Charter schools need a clean process

We’ve been around long enough to see at least a couple of charter schools get off the ground.

The process moves astonishingly quickly.

From approval at the state level to the opening of doors on the first day of school is only a matter of months. In that time, organizers need to do everything: get books, hire teachers, acquire furniture, set up the curriculum.

Among the most important tasks is finding a building. And, for a variety of reasons, leasing a building has been the best choice nearly every time.

You can imagine how, in the rush to get everything together, schools might wind up in a less-than-ideal location.

The people in charge of the Fronteras Spanish Immersion charter school have prophesied this about their school. The facility they are in is comprised of more than one building. It’s got a gravel lot for a playground. There is no gym. And they’re paying quite a bit of taxpayer money for the privilege.

We’ve documented the school’s many attempts to get a new building that seemed to reach a dramatic crescendo when Jim Colver successfully pushed through an initiative for a bond proposition to build a school for Fronteras, only to see it fall to a mayoral veto that he lacked the votes to override.

The school is finally on its way to getting a permanent facility. We reported about it in today’s edition.

But to say that the process for getting this far was ad hoc and piecemeal would be putting it mildly. A standard process for funding facilities for charter schools doesn’t exist. Everyone was playing by ear. We were all making it up as we went along.

One other charter school has traveled farther than Fronteras in this process. However, Academy Charter School blazed a completely different path. That building, a wonderful facility on the Old Glenn Highway, was built in pieces with a series of grants directly from the state Legislature. The borough chipped in some funding, but the bulk of dough came from Juneau.

In one case, Fronteras managed to win the borough over with advocacy. In the other, Academy won Juneau over with similar lobbying efforts.

Meanwhile, four other charters are waiting in the wings, still in rented facilities, possibly seeking something more permanent. And the charter roster seems poised to expand with organizers behind Arkose Ridge Leadership Academy vowing to push on with their efforts to create another charter.

We don’t believe that the only way charter schools get buildings is by leaning on their powerful allies. We think that’s too cynical and dismissive of the good work these schools have done to deserve permanent buildings. But it’s easy to see why people might think that who you know matters in these scenarios.

This is no way to handle something as important as the building of schools. The district needs one uniform process that allows all charter schools to compete on equal footing for limited capital dollars for new construction. This would help scrub out the idea that lobbying efforts, not merit, are the deciding factors for charter school construction.

The Mat-Su Borough School District has a process for building traditional schools. At the risk of gross oversimplification: as populations increase the district figures out where to locate a new building in order to serve those new students and then builds it.

We understand that charter schools are risky. We understand the district doesn’t want to jump in with both feet on a new school that hasn’t been proven successful.

But the borough and the school district should spend the time to come up with a process for proven charter schools to apply for and receive borough support to build a permanent facility.

We can’t keep doing it the way we have. It’s not fair to the individual schools, but it’s also not fair to our students.