Don't build new if an old school will do

A charter school is an idea, or, perhaps, a dream. It has a physical presence but at its heart, the successful charter is the embodiment of new, exciting and measurable ways to educate students.

But this year at the Legislature, we are asked to consider the charter school as bricks and mortar. The Minnesota Senate has begun work on a bill that deals with the conditions under which charter schools can purchase or construct their own school buildings.

It's a necessary effort, considering the current haphazard system, which had led to some questionable deals and financing practices. But this year's discussion represents a significant departure for Minnesota's 18-year-old charter school experiment. It takes the experiment out of the garage and gives it a permanent home. Our fear is that the building could come to define the school, rather than the other way around.

If buildings are needed, we need to put the taxpayer in the front row of desks. We want charters to exhaust unused public space before adding buildings to the public domain. And new charter facilities should fit into the community's long-term needs in the way that new district schools do.

Charter schools are independent public schools whose sponsors generally espouse a unique educational theory or approach. They are to be nonsectarian and open to all and must meet statewide testing standards. They receive public funding but are freed from many restrictions, such as the length of the school year.

This year's bill is in part a response to a Star-Tribune series that raised questions about the way some charter schools have set up affiliated companies to build and own facilities, even as the charter schools themselves were barred from such ownership. It raised questions about financing, conflicts of interest and whether some charters were getting big in order to produce the per-pupil, taxpayer-funded revenue stream that would pay for new construction.

The bill takes the approach of allowing charter schools with a proven track record to buy or build facilities, using the "lease aid" that they now use to rent space. It clarifies that these buildings would be owned by the state in the event the charter school should fail. The bill requires that a charter school have a five-year track record to buy and an eight-year record to build. In addition, the charter school seeking its own building must meet a series of tests, including success on standardized testing, proven financial stability and enrollment projections. It sets up a state authority to review requests and a finance pool aimed at lowering interest rates.

Sen. Kathy Saltzman, DFL-Woodbury, chair of the Senate's charter schools subcommittee and sponsor of the bill, said the intention is to provide some oversight and taxpayer protections on a building boom that has already begun. Joe Nathan, director of the Center for School Change at Macalester College, and who offered ideas to be included in the bill, said he believes taxpayers will save money because long-lived, successful charters will be paying a time-limited mortgage rather than an open-ended lease. Nathan said it is critical that the schools that will own buildings are deemed "worthy financially and educationally.''

These ideas all make sense — if we accept the underlying concept that charter schools are permanent, and must now move from the dream that sparked the school to the bricks and mortar that will house it.

We understand that experiments can't stay in the garage and that owning can be cheaper than renting. But the bill, as it moves along, should not merely encourage but demand that charters first use unused public space. Ditto for cooperation between charters and school districts in using space.

If the result of the bill is that new buildings are added to the public school inventory in places where they are not needed, taxpayers will not be well served. The best result would be that this bill fills up available public space, allows for purchase or construction in limited cases, and keeps charter schools focused on the mission of creating unique spheres of educational attainment.

copyright 2010 Pioneer Press