Activists see conspiracy in plan to help charter schools

Beth Overholt is gearing up for a showdown on high-stakes testing and charter schools. But first, she has to get across town in mid-day traffic.  Pick up her high school senior – class valedictorian - and head to Atlanta to check out Georgia Tech. Her daughter can’t decide whether to continue at Tech or stay in town and attend Florida State.

Overholt is active in the opt-out movement against the state’s public schools’ testing regimen. Right now though she’s sitting at a red light steaming about something Sen. Aaron Bean said three days earlier in a committee meeting.

Bean, a Fernandina Beach Republican, made a pitch for $200 million to lure charter school operators to set up shop in neighborhoods of schools the state rates “D” or lower.

Bean called one charter operator’s performance “extraordinary.”

“It’s a D school,” Overholt exclaimed. “My kid goes to a D school. Why don’t they get the money?”

Overholt is among a group of parents, educators, and lawmakers who see a plot to undermine public education unfolding in the session’s final two weeks. They say it is being executed by reformers who use a pretense of accountability and innovation to divert public money to set up an alternative privatized education system.

The money Bean requested and included in a House-approved plan called “schools of hope,” would lure private operators of charter schools to provide additional services, such as more hours of instruction and “wrap-around services”  including food and medicine for students served by low-performing schools.

The "Schools of Hope" plan, coupled with a testing bill the Senate is writing, works together, according to critics. The testing bill currently changes what amounts to a passing grade (proficiency) on state tests. Overholt has wrestled with the state testing system for nearly a decade as a member of school and district advisory councils.

She and members of several groups say Florida’s puts too much emphasis on tests to evaluate students, teachers, and schools. They say the current system benefits primarily the testing companies and is part of a tactic to privatize education.

“They play together. Flip the proficiency language. Label a school a failure. Presto! A public school moves in,” said Overholt. “They get the proficiency language and schools of hope passes, public schools will close.”

The fate of the two measures and the future of the state’s education process will be decided in negotiations during the next two weeks.

(This) is why I enjoy the budget conference process,” said Senate President Joe Negron, Friday. “That’s when a lot of these issues get hammered out.”

► Related: Negron says education toughest issue for lawmakers this session

ore: Committee passes bill shortening school testing season

And within the education community, the hammering is building to a crescendo for a May 5 finale.

When a Senate companion to the House’s schools of hope proposal arrived at an Education Committee meeting, Sen. David Simmons, R- Seminole, said it provided a chance to talk.

“It begins the dialogue so essential as to how we can do greater things for these chronically failing public schools,” Simmons, the committee chair, told lawmakers.

How to help low-performing schools is one of three unresolved public schools issues between the House and Senate. The chambers differ on testing, per-pupil spending and whether to fund wrap around services for traditional public schools as well as charter schools. It is an explosive mix. Capable of blowing up the Rubik cube of negotiations needed to assemble a state budget.

The biggest issue is per-pupil spending. The Senate budgets a $210 increase the House $19. The House offer shocked Leon County School District member Roseanne Wood.

“Nineteen dollars will not keep up with inflation,” said Wood. “It will mean no new programs nor increases for teachers, books, and supplies.”

More: Leon educators say 'instructional materials' bill not needed

More: Senate committee pushes 'religious expression' bill forward

The House comes in with the lower per-pupil spending because it spends more than $500 million to keep property taxes flat. Property taxes fund the required local effort for districts to draw down state money. The Senate would allow districts to collect the increase tax money produced by rising property values.

“There’s a significant difference between the House and Senate,” Negron said. “It’s one that will take some negotiations and principled compromise on both sides to resolve.”

It’s a kind of issue that serves as a domino. Once it’s decided, then other issues fall in place. Around the Capitol, advocates are positioning themselves for when the dominos start falling.

Bill Montford, D-Tallahassee, had 20 minutes for lunch and visitors to his Capitol office.  When the Overholt conspiracy theory is laid before him, he sighs deeply and pushes the food away.

“If you look at past history I can easily see how someone could come to that conclusion,” said Montford. “It’s a real simple step. If you raise the grading bar as proposed, you would have 46,000 more students in the third grade that wouldn’t meet the requirement. So your school grade goes down.”

Elements of Montford’s bill to move away from high-stakes testing have been rolled into a proposal by Sen. Anitere Flores, R-Miami. Schools of hope advocates are also attaching pieces of the House plan to the Senate’s education proposal.

It is included as one of three turn-around options districts have for low-performing schools. But Montford, Simmons, and others are working to have Florida extend the wrap around services to traditional schools as well as “high-impact” charters.

They argue if charter schools get money to feed hungry children, provide additional instruction and medical services, then the same programs should be available to students in traditional public schools.

“Why should a child in a regular public school be denied the same services if they had gone to a charter school,” asked Montford. “That is wrong. It is called separate but unequal.”

Rich Templin said he sees a separate unequal scenario play out in his neighborhood less than a mile from the state Capitol. Templin lobbies for the AFL-CIO but earlier this month he was at the Capitol as a parent and chair of the school advisory committee at his child’s school.

Standing in front of the House chamber he explained he is living out a version of the conspiracy Overholt predicted will be commonplace if schools of hope become law and there is a change in proficiency scores.

Templin’s neighborhood school fell to a D.

He said charter operators began targeting higher income homes the school served while ignoring the homes of lower income students. He said the charter operators use parents' disappointment with the school to entice them to change schools.

“All the things that you don’t like about your public school you don’t have to deal with if you come to our charter,” Templin said parents at his school are being told. “This isn’t about schools of hope. This is about schools they hope will make money.”

Bean said the work of some charters in his district is “unbelievable” and “breathtaking.”

Montford and Simmons don’t debate the quality of charters. They say their interest is to help low-performing schools.

“It is inexcusable, indefensible and flat out wrong to expect a child to come to school hungry, with a stomachache and could not get a good night sleep to learn,” said Montford. “The basis of schools of hope is to provide services to address those problems. Well, let’s provide those services to the regular schools too.”

Contact James Call at jcall@tallahassee.com.