Proposed new charter school

[klauspood.livejournal.com]

There is a proposal for a new charter school in Somerville. The state (DESE) will be reviewing the application for the next few weeks and will possibly grant the charter on February 28th. If granted this charter school will undermine the existing Somerville Public Schools by reducing school funding by nearly $5 million a year, which is almost 10% of the current school budget. This cut in funding will lead to devastating cuts in public school programs, loss of 60 -75 teachers, and potentially closure of an entire school. This would represent a huge set back for public education in Somerville, setting back much of the progress that has been made in our schools in the last 25 years.

There will be a public hearing by the DESE on this on December 14 2011 at Somerville High School. More info can be found at:

https://sites.google.com/site/progresstogetherforsomerville

http://www.thesomervillenews.com/archives/21168

http://www.doe.mass.edu/news/news.aspx?id=6532

Comments

[pekmez.livejournal.com]

The name of the charter school is the Somerville Progressive Charter School.
They have submitted an application, and it is in the state's decision queue and would open in 2012 if approved. There is a public hearing on it at the Somerville High School, from 4-6pm on December 14th (that is in just under 1 week from now.) The state DESE will accept written feedback (email feedback) until January 3. The state will decide at the end of February.

The funding model for this sort of charter school, as I understand it, is that they draw their entire budget allocation (number of students * per student "tuition"/spending in Somerville) from the state, and based on the number of students they enroll, that money goes to their budget and some of that money is subtracted from the city of Somerville's share of state school funding. (In the first year, the charter school is fully funded and the city funding remains the same, in years 2-5 some transitional money continues to go to the city as well as the charter school, and from year 6 on the city receives as much less state aid as is being given to the charter school. There has been a lot of spinning on both sides and mincing of numbers for what exactly it means (at one point, for example, I read on the SPCS's website that "no money would be lost from the Somerville Public Schools budget _in 2012_ - yay, let's just ignore what happens in the following year!)

A lot more information on how to submit feedback and what else you can do to learn about the situation are posted at Progress Together for Somerville's website (link goes to how you can help/submit feedback, rest of site can be navigated from there): https://sites.google.com/site/progresstogetherforsomerville/i-want-to-help (https://sites.google.com/site/progresstogetherforsomerville/i-want-to-help) (disclaimer: I am a member of Progress Together for Somerville and I oppose this charter application.)

I don't know a lot of facts about the proposers of the school. I understand that most of them have had children in the Somerville Public Schools and were not satisfied with their education, or with the decisions made by the school system (in particular regarding the Healey school and the progressive programs there which now serve all students.) I don't know how many of them have made their names public, where they live now (not all are still in Somerville), where their kids attend school currently, etc. Their website is here:
http://www.thespcs.org/home (http://www.thespcs.org/home)

[ron_newman]

A list of (at least some of) their proposers is on pages 31-35 of the SPCS application document, with more detail about them on pages 50-132. (btw, one of them appears to be a nearby neighbor of yours)

ETA: The document also lists and briefly describes their Advisory Board on pages 170-173.