---

By Suzie Boss

Despite backing from vocal parents, politicians of all stripes, and a billionaire with deep pockets, Washington State can't seem to get charter schools up and running.

SEATTLE, Washington—Judging from the headlines, it would be easy to assume that the recent fight to bring charter schools to Washington State is nothing less than a full-blown political battle. All the big hitters — from Governor Gary Locke to billionaire Paul Allen — have taken sides. Most of the state's largest newspapers have debated the merits of charter schools on their editorial pages. And while the voters have spoken twice — turning down charter school initiatives soundly in 1996 and again, narrowly, in 2000 — proponents show no signs of giving up.

The irony is, if charter schools ever do get the nod in Washington, they will succeed in spite of politics. Although the quest for charters has become politicized, this crusade started as something much more personal. It began with a family — a husband and wife eager to join in the life of their children's school, and a school door stubbornly closed to their good intentions. Their story may have gotten lost in the bigger debate, but it offers a reminder of why charter schools resonate with a small but determined base of supporters.

Jim and Fawn Spady are baby boomer parents and the products of public schools themselves. By the early 1990s, Jim had been a commercial lawyer for nearly a decade, living in a Seattle suburb with his wife and two young children, when he decided to move into the city. A generation earlier, his father had helped launch Dick's Drive-in Restaurants, a small chain of burger joints. Now it was time for the son to help run the show. He took down his lawyer's shingle and moved into humble office space in the shadow of a rotating Dick's Drive-In sign in Seattle's Wallingford neighborhood.

"We moved back into the city just at the time when our friends were moving out to the suburbs. Other parents told us we were crazy," he admits, to think of enrolling their children in an urban district. Seattle's crusading Superintendent John Stanford had not yet arrived to light a fire under school reform efforts. "But we told our friends we really believed in public education," Spady recalls, "and my wife wanted nothing more than to be a good public school mom. She couldn't wait to get involved."

At the school where their son started kindergarten, however, their story took an unexpected turn. Every day, Fawn Spady and half a dozen other parents would arrive early to pick up their children. Standing in the hallway, waiting for the dismissal bell, they compared notes. All of them would have been thrilled to participate in the classroom. Many had tried volunteering. "But the principal told us, 'Oh, we've tried parental involvement before, and parents are just too unreliable,'" Jim Spady recalls. "These parents kept thinking, we're here every day anyway. Why not let us come inside and help?" But the door stayed closed.

Within weeks, the Spadys grew tired of waiting in the wings. When the principal suggested that the school and the family weren't a "good fit," they pulled their children out of public school and enrolled them in a nonreligious private school. "It was small and personal and caring — exactly the kind of school that shouldn't have a reason to exist," Jim Spady argues in his outspoken way, "if public schools are doing a good job."

The little elementary school, located in a funky old house, was nothing fancy. "But it was a wonderful community," he says, "so welcoming. The parents were made to feel that these 25 kids were all our children. We came together as a community at that school."

Day by day, the Spadys also watched their son grow more excited about learning. In his previous school, "he was visibly less excited the longer he stayed there. But at that little school, his love for learning was reignited," his father says. "It was really positive."

That might have been the end of the story, except for one thing. The Spadys couldn't help but think about those other parents, waiting in a hallway outside their children's classroom. Why couldn't public schools provide them with more options, more flexibility for educating their children? As Jim Spady recalls, "Our own children were doing great in their new school, but we felt so bad about the families we had left behind. My wife and I were idealistic Democrats. We felt an injustice. What could we do?"

They've spent much of the past decade working on an answer. Along the way, the Spadys have changed political parties, moved back out of the city, tangled with organized labor, and learned to swim in the turbulent waters of state politics. Yet they remain that charter schools offer the best solution to keep well-meaning parents connected to public education and prevent talented, professional teachers from fleeing the field. "It's public sector entrepreneurship," Jim Spady says, "a way for teachers who feel boxed in by bureaucracy to be creative and innovative in the way they teach."

Someday, he predicts, people will look back on the protracted battle to launch charter schools in the Evergreen State and wonder what all the fuss was about. "Fifty years from now, no one will understand why charter schools were ever opposed," he speculates. "In our view it's a civil rights issue, a struggle for freedom," he says, not apologizing if he sounds like a bit of a zealot. "Issues like that can take a long time to win."

One step forward, one step back

Washington state has been debating the merits of charter schools since at least 1995. That was the first year Jim Spady filed a charter initiative. Somewhat naively, he thought an initiative would be a good way to educate voters about this new breed of independent public school. He failed to gather enough signatures to get that first initiative on the ballot, but the effort introduced him to others in the state — teachers, parents, and politicians — who share his passion for creating more options in public education.

Kurt Lauer, for instance, is a veteran public school educator who is a fairly recent convert to the idea of charter schools. A teacher and administrator from Seattle's South End neighborhoods, he has grown frustrated with the lack of options for lower-income families. "There already is choice for the more wealthy families," he says, "and even middle-class families know how to work the system to their advantage. But those in lower socioeconomic areas don't have the same choices in education. And we have to do something for these kids. We're not succeeding, and we have to do better."

Out of frustration, Lauer conducted his own research, seeking out schools that successfully serve poor children in other states. To his surprise, many turned out to be charter schools. He went from being a charter foe to a charter fan. "I've met people who would not have been able to accomplish the same things for kids in a traditional school setting," he says. "Charters allow us to attack things from a different way."

Despite the enthusiasm that individuals have expressed for the charter concept, building statewide support has proved challenging. Since the mid-1990s, two charter initiatives have failed at the polls and several bills have died in the state legislature. The most recent defeat in Olympia took place last spring, when a charter school bill appeared to have the support to pass on a floor vote but stalled in the Education Committee headed by Sen. Rosemary McAuliffe, a Democrat and former school board member from Bothell.

It's a testimony to optimism that charter supporters can see in these defeats the signs of growing support. In 1996, for instance, voters turned down charter schools by a two-to-one margin. Last November, charter schools Initiative 729 failed statewide by less than 4 percentage points. It passed in five counties in the populous western half of the state, but took a drubbing in more rural eastern Washington. To charter foes like Doyle Winter of the Washington Association of School Administrators (WASA), the consistent losses show, "People are clearly saying 'no.'" But with each setback, supporters for charter schools have become more vocal, more politically savvy, and better funded.

In the weeks before the November 2000 election, in fact, it seemed that all the pieces were finally falling into place. I-729 was a more modest proposal than the earlier initiative, authorizing only 20 charter schools per year and requiring charters to be sponsored by school districts or public universities. No longer an issue championed by a small group of dissatisfied parents, I-729 won endorsement from a cross section of supporters, including many in the minority community: the Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle, which hoped to sponsor one of the first charter high schools; El Centro de la Raza, representing the interests of Hispanic families; the United Indians of All Tribes, which hoped to launch a charter school for Native American middle school students; nearly every newspaper in the state; incumbent Governor Gary Locke as well as his Republican challenger, John Carlson; and Paul Allen, who showed his support by chipping in more than $3 million for the I-729 campaign.

Of course, when a billionaire like Allen throws his weight behind an idea like charter schools, the story changes. No longer is it a grassroots effort to tinker around the edges of education reform. Suddenly it's a morality play about big muscle, big interests, and big changes in education policy. The campaign strategy favored expensive, targeted television advertising over the low-key community meetings that had been used by charter supporters in the past.

"It was no longer a grassroots message," admits Spady, who found himself on the sidelines of his own initiative campaign. In hindsight, he says, "The grassroots message is critical. This is a complicated concept — much more complex than vouchers," with which charters are often erroneously confused by voters. "You need time to educate people about charter schools," he says. In 1996, for instance, former state schools chief Judith Billings opposed charters. By the 2000 election, she had come to see charters as "something we owe our kids," and co-chaired the I-729 campaign.

Taking the lead to oppose I-729, with a scant $11,000 in campaign coffers, was the Washington Association of School Administrators. WASA argued that charter schools would siphon off precious support for public schools for the benefit of a few, and cast its membership as little David in a battle against big-bucks Goliath. Because Paul Allen is an investor in the for-profit Edison Schools, which contract to operate charter schools in several states, critics also were free to suggest that his motives were less than pure.

Winter, executive director of WASA, saw dollar signs in Allen's motives. "He stands to make money from charters," Winter said several weeks after the election. "That's part of our concern." WASA members also worried that charters would be "independent of the obligation to be accountable to school boards or superintendents of instruction," Winters added. Most of all, though, the school administrators group "is adamant about keeping public money from going to private schools. We don't believe in letting special interests decide the future of our state."

Those criticisms were echoed by the Washington PTA, which also opposed the initiative. "We don't say 'no' to charter schools carte blanche," explained Jean Carpenter, the organization's executive director. "But we felt that this initiative didn't provide enough accountability to elected officials. The PTA wants to be sure nothing is done to divert resources away from public education."

When I-729 failed, Washington was halted from becoming the 37th state to allow charter schools. State Sen. McAuliffe pointed to the defeat as the final word from the people. She told the Seattle Times: "The message has always been clear on charter schools. People did not vote for them in 1996, and they did not support them today. I think the message is: Let's invest the dollars in our public schools, in our education reform." Indeed, in the same election, voters did approve two other measures to boost public education. After several false starts, had charter supporters sighed their last gasp?

Dreaming on

A few weeks after the defeat of I-729, about 100 charter schools advocates gathered in Seattle for a conference that had been planned in advance of the November election, when hopes were running high. But in the wake of the election, the conference title — Imagine the Possibilities — sounded more ironic than hopeful. Nonetheless, the event drew a who's who of speakers from the charter movement: Mike Feinberg, founder of Houston's successful KIPP Academy, serving primarily at-risk minority students; Robert Rauh, founder of Marva Collins Prep Charter School in Milwaukee; Joe Nathan, author of Charter Schools: Creating Hope and Opportunity in American Education; Paul Hill, executive director of University of Washington's Center for Reinventing Public Education; and, of course, Jim and Fawn Spady.

Some dreams just won't die.

"It's not exactly a groundswell of supporters," points out WASA's Winter. Among the general public, he says, "charter schools are just not that high an interest."

But charters — by their very nature — have always been the darlings of the passionate few.

If Washington ever does pass a charter school law, Jim Spady acknowledges, "it will be too late for our children." His daughter is now 15. His son is 12. When the children outgrew their private elementary school in Seattle, the family moved to Snoqualmie Pass. Fawn Spady, the mom who yearned to be involved in her children's education, has gotten her wish — but not exactly the way she imagined. For the last several years, she's been home schooling.

Jim Spady, who considers himself "a pragmatic Republican" these days instead of an idealistic Democrat, has gotten his own education about politics by leading the charge for charter schools. He now understands that those on the far ends of the political spectrum — both right and left — will never support charters. But he insists that there's growing support in the middle. And even as an outsider, he's found that he can have a voice in state education reform. Last year, he was appointed by the governor to the state's nine-member Academic Achievement and Accountability Commission.

Winter acknowledges that the burger executive and his wife probably had a legitimate beef, back in the early 1990s, with the public school that wouldn't welcome their participation. But since the Spadys began their crusade, he points out, alternative education has grown in Washington state, creating more options for families who want to keep their children enrolled in the public school system. "We'd like to see that option expanded even more," Winter says, "so we can continue to meet the need for more choices for families." Winter can even imagine the day when his association might support charters, "if we felt satisfied that they had built in accountability."

So while much of the rest of the country cautiously joins the charter movement, Washington remains stuck at the starting line. "We'll never be a leader," Spady admits, "but I'm convinced someday it will happen here. Maybe in time for my grandchildren."

Respond to this article