mbutts@heraldsun.com; 419-6684
DURHAM – Durham school board members tonight will likely approve a resolution in opposition to Research Triangle High School, a charter school proposed for opening in Research Triangle Park this fall.
At the board’s retreat Tuesday, members expressed concerns over the potential for the school to further segregate local education along racial and socioeconomic lines and to leave the district with fewer dollars with which to serve the county’s most at-risk – and most expensive to educate – children.
RTHS is among nine proposed charter schools that received the endorsement of the N.C. Public Charter School Advisory Council earlier this month to open through the state’s “fast-track” process reserved for applicants that can get their schools up and running in less than a year. If approved by the state Board of Education, the school would open in August.
Charter schools are public schools – therefore tuition-free – but operate independently of local school districts. The state Legislature lifted a statewide cap of 100 charters last year.
With eight charters already operating in Durham, the county already has the highest market share of students enrolled in charters of any school district in the state, board members pointed out on Tuesday. Charter schools draw down dollars from their students’ base school districts.
“RTHS will function effectively as a de facto private school supported by taxpayers,” reads a draft of the board’s resolution.
Board member Natalie Beyer, who drafted the original resolution, said she’s particularly concerned by what she sees as barriers to low-income students attending the school: the need for at-home technology to utilize a “flipped learning” model in which students listen to lectures at home; a location “away from where students of need live”; and a requirement that students complete at least Algebra I by the end of their freshman year.
Board members are also concerned by what they see as small transportation and nutrition budgets, $22,200 and $16,650, respectively, for 160 students in the 2012-13 academic year.
The school’s application was filed by Pamela Blizzard, executive director of the RTP-based Contemporary Science Center and a founder of Raleigh Charter High School – designated by the state as an Honor School of Excellence since 2005 and a fixture on national rankings like Newsweek’s America’s Best High Schools list.
But those accolades come at the cost of diversity, board members suggested. Data on the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools website shows that Raleigh Charter’s student population in 2010-11 was 73.1 percent white, 13.2 percent Asian, 6 percent black, 2.5 percent Latino and 5.2 percent other. That contrasts with demographics from the same year in the Wake County Public School System: 49.3 percent white, 6.3 percent Asian, 24.7 percent black, 15 percent Latino and 4.7 percent other.
Many existing Durham charter schools are either majority-white or majority-black/ Latino, board members pointed out. For example, Voyager Academy is 82.1 percent white, according to the national charter group, and Maureen Joy Charter School is 74.3 percent black and 24.1 percent Latino. About 51 percent of Durham Public Schools students are black in the 2011-12 academic year, followed by 22 percent Latino and 21 percent white.
“We’ve yet to successfully create separate but equal. We’ve never been able to do that as a society, and that is what this is creating,” said board Vice Chairwoman Heidi Carter, noting that more than 75 percent of DPS students qualify for free or reduced-price meals. “We need [RTHS] to share the burden of educating children with social challenges.”
Board member Leigh Bordley said she’s heard concerns about RTHS from Durham County residents, dismayed by what they see as a re-segregation of schools unfolding in the Wake school system.
“I can’t count the number of people [who have said] if we allow things like this to go forward, we’re deepening the segregation of our own community,” she said.
Blizzard said diversity is important to RTHS and that she’s not worried about the potential for homogeny because “we’re working so hard to that the school is working to recruit from a really diverse and broad student population.”
She said the proposed school is interested in collaborating with DPS programmatically, noting that the Contemporary Science Center has long worked with DPS schools to enrich students’ education. Blizzard is also interested in partnering with DPS on resources, infrastructure and transportation, but she said she hasn’t had conversations with the district about a potential collaboration since the school’s application has yet to be approved.
Concerns about students having to take Algebra I by the end of the ninth grade aren’t valid, she said, noting that most North Carolina teenagers already take the course by that point.
RTHS’ application highlights a planned focus on STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) learning and a goal to partner with RTP-based companies in preparing students for STEM-focused careers. The application’s assertion that only a “handful” of local high schools are STEM-focused irked school board members, who noted that STEM is a huge initiative for DPS, with programs already in place at Hillside New Tech High School, City of Medicine Academy and Southern School of Engineering in addition to STEM pathways and choice programs at several other high schools.
Durham school board members also expressed concerns about RTHS’ recruitment of teachers and students before receiving approval from the state Board of Education. Lists of available faculty positions and open house dates are already posted on the school’s website.
But Blizzard said that’s a necessary part of the process of getting a school ready to open in August. Other schools in the running for fast-track approval have taken the same steps, she said.
After the board tweaked its resolution Tuesday, members expressed their concerns to Bill Harrison, chairman of the state Board of Education. He assured them that the state board does consider the impact on school districts when deciding the fate of charter applications and that the board “is not interested in creating two [school] systems.”
“I don’t want to be a part of re-segregating our public schools,” he said. “There’s enough kind of de facto re-segregation occurring, and I don’t want to be the leader of a policy board that accelerates that re-segregation.”
The Durham school board will meet at 6:30 tonight at the Fuller Central Services Building, 511 Cleveland St.
