Education Week - August 7, 2013 - 16

16 EDUCATION WEEK AUGUST 7, 2013 www.edweek.org
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FOCUS ON: FACILITIES
Charter-Space Seekers
Run Into Hurdles
On Several Fronts
By Katie Ash
Before Le Monde French Im-
mersion Public Charter School
opened its doors last fall in Portland,
Ore., it had already overcome
one of the biggest challenges
facing charter schools: finding and
financing its facility.
“It was a traumatic experience,”
said Shouka Rezvani, the board
president for the independent
public school. “We all know what
our academic models are, but as a
startup, you have no financial history
that you can fall back on with
respect to getting money.”
Unlike regular public school
systems, which can seek taxpayerbacked
bonds for school construction
and renovation, many charter
schools have no mechanism in
place to offset their facilities costs.
And while some of the larger charter
networks have more experience
and financial track records to fall
back on, startup charters are hit
particularly hard when seeking
loans and other financial assistance
because of their lack of a financial
history, experts on the sector say.
In addition, charters’ contracts
with their authorizers tend to
range from three to five years,
while loans are typically paid
back over several decades, making
banks wary of lending to the
schools for fear that their contracts
will not be renewed.
For the Portland startup, even
before tackling how it would pay
for the facility, an even bigger hurdle
was simply finding a suitable
space, Ms. Rezvani said.
“We have to meet all of these code
requirements that older schools
[and private schools] may not have
to comply with because we’re a
new school, which makes even the
consideration of most spaces impossible
and difficult,” she said.
In addition, when it was seeking
to move into a Portland school system
building that was no longer
in use by the district, Le Monde
faced competition from private
schools with larger budgets.
Allowing charter schools to oc-
cupy former district-owned buildings
is a practice that has spread
to many states, and in some cases,
it has increased the tension between
charter and district-operated
schools.
Ultimately, Le Monde ended up
where many charters start out: colocating
with a church. And while
that arrangement has worked so
far, it hasn’t been ideal, Ms. Rezvani
said.
The school has installed reversible
bulletin boards that can be
flipped over depending on the use
of the room, and the school and
the church have signed agreements
about where student artwork
can be posted and what can
and cannot be displayed.
For now, the arrangement is
working, but officials of Le Monde
are continuing to seek suitable but
affordable spaces as the charter’s
enrollment increases, Ms. Rezvani
said. The school currently serves
about 150 students in grades K-2
and plans to add grade levels each
year until it is a K-8 school.
Le Monde is not alone in its
struggle for a space, said Josh
Kern, the owner of Ten Square, a
Washington-based consulting firm
that works with charters to help
them find and finance facilities.
‘Political Battle’
“This is the single biggest business
decision that schools will
make,” he said. “Making a bad
facilities decision in the first year
can really determine the performance
of the school.”
Mr. Kern, who founded and ran
a charter school, Thurgood Marshall
Academy, in the nation’s
capital for 10 years, said that
although charter schools in the
District of Columbia receive one
of the charter sector’s largest perpupil
facility allowances (about
$3,000 per student), the Washington
real estate market makes
States, Districts Set Policies to Give
Charters Financing for Facilities
By Katie Ash
Several states have been working to
change policies and budgeting practices
to help charter schools identify and pay
for better facilities.
In Idaho, education officials representing
both traditional district schools and
charter schools came together this year
to work on a plan for equitable facilities
funding for charter schools.
After a series of compromises by both
district and charter groups, the final recommendation
was for the state to provide
20 percent of facilities costs for charters
in its per-pupil allocation the first year
of the program and 30 percent the next
year; after that, the funding would increase
or decrease in increments of 10
percentage points, with a cap at 50 percent
and a minimum of 20 percent, depending
on fluctuations in the overall
state education budget, said Jason Han-
it nearly impossible to find an appropriate
and affordable location.
“It’s a nonstop political battle,”
said Robert Cane, the executive director
of a Washington-based charter
advocacy group, the Friends of
Choice in Urban Schools, or FOCUS.
A city law requires the District of
Columbia public school system to
give charter schools “right of first
offer” whenever a public school
building transfers hands, but Mr.
Cane contends the school district
has been hesitant to do so.
“There’s a tendency to want to
keep control because [the district]
is afraid that if [it] gives up [the
facilities] to charter schools, that
will just accelerate the decline in
their enrollment,” he said.
That is also a problem for
charters elsewhere, said Emily
Dowdall, a senior associate for the
Philadelphia Research Initiative
at the Pew Charitable Trusts.
“In a number of cities, there
Conversion charters are those that were
previously a traditional public school before
becoming a charter.
To cut back on the competition between
cock, the deputy chief of staff at the Idaho
education department.
“It was important to administrators
that future increases in that equivalency
percentage would be tied to the budget,”
he said. “If charter schools were getting
more money for facilities, it was because
all schools were receiving more money.”
The proposal passed the legislature
with minimal changes and was signed
into law in April.
Meanwhile, in Tennessee’s state-run
Achievement School District—which was
created with $22 million from the $500
million Race to the Top grant awarded to
the state in 2010—education officials are
aiming to move the lowest-performing 5
percent of schools in the state into the top
25 percent of student achievement within
five years.
To do so, the achievement district has
relied largely on conversion charters in
the low-performing schools.
charters and regular schools, the conversion
charters can only pull students from
schools in the Achievement School District.
In exchange, the charters operate in
district facilities rent-free.
“We don’t want this to be a financially
adverse situation for the home district,”
explained Malika Anderson, the chief
portfolio officer for the 1,600-student
Achievement School District.
Ballots and Bonds
In California, a series of lawsuits stemming
from a 2000 ballot measure has put
the state in the limelight for the charter
school facility movement. The measure,
Proposition 39, requires that public school
facilities be “shared fairly and equally
among all public schools, including those
in charter schools.”
Proposition 39 has been critical in help-
ing charters find adequate facilities, said
Ricardo Soto, the senior vice president for
legal advocacy and general counsel for the
is a growing concern that turning
those buildings over to charters
will lead to expanded enrollment
for charters and even
further rounds of closures [in
regular school districts],” said
Ms. Dowdall, who recently wrote
a paper about what happens to
shuttered school buildings in 12
cities around the country.
But while districts may be hesi-
tant to embrace charter schools,
Ms. Dowdall’s research showed that
the biggest share—42 percent—of
shuttered school buildings do end
up in the hands of charter operators.
“In many cases, there might
not be a lot of choices,” Ms. Dowdall
said. “The charter school may be
the only prospective buyer.”
Tracking Facility Needs
Until recently, charter advo-
cates could only estimate the
percentage of operating budgets
California Charter Schools Association.
But even with the law in place, the state’s
charters face challenges in securing space
and paying for it, he said.
For starters, the law applies only to
charter schools with more than 80 students,
which not all startup charters
may have, he said. Second, while Proposition
39 helps charters access facilities,
it doesn’t help those charters finance the
buildings.
In some California districts, such as
San Diego and Los Angeles, charters
have responded to that challenge by
working with districts to be included in
local bond measures, said Mr. Soto.
Miles Durfee, the Southern California
managing regional director for the California
Charter Schools Association, is helping
oversee the distribution of funds to charters
from a facilities bond passed in the
San Diego school district last November.
“We absolutely would like to see this
model explode or become bigger as we look
through different local bonds,” he said.
“The political nexus occurs when the voters
vote for the bond. They want to vote for
all students, and they have kids at charter
schools.”
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