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By Catherine Paglin

Founders can trip up as they try to negotiate the financial, educational, legal, technical and personal obstacles to creating a new school.

Cardboard boxes sit atop wooden tables. Child-sized chairs are stacked in a corner. Racks of books go unread amid a jumble of office supplies, soccer balls, and jump ropes. When teacher Beverly Grogan looks around the classroom that once housed Bay View Charter School, she remembers children working with colorful Montessori shapes and letters, set in carefully crafted wooden trays. She remembers the tapping and ringing of rhythm instruments — hand drums, glockenspiels, marimbas, xylophones — that now sit silent on a shelf. She remembers her students gathered on the floor at morning circle time, around a segment of a 200-year-old spruce tree trunk.

Grogan also remembers frustration, conflict, and overwork.

Even under the best of circumstances, opening and running a charter school is no easy feat. In addition to providing a sound educational program, these schools-from-scratch must manage purchasing, contracts, facilities, personnel, recruitment, fund raising, and record keeping. A mistake in the recipe and sometimes the whole venture falls flat. A recently updated study of charter schools by the Center for Education Reform (a charter advocacy group) found that 86 schools in 21 states, or 4 percent of the nation's total, had closed of their own accord or had their charters revoked as of December 2000. Also, 50 schools in eight states were granted charters but never opened, and 26 in 10 states opened but were later consolidated into their school districts or with another charter school.

The optimistic names of which charter founders are fond — Success Academy, Bright Horizons, Education Redirection, Life Is Beautiful — do not ensure a shining future. The updated CER report, Charter Schools Today: Changing the Face of American Education, which documents the demise of these and other schools, found the most common reason for charter closure was "mismanagement" (33 schools), including deliberate misspending and an overall lack of accountability. Another common reason was "financial inequities" (32 schools), meaning budget problems the school was not able to overcome resulting from conditions such as underenrollment or higher than projected expenses. Smaller numbers of schools closed because they could not find a facility in which to continue (13 schools) or because they did not meet the academic goals of their charter (seven schools).

The Northwest has yet to produce grisly charter revocation stories like those recounted in the original CER study. In Phoenix, for instance, the founder of Citizen 2000 and her sister were indicted on 31 counts of theft, fraud, and the misuse of $179,000 in public funds. In Los Angeles, an audit of Edutrain found that administrators inflated enrollment figures and took expensive retreats while teachers lacked supplies and went unpaid. In Washington, D.C., the principal of Marcus Garvey Public Charter School allegedly attacked a newspaper reporter, scuffled with police, and disrupted school operations after she was suspended. When she was fired, she tried to take over the school by locking out the trustees, removing computers and other property, and naming a new board with herself as chair. In Waco, Texas, Emma L. Harrison Charter School accumulated a $400,000 debt, failed to pay into unemployment and retirement funds, missed teacher paychecks, and violated laws related to nonprofit corporations, open meetings, public information, employee payment, and the federal child nutrition program.

Thus far in the Northwest, where charter schools are few, only two have closed — Bay View Charter School and Walden Pond Charter School, both in Alaska. Problems at Bay View and Walden Pond were not sensational, but similar to the problems many charters face at some point in their development — poor planning, internal disagreements, lack of management skills, lack of district support, burnout, and budget imbalances.

The life and death of a charter school

Bay View, a K-5 Montessori-based school in Seward, got off to a rocky start. Its founder readily admits that planning was inadequate. "We started too soon," says Beverly Grogan, former head teacher and administrator. She and the other founders liked Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences. Although no one curriculum embodies his theory, the Montessori approach comes close, the founders learned. But by the first day of school the all-important Montessori materials had not arrived. Neither had the child- sized Montessori furniture. Complicating things further, Grogan had no Montessori training and the school's year-round schedule prevented her from taking the training in June.

Even before Bay View opened, relations with the local elementary school were strained. Before the meeting at which the school board was scheduled to decide on the charter, teachers from the school sent faxes in opposition. The charter group temporarily withdrew its request for approval and Grogan went to a tense site council meeting to try to explain the purpose of Bay View. "I said to them, 'It's not an attack; it's an alternative.'"

Bay View set up shop in a room at Seward Middle/High School — a location that was meant to be temporary but became permanent after plans to locate in the local aquarium fell through. The rent at the middle/high school was reasonable and the staff was welcoming and helpful, says Grogan. But in several ways the facility was inappropriate for elementary students. The first year, the school was in a room with no windows, no running water, and no area for staff to deal with discipline problems, except out in the hall. The second year, the school moved to a room in a bottleneck area of the high school where Grogan sometimes had to break up fights among older kids outside the door. Parents were unhappy with both locations.

As simple sounding a task as submitting attendance records to the district was daunting. Grogan wanted to fax attendance records for what was never more than 19 students, but the district was on a computerized system. A parent had to drive 95 miles across the peninsula to Soldotna to be trained to do budget transfers and attendance. Taking care of students with playground scrapes and bumps was something else that seemed as if it should have been straightforward but wasn't. Though there was a school nurse at the high school, the district wouldn't let Bay View students see her. Grogan was told to call 911 in an emergency. "It seemed so unfair," she says. "These were district kids, too."

It's just such details that really test a charter school, says Jim Green of the Oregon School Boards Association. "When I talk to groups I tell them, 'You've got a great idea for providing an educational program to boys and girls, but you need to think about who's going to turn on the lights, who's going to repair the boiler when it breaks down, who's going to unlock the door in the morning,'" he says.

Grogan feels that more support from the district could have made a big difference. "They never even identified a contact person," she says. A contact person who supported the charter school concept could have been a liaison between the school and the administration. Such a person could have helped the school work out problems related to special education services, nursing services, and transportation, she says.

The idea of an advocate or outreach person for charter schools in a district of 10,000 kids in 40 schools in a 26,000 square mile area is unrealistic, says Assistant Superintendent Patrick Hickey. "We don't just hire someone to be an ombudsman for a cadre of programs." There is nothing the district provides from which participants in charter schools are excluded, he notes. "We have special education problems," he says. "We have transportation problems. We've got people dedicated to addressing those. Is it management's role to be anybody's advocate, or is it to provide equitable distribution of resources for the good of the whole to avoid the perception of favorites?"

By the second year Bay View's relations with the elementary school had improved, but internal dissension was rife. The policy council discussed every issue at length, but often failed to come to a decision because it was set up to operate by consensus. "We wanted to please everyone," says Grogan. In the absence of decisions on issues such as half-day versus full-day kindergarten, she was often left to decide by herself when the day of reckoning came, inevitably angering those who disagreed.

From Grogan's point of view, some parents and board members had become intrusive, more concerned with curriculum details than writing policy council bylaws or dealing with big-picture issues such as funding. Whereas the first year interested parents sat in the Montessori observation chair and watched the class, in the second year they sometimes marched right into class with their comments and disagreements. "I felt they were trying to run my classroom instead of running the school," she says.

Grogan felt pulled in every direction. Though a parent took the students for PE so that she would have prep time, if a child got hurt, Grogan, as the only certified teacher, was required to be present. The Bay View charter was set up to waive certain policies and also reserved the right to request other waivers. But as situations like this one arose in which a waiver would have been helpful, no one seemed to have time to write the request. "There were too few people to do the work," says Grogan.

In hindsight, says Grogan, there is much she would do differently. She would start up more slowly, with more planning, and have training and materials in place before opening. She would clarify the mission of the school by making it strictly a Montessori program, not a Montessori-based program, which left her open to continuing discussions with parents about what was acceptable in the curriculum. Ideally, the school would have two classroom teachers with one class for three- to six-year-olds and one for six- to nine-year-olds, to better carry out the Montessori philosophy. The board's responsibilities would be defined more narrowly, a certain number of people would serve, and they would need to make a minimum time commitment to do so. The board would operate by majority rule instead of consensus. Grogan would hire a part-time secretary to do payroll and attendance.

In February 1999, an accident put Grogan in the hospital for two months. Substitutes took over. But when she returned, enrollment — which had already dropped from 17 to 12 — had dropped again. By the time the school board voted in May to terminate Bay View's contract, the school had no more than seven students, and its policy council had not responded to the superintendent's request for a plan to boost enrollment to the minimum 20 required by the charter contract. The board left the door open for the school to reapply for charter status by January 2000, but Bay View closed in June and did not reopen. No other school has rushed forward to fill the void. "Under current rules there remains one more slot for a charter school, but it's remained open since their contract was terminated," says Hickey.

A school falls through the cracks

Like Bay View, Walden Pond Charter School for grades seven through 12 began with a concept that was too broad. "You need to picture what kind of student you want to serve," says Meghan Hackett, a teacher and the school's fourth and last head during its three and a half years. Walden Pond, says Hackett, who was not involved in the school's start-up phase, was conceived to serve "kids who were falling through the cracks." The problem, she says, was that this vague phrase meant something different to everyone. The school, the first charter to open in the Anchorage School District, brought in some capable students who didn't thrive in a traditional setting, but also became a destination for kids with behavior and academic difficulties.

"We didn't want to attract students with behavior problems because we had no counselor," says Hackett. Over the years the school, which opened in fall 1997 and closed in December 2000, tried to correct its mistake by stressing academics in its marketing materials and with the students. But its image as a place for difficult kids was hard to shake. Twenty-five to 30 percent of the student body was always made up of special education students. The school came up with a plan to have failing students meet certain GPA goals in order to attend, but at a time when the school was struggling to boost enrollment, consequences were rarely enforced.

Hackett, like most of the Walden Pond staff, was new to teaching when she came to the school. She continued to teach when she took over the job of headmistress. "The job was designed incorrectly," she says. "There needs to be one person in charge all the time without the responsibility of classes." She also served as treasurer for the policy council because no one else stepped forward to fill the job. Like Grogan at Bay View, Hackett felt overwhelmed by the multiple responsibilities. Her teaching suffered.

Finding suitable quarters at a reasonable rent is a major challenge for many charter schools. Whereas Bay View had affordable rent but a less-than-ideal facility, Walden Pond had the opposite problem. The facility — a former junior college in an office tower attached to Anchorage's largest mall — was excellent, says Hackett. The classrooms were spacious and the mall had an iceskating rink and bowling alley. Students could eat in the food court, which meant they didn't have to go off campus. But the pricey space was a major factor in the school's downfall. For the first year, the school got the space at an affordable rate. The next year, however, the landlord wanted a three-year contract at a much higher rate. In the meantime, says Hackett, the school's policy council had not looked into alternatives.

"We signed a lease for an incredibly large amount of money [$187,000 annually] that we weren't able to pay," says Hackett. "We didn't realize we could have asked the district to look over the contract." To make matters worse, after the lease was signed the Alaska Legislature passed Senate Bill 36 which, in order to encourage economies of scale, reduced funding to alternative and charter schools with enrollments under 200.

The Anchorage School District made up the difference in funding during the first year of cuts, and offered other support, such as sending a representative to school meetings to explain the financial problems. "The district was wonderful," says Hackett. The school made efforts to increase enrollment, but it was too little, too late. Walden Pond had run for a year and a half in the red when the Anchorage School Board closed it in December 2000 to avoid the approximate $225,000 deficit projected at that time, says Superintendent Carol Comeau.

"I believe if we had had a strong and dedicated academic policy council, we could have made it," says Hackett, who feels the council had more than adequate warning of the impending financial crunch. Without a council dedicated to finding less expensive space or raising funds, she says "our school was destined to fail with or without SB 36."

Exploring "unchartered" territory

While Grogan's vision lies abandoned in a lonely classroom, some would-be charter starters find their paper proposals are the end of the line. The Number One reason for charter rejections is budget numbers, says Marc Abrams, Vice Chairman of the Portland School Board. "It's easier for us to process that before making the finer judgments on the academic merits of a proposal," he says. "If the numbers crunch, then you turn to — is it pedagogically sound?"

The first group to apply for a Portland district charter — European High School — suffered from fuzzy math. "Their numbers didn't crunch," says Abrams. "They didn't even snap, crackle, or pop." The school's prospects looked even dimmer when The Oregonian newspaper reported that one of the charter proposers had had her teaching license revoked.

In Southern Oregon, Eagle Point School District denied the state's first charter application on several counts. The Renaissance School, an existing alternative school with a visual and performing arts focus, closed at the end of the 1999 school year when it could not continue in its space in a church. While looking for a new home, the school's founder applied for charter status.

"One of the issues was a concern about the understanding that this was really a small business," says Bill Jones, Eagle Point School District Superintendent. "The applicant was never able to present a balanced budget after several tries." The school's budget included what the district felt were unrealistic assumptions about costs and about grant funds that the applicant had yet to apply for and secure. "On her very last, I believe it was the seventh try, out of $131,496 the applicant allocated $100 to instructional supplies," Jones reports.

Besides, says Jones, the mission of the school seemed to be in flux. When the latest potential location was a mall, the school was to have a marketing focus. When it was near the Rogue River, the focus was to be environmental. He also had concerns about the depth of community support for the school. The school appealed the charter denial to the state Department of Education, but after seven months with no official action dropped the appeal.

Pioneers blaze new "Oregon Trail"

In Oregon, where the charter law is still young, none of the 12 operating charters has come to grief. They are experiencing growing pains, however, and this applies to established schools that have converted, as well as to start-ups. Hungry for greater financial stability, Willamette Valley Community School, a five-year-old private school, became a charter in fall 2000. Subsequently, enrollment grew from 25 to 45 students, and the budget ballooned to twice its original size — from just under $150,000 to close to $300,000. The new funds were a welcome change. But along with the conversion to charter school status came unexpected consequences.

"The huge shock for them, what they had not anticipated, was the number of special needs students," says Corvallis School District Assistant Superintendent Ron Corbell, who acts as the district's liaison to Willamette Valley. Whereas regular schools in the district average about 12 percent special education students, Willamette Valley's percentage is currently twice that high.

"That has caused them incredible difficulty," says Corbell. "The whole notion of IEPs (individual education plans) and special education laws — which are familiar to us in the public sector — were brand-new to them. They didn't have systems in place to deal with it — or with the reporting of attendance, assessment, and curriculum."

Increasingly, says Corbell, there was a mismatch between the creative, visionary director who founded Willamette Valley and the school's new nuts-and-bolts needs. "The way the charter law is written, the director functions more as a superintendent than a principal," says Corbell. "It takes a very talented individual to be a creative leader, know systems inside and out, and report to the board." In January 2001 Willamette Valley's board dismissed the school's founder. There ensued what Corbell termed "a month of confusion and craziness in the news media."

"The difficult thing for parents is getting beyond the idea that the school is about one person," says Marion McNamara, a member of Willamette Valley's board.

The board's action sparked a student walkout and a call for board members to resign. Unhappy parents recommended the board appoint four additional members to the original five-member group. The board complied. A handful of parents pulled their children out of school. In February, after a meeting that stretched more than five hours, the board hired an interim director, someone with a superintendent's certificate and experience heading educational programs.

Who pays the price of failure?

"I have lots of faith that Willamette Valley Community School will thrive," says Corbell. "This is a bump in the road, a course correction." McNamara is hopeful all the attention focused on the school will translate into additional parent commitment to fund raising and volunteering.

A bump in the road or the end of the road? The possibility of failure is a major difference between charter schools and mainstream public schools. The idea that a school can close voluntarily or that a school board or other authorizing body can revoke or refuse to renew its charter, raises an array of reactions and concerns from those involved with the issue. Charter school advocates, for instance, see closures as evidence that the charters work as they are supposed to. The Center for Education Reform points optimistically to the 86 failures documented in its report as proof of "real contractual accountability, which is all too often missing at many traditional public schools."

Others put a different spin on closures. The National School Boards Association cautions: "A charter school is not simply a small business subject to the vagaries of the marketplace and the business acumen of its operators; it is an institution that holds an important key to a child's future. When a charter school fails, the students whose education is disrupted pay an immediate price. The entire school district also bears a burden as it hurries to accommodate those students. And citizens, whose taxes paid for the failed experiment, suffer a financial loss and, perhaps, a loss of faith in the ability of the local school board to make sound educational decisions."

The NSBA urges school boards to take seriously their oversight responsibility for charter schools. Portland School Board member Sue Hagmeier does. She's particularly concerned about providing stability — six years of it at the elementary school level. " I wouldn't want to experiment on my child," she says. "And I don't want to be in the hot seat for saying you can experiment on someone else's child." She points out that Portland already has numerous magnet schools, special-focus schools, and alternative schools. She worries that charter schools, even those with academic merit, could fail simply because of market saturation.

The idea behind charter schools is that they will compete in the educational marketplace by showing academic results. Thus far, however, as at Walden Pond, it is financial trouble, not academic nonperformance that causes most closures. "Education people are rarely also CPAs," notes Abrams.

Will school boards and other authorizing bodies in fact terminate schools for not meeting academic goals when charters run out in three, five, or even 10 years? Abrams is skeptical that they will have the political gumption to do so. "Once you do something there's a presumption of continued validity and that concerns me," he says. "A body in motion tends to stay in motion. A program approved tends to stay approved, and that sometimes results in misspending." At least one charter school in Oregon isn't counting on Newtonian physics for its survival. The 21st Century Community Schoolhouse, a high school in the Salem-Keizer District, has contracted with Teaching Research Institute for an evaluation of everything from attendance to parent satisfaction to student progress in meeting benchmarks. The first year of the three-year evaluation will cost approximately $21,000. "That's another expense a lot of charters don't put into their budget," says co-founder Andrew Goldstein, "But you'd better be able to cut the mustard when your charter comes up for renewal."

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