

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May 28, 2009

Charter school denied

LSH Supt. Johnson: ‘It’s disappointing'

By Tanner Kent

LE SUEUR — After months of planning, a proposal to charter a Le Sueur-Henderson elementary school was denied last week by the Minnesota Department of Education.

Conversations about converting Hilltop Elementary into a charter school began earlier this year when the district was looking for non-traditional ways to reduce its budget.

One reduction proposal included the conversion of an existing elementary into an elementary charter school, which could save $90,000 a year through reduced per-pupil spending and federal grant money available specifically to charters.

Hilltop teachers unanimously voted to pursue the plan in March. District officials then submitted an application to the state detailing the proposed charter’s mission statement, curriculum, governance and financial viability.

On Friday, that application was rejected by the state department, which issued a nine-page report filled with feedback from external and internal reviewers.

LSH Supt. Dave Johnson said district officials will begin meeting when school lets out to decide whether to revise the application and send it back to the state. But even if they meet the July 7 deadline, the window has already passed to open the school this fall.

“It’s disappointing,” Johnson said, citing the work poured into the application by staff and administrators. “We’ll go back to the drawing board.”

In the state’s report, the charter proposal is lauded for its financial oversight and transparency. It also earned high marks from reviewers for its model of leadership and its core mission, which is to engage elementary-aged students in science, technology, engineering and math.

But at issue were questions about whether the school needs to be chartered at all.

Because the application fits the rare circumstance of being submitted by a school district — the last such conversion took place nearly a decade ago — many of the policies and programs named in the application are already in use at the current elementary. One of the reviewers, none of whom were named in the report, said: “There is no clear description of how the newly converted school would be different from and more effective than the existing public school.”

Morgan Brown, an assistant commissioner with the Minnesota Department of Education, said LSH could revise and resubmit its application before July 7. With that deadline, Brown said the earliest opening date for an LSH charter school would be the 2010-11 school year.

Brown added that charter schools are required by law to schedule one year of planning time before they open — unless the charter is sponsored by a school district. Brown further suggested that the rarity of such circumstances and LSH’s swift timeline may have contributed to the rejection.

“They may not need a year” of planning, Brown said, “but more than 30 to 60 days.”

Brown also said a later opening date would make additional funds available to the district through federal grants reserved specifically to pay for that one-year planning period.

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