By Kyle Cheney
BOSTON — Over the objections of a teachers union, the state's Board of Elementary and Secondary Education has agreed to more than double enrollment in a Lynn charter school and expand the school to include high school instruction.
Backers of the KIPP Academy Lynn Charter School say it has helped transform their lives and their children's, putting them on a path to college and bringing families together. But critics say the expansion will strain Lynn's already-strapped education budget.
"It's not pro-charter, anti-charter. It's funding," said Alice Gunning, president of the Lynn Teachers Union. "We cannot afford to lose funds to an expansion at this time ... We're barely keeping our heads above water. It is hurting the majority of students who remain in the Lynn public schools."
Paul Reville, the governor's Secretary of Education, said that despite often-valid financial considerations, state laws and regulations don't ask the board to consider communities' fiscal situation when evaluating charter school proposals. He said that the expansion should pass on its merits.
"We know that pressing circumstances exist in many of our communities across the commonwealth," Reville said. "We find ourselves in this dilemma."
Board members, who passed the proposal 8-2, pointed to the stories of parents who credited KIPP with preparing their children for college. One parent — a self-described "poor, Hispanic teenage mother" — said KIPP brought her family together, changing dinner conversation topics from "what happened on MTV" to "talking about which high schools we were going to visit."
When the board passed the proposal, several dozen backers of the charter school erupted in cheers and shouts of "Merry Christmas." Board members Ruth Kaplan and Harneen Chernow voted to reject the expansion.
The approval means the 320-student fifth-to-eighth-grade school will grow to 750 students and add high school grade levels over the next several years. According to staff of the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, students who do not begin at KIPP in fifth grade are ineligible to enroll in the school in later grades.
The debate played out as lawmakers are considering a proposal to lift statewide charter school enrollment and spending caps — and as debate continues over the BESE's controversial approval of the Gloucester Community Arts School charter.
The spending cap bill passed the Senate last month, and House leaders have promised action in early January, in advance of a Jan. 19 deadline to compete for federal education funds.
The state Senate's legislation would require charter schools to backfill some classroom vacancies with students on the school's waiting list, according to Department of Elementary and Secondary Education staff.
Elementary and Secondary Education Commissioner Mitchell Chester, who supported the Lynn expansion request, recommended that the KIPP increase its enrollment by 430 students, rather than the school's initial request of 530 students. He said the smaller expansion would leave room under the local charter school cap should another charter school win approval.
During debate on the expansion, Chernow said she was concerned that only 55 of the 128 students entering fifth grade at KIPP are projected to complete 12th grade. Charter school critics often point to attrition rates as an example of their failings. Chernow rankled KIPP supporters when she described students who leave KIPP before graduating as "dropouts."
At the meeting, Chester also urged board members to revoke the charter of Springfield's Robert M. Hughes Academy Charter Public School, following revelations about rampant cheating on standardized tests and mismanagement. He described his recommendation, which will be voted on in January, as "a bit of a tragedy."
"I do not believe at this point that we have a viable organization in front of us," he said.
That school, which opened in 1999, enrolls about 180 students in kindergarten through eighth grade classes. Chester said the attorney general and the state auditor are examining the school on "a number of other allegations that go beyond cheating."
A spokesman for the auditor confirmed that the office is conducting a "financial review" of the school. A spokeswoman for Attorney General Martha Coakley was unavailable for comment.
During a five-hour meeting, the board also renewed the charter of the Boston Renaissance Charter Public School while keeping the school on probation for failing to reduce enrollment to target levels, discussed Chester's recommendation to revoke the charter of Lowell Community Charter Public School for failing to meet academic improvement goals and adopted amendments to regulations requiring at least one member of the board to attend local public hearings on charter school applications.
The board also approved annual and long-term targets for high school graduation rates. Officials say the current four-year rate statewide is 82 percent. For schools to meet minimum accountability requirements, the board voted that their four-year graduation rate must reach 70 percent - up from 65 percent - their five-year rate 75 percent - up from 70 percent - or they must show at least a 2 percentage point increase from the prior year.
Board members differed over whether to set a long-term graduation rate of 100 percent by 2018, with those in favor saying it's important to aspire to a high standard and detractors arguing that the standard is unrealistic and is unaccompanied by strategies to reach that goal.
Although one board member, Sandra Stotsky, wondered whether the vote could be delayed until more data is available and members engage in further discussion, board chair Maura Banta said the federal government requires such long-term goals.
The motion passed 6-1, with Stotsky dissenting and two members abstaining.
"One of the things about goals ... when we don't set them we won't reach them," said board member Dana Mohler-Faria, who supported the measure. "Is our goal to educate or graduate 82 percent? Is it 90 percent? Our goal is to graduate 100 percent."
But board member Ruth Kaplan said without changes to current practices - including the consideration of establishing differentiated diplomas for certain subgroups of students, such as those with disabilities - reaching a 100 percent graduation rate would be impossible.
"If we want to have that goal ... we absolutely have to make a commitment to modify our assessment practices to meet that goal," she said. "We're not going to get there using the MCAS process or even the appeals process or even the alternative assessment to meet that goal."
