Charter school disputes discussed



BARTOW - Since their inception, charter schools around the state have drawn heated debates between organizers and school board districts. During Monday's Tiger Bay Club meeting, some of those disputes were hashed out by a 10-person panel.

Right off the bat, the tension began to build as one member of the audience, on a note card, asked what was the initial driving force behind the charter school movement.

The driving force behind the Lake Wales conversion schools was to improve the quality of education the area students were receiving. Of the students in Lake Wales, 843 (17 percent) were opting to go outside the area for their educational needs, Lake Wales Charter Board Chairman Robin Gibson said.

"That meant we were losing a lot of our top students," he said. "This was something that was fragmenting our town."

School Board Member Frank O'Reilly saw the driving force somewhat differently - "Money. Charter schools are converted for one reason and one reason alone - they each receive $250,000 over two years for their start up."

The basis for the charter school idea was to give parents more options in helping their children achieve in school, said Polk County Tax Collector Joe Tedder, who filed the original charter school bill as a state legislator.

Accountability and explanation of how charter schools are graded also was asked.

Former Polk County Superintendent Glen Reynolds explained that accountability of a corporation in the business world is considerably different compared to a school system.

"Corporations in the business world have more control over their product where schools do not," he said.

Clint Wright, the superintendent of the Lake Wales charter school system, believed a schools accountability should not be measured by FCAT scores alone but by total achievement, including graduation rates, SAT and ACT scores, as well as college and vocational school enrollment.

"We have to look at the total amount of achievement," he said. "Don't look at one measure of performance called FCAT."

Contradictory statistics were spouted by panelists showing the achievement rates of charter schools as both bad and good, with no final conclusion.

"We need to figure out what we need in this community," Gibson said. "The state of Florida does not value public education."

Gibson quoted that both sides, both public and charter schools, need to work toward closing what he calls the education deficit gap in per-student funding. "That is what the problem is."