STEVE LEWIS/Herald
Sophomore Johnathan Cannon, a student ambassador at Animas High School, talks to parents and prospective students during an informal presentation and question and answer session at the school.
Could charter, public schools get along?
Meeting could signal a new era of collaboration
By Emery Cowan Herald Staff Writer Article Last Updated: Monday, February 14, 2011 11:19pm
It’s no secret that relations between public charter schools and traditional public schools can be tense. The failure of two charter schools, Excel and Community of Learners, led to disagreement and blame-placing among many of those involved. The bitter memory still lingered when a new charter school, Animas High School, announced plans to begin.
Durango is no exception. The failure of two charter schools, Excel and Community of Learners, led to disagreement and blame-placing among many of those involved. The bitter memory still lingered when a new charter school, Animas High School, announced plans to begin.
But then Animas received the “go-ahead” from the Colorado Charter School Institute, which oversees the school, and enrolled enough students for a full freshman class. Now another charter school, Mountain Middle School, is set to open next fall, and both schools are close to triggering lottery enrollment because of the high level of interest they have attracted.
Though charter schools often are seen as a threat to public schools because of their potential to draw away students and funding, Durango School District 9-R decided to tentatively extend an olive branch.
In a meeting earlier this month, the board voted to schedule talks between the boards of Mountain Middle School, Animas High School and 9-R to discuss what future relations will look like between the boards and their schools. Scheduled for March or April, the meeting will be the first formal talks between the three groups.
“I feel like what happened last night was historic for Durango,” said Nancy Heleno, president of Mountain Middle School’s board of directors, after the board meeting. “It’s a paradigm shift of thinking and perceiving charter schools. For 25 years, the go-to feeling has been that they’re competition.”
Though school administrators aren’t guaranteeing any type of outcome and emphasize their primary responsibility is to their own schools, the plans suggest a new movement to find a place of coexistence that so far has been difficult to reach.
Much of the tension between the schools comes down to funding, which has been sorely lacking all around since the economic downturn.
Keith Owen, superintendent of Durango School District 9-R, said 9-R loses almost $7,000 per pupil each time a student enrolls at Animas High School. The case will be the same when students enroll in Mountain Middle School because both schools are chartered through the Colorado Charter School Institute. Like any other school district, the institute receives separate per-pupil state funding and has authority over the schools it charters.
In many other districts, charter schools are run through the local school district. In these cases, state funding would go to the district.
Laine Gibson, the district’s chief financial officer, said that in the two years since Animas High School started, Durango High School has lost five teaching positions and reduced several programs because of falling enrollment.
Districts see charters as competitors, which creates an automatic adversity, said Mark Hyatt, executive director of the Colorado Charter School Institute.
Such financial dynamics are likely to continue, with the state institute counting a 21 percent increase in enrollment this year, according to Education News Colorado, a news website dedicated to Colorado’s schools.
But a wave of partnerships is beginning to happen in Colorado and nationwide.
Hyatt said there are good working relationships between traditional public schools and public charter schools in about half of the districts in the state. On a national scale, nine cities have signed on to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s District-Charter Collaboration Compact, an initiative designed to highlight and share best practices and knowledge among public charter schools and traditional public schools.
Still, Durango would be fairly unique, at least among schools in Colorado, if any sort of mutual support or collaboration came out of the boards’ talks, Owen said.
From what he has seen, it’s a rare occurrence for charter schools run by the state institute, as opposed to district-run charters, to have much collaboration with local district schools because they have no legal obligation to work together, he said.
Floyd Patterson, president of the 9-R board, said the board’s decision reflects the recognition that the educational landscape is shifting as charters continue to grow.
“It’s a change in thinking, we’re in the era of choice,” Patterson said. “A lot of our friends have children in these schools, and we can’t be hostile.”
Michael Ackerman, Animas’ head of school, and Heleno already have ideas for collaboration.
Ackerman said he would like to see the schools put their resources together to do a high school information night to clarify the benefits of and differences between Animas High School and Durango High School.
Heleno said she could see the schools applying for grants together to have district development days that are open to all schools, public, private and charter.
Neither of them hold illusions about the amount of work required to reach a level of substantial collaboration.
“We still have a long way to go,” Ackerman said.
ecowan@durango herald.com
STEVE LEWIS/Herald
Michael Ackerman, far right, answers a question from Matt Pope, left, during a presentation for parents and prospective students at Animas High School.
JOSH STEPHENSON/Herald
Ninth-grader Brittany Lee, 15, goes to her next class at Animas High School.
