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The Tufts Daily
Where you read it first | Thursday, March 28, 2024

Community members discuss Question 2's potential impact in surrounding area

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Massachusetts voters will decide today on four ballot questions as part of a state referendum. One of these, Question 2, calls for the approval of up to 12 new charter schools or the expansion of enrollment in existing charter schools each year.

Among the charter schools that have already been established in Massachusetts is Prospect Hill Academy. Founded in 1996, Prospect Hill serves the Somerville and Cambridge communities and is currently the only charter school in Somerville, according to State Senator Patricia Jehlen, whose district includes Medford and SomervilleJehlen added that some students from Somerville attend charter schools elsewhere.

Jehlen explained that Prospect Hill's beginnings are unlike those of most charter schools today, which she feels is reflective of the changing role of charter schools in the education system.

Prospect Hill was formed by a group of parents," she said. "That doesn't happen anymore."

Today, she explained, it is more common for charter schools to be founded by a board of directors, who are not parents of schoolchildren and might not even live in the community. For this reason, she said that school committees may be hesitant to follow the lead of these boards of directors.

“That's why school committees across the state are saying, 'This is local tax money, these are local schools. Don't have [non-local people] make decisions about how our children should be educated,’” Jehlen said.

The current Massachusetts charter school system allows charter schools greater freedom to operate but subjects them to increased accountability compared to traditional public schools, according to the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education website. 

The Massachusetts Education Reform Act of 1993 allowed for the establishment of charter schools in the commonwealth but set a limit of 25 operating at any given time. The results of subsequent elections raised this cap, according to Jehlen. Today, the cap is 120 schools, and there are 78 charter schools currently operating in Massachusetts, according to an Oct. 20 CBS Boston article.

According to Jehlen, though charter schools were initially supposed to work alongside public schools, she feels they have now became an exclusive class of public schools, not necessarily extending their strengths to the rest of the system.

“It does appear now that there is a different view of what charter schools are for,” Jehlen said. “The proponents feel that urban schools in particular are failing and parents need to have a choice of where to send their kids.”

Price Figurelli-Reid, president of Tufts Republicans, said he is voting "yes' on Question 2 because he believes this choice is not being provided to all families in the state, particularly low-income families.

"Charter schools provide an option to families in more urban and poor districts to send children to [other] districts -- an option that’s available to wealthier students in the form of private schools but isn’t available to poorer students," Figurelli-Reid, a junior, said.

He stressed that charter schools have proven to be successful in Massachusetts since they first appeared in the early 1990s, with approximately 32,600 students on waitlists throughout the state during the 2016-2017 academic year.

"Students in charter schools have significantly outperformed students ... in some of the best public school districts in the state," Figurelli-Reid said. "So [Tufts Republicans] think[s] that with 32,000 students on the waitlist and with a proven track record of academic success, it makes perfect sense to raise the cap on charter schools."

On the other hand, Carrie Normand, chair of the Somerville School Committee, said that charter schools are actually reducing the choices left for students attending public schools.

“What I see happening is, instead of it becoming a system of improving all publicly-funded schools, you're getting more and more of a two-tiered system,” Normand said. “And I don't think that's what tax-payers are interested in, and I don't think it's good for kids. Because there are some good things happening at some charter schools, and we should be sharing that.

Normand said that charter schools exist largely on their own without contact with other schools.

“Charter schools were designed to be innovation labs, and there's no mechanism to share what they've learned,” Normand said. “There are some individual [district school] principals or some district superintendents that might have relationships with individual charter schools, but there's no mechanism to truly foster that kind of shared professional development.”

Mary Skipper(LA '89) is the superintendent of Somerville Public Schoolsand was formerly the assistant superintendent of Boston's public pilot schools. She believes that success is possible in various types of academic institutions.

“I think you will see a range of performance in any type of school environment. No one type of school is inherently better than another,” Skipper told the Daily in an email. “In my almost 30 years in education, I have seen some outstanding work in non-charter public schools.”

Both Normand and Skipper pointed out that Somerville High School is categorized by the Massachusetts Department of Education as a Level 1 high school, which is the highest accountability rating a high school can achieve. There are also a number of new initiatives being offered in the Somerville public school system, such as the installation of a makerspace in one school and an annual "Hour of Code" event that offers students the opportunity to code, according to Skipper.

“We’re doing all of this while also expanding opportunities in music, art, world languages and extracurricular programs," Skipper said.

Jehlen said that district schools would lose the ability to offer such programs if more charter schools were introduced, since charter schools also receive state funding.

“The state Board of Education is essentially appropriating money from the central budget and spending local taxpayer money,” Jehlen said.

While people on both sides of the argument have been raising money to support their causes, large donations from out of state have been made especially in support of Question 2, according to a Sept. 12 WGBH News article.

Normand said that she opposes the influence of outside donations used to fund the “Yes on 2” effort.

“All of the investment bankers in New York, Michael Bloomberg, all of them who are writing these huge checks — they're done with this question [after] Nov. 8," Normand said. "I'm the one who's going to have to take the vote to decide what beloved program, what beloved school they have to close and what negative effect that will have on the remaining students in the district."

As an elected representative for Somerville, Normand said that she feels accountable for the decisions of this election, although the results are largely out of the community's control. She pointed out that communities across the state would be impacted differently by this decision.

“The charter schools have felt the need to say, 'District schools are failing.' ... Across the state, the poorest children go to the schools with the least resources. And then, [un]surprisingly enough, they have the worst test scores,” Jehlen said. “So we say the schools are failing? We're failing the schools. We're not giving them enough resources to teach the children. We're not giving kids preschool education that would allow them to come into kindergarten prepared.”

Skipper also thinks that resources should be allocated toward public school districts in need of funds.

“Is it important for families to have choices? Sure, but I don’t believe choice should come at the expense of another system,” Skipper said. “New charter schools often end up not only impacting public school enrollment but having a negative impact on limited financial resources that allow public school districts to adequately serve students by redirecting financial resources to a new entity with 'increased freedom.'”

While Normand does not entirely oppose charter schools, she does not feel that expanding the cap will benefit the school system.

“For me, voting 'no' on 2 is not a condemnation of charter schools,” Normand said. “It is saying, 'It's too much, too fast, too far.’”

She feels that regardless of personal positions on this issue, it should ultimately be decided based on its impact on the group it will affect the most: students.

“I think everybody is coming at it with the best interest [for] kids,” Normand said. “We may have different ways of getting there, but to me, this isn't how we best serve kids.”