Even as the state's Board of Elementary and Secondary Education meets tomorrow to weigh its options on its approval of a charter school for Gloucester, state lawmakers are also poised this week to consider education legislation rooted in Gov. Deval Patrick's overall charter-school plan.
Sen. Robert O'Leary, the Barnstable Democrat who serves as Senate chairman of the Education Committee, has said he's hopeful for floor votes on the bill before the Legislature closes its formal business for the rest of the calendar year on Wednesday.
"The substance of the bill will be something that the House and Senate have agreed on, at the committee level," O'Leary said during a telephone interview.
But with a rules-induced Nov. 18 deadline crimping the legislative pipeline, many lawmakers and Beacon Hill observers called passage of a major bill like education reform difficult before the end of the year.
"If it's not done then, it's got to be one of the first things we take up in January," said assistant House majority whip Patricia Haddad, who left her Education Committee chair to join Speaker Robert DeLeo's senior leadership circle. Haddad said she and others were wary of an initiative petition removing restrictions on charter schools that could land on the ballot, and of the prospect of federal aid.
"Every dollar matters, but for me, at the end of the day, beyond the dollars, it's the best way to do this," Haddad told the State House News Service.
Patrick has urged lawmakers to act on bills he filed in July, including one that would dramatically expand charter schools in Massachusetts and empowering the state to intervene more aggressively with restructuring poorly performing schools and school districts.
"These bills have merit independent of the 'Race to the Top' application," he said, referring to the expanded federal education aid program.
Estimates have fluctuated starkly for how much federal aid Massachusetts could receive under the "Race to the Top" program, the high-end estimate hitting $500 million over two years. Education Commissioner Mitchell Chester estimated the state could receive $100 million or more.
Final Race to the Top rules and applications are due out in "late fall," according to the U.S. Department of Education. And a sweeping education reform bill could serve as a standout autumn or winter achievement, while granting Patrick a win on his legacy issue heading into an election year.
Yet the Patrick administration's push regarding charter schools has also become muddled in the Gloucester controversy, where an e-mail obtained by the Times showed that Paul Reville, the governor's Secretary of Education, suggested that Chester recommend approval for the Gloucester Community Arts School charter largely because the administration needed a green light for at least one of the three applications to simply advance their "agenda," and not alienate traditional supporters such as The Boston Globe and The Boston Foundation.
Patrick subsequently ordered the BESE to reconsider the Gloucester charter, and local charter opponents, including Gloucester Superintendent of Schools Christopher Farmer and a number of Gloucester school parents, have urged that the local charter be revoked and refiled.
But in a Nov. 7 BESE meeting at Gloucester City Hall, attorney David Kerrigan advised the panel that the legal standard for showing "material misrepresentation" in the application, a reason to "justify revocation of a charter," would be very high and difficult to prove.
The board is set to meet at its offices in Malden tomorrow.
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