Two Philly charters owe their existence to appeals to state board

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

The new cigarette tax bill that sends badly needed money to the School District comes with a controversial provision — that the District start accepting applications for new charter schools.

To the consternation of the charter community, the School Reform Commission has not considered new charter applications since 2007, citing its precarious financial situation, although it has continued converting low-performing District schools to charters.

The new law also says that applicants denied by the SRC can appeal to the state Charter Appeals Board (CAB). This has been the procedure across the rest of Pennsylvania, but charter applicants in the city were prevented from using it by the law that created the SRC.

Will this change open the floodgates to new charters? Hard to tell, but there’s a bit of history.

The charter school law was passed in 1997, and the state took over the Philadelphia schools in 2001. In those four years before the SRC was formed, charters could appeal decisions made by the old Board of Education.

In those heady days of charter creation, the school board approved many charters, but rejected several and failed to make a decision on others within the specified time frame. State records indicate that 10 charters appealed. According to these records, only two won their cases with the CAB.

One was Walter D. Palmer Leadership Learning Partners Charter School, which is now in a process of revocation due to poor academics and financial disarray. At the time, the school, called Leadership Learning Partners Charter School, was proposing to be operated by a for-profit company, Mosaica.

Another charter that opened after an appeal to the state was Independence Charter School, now a popular school in Center City.

These two applications were not rejected by the Board of Education, but instead were not voted on within the 75-day deadline, so the CAB decision was not a reversal.

The two appeals were granted in 2000, shortly before the school board was dissolved and replaced by the SRC. In that year and in early 2001, eight other charter appeals from Philadelphia were denied by the CAB, the records indicate. Three sought reversals of Board rejections.

It is hard to know what to make of that track record. The political climate is different now. Charters are a well-established part of the landscape, and they have strong lobbying clout in Philadelphia and Harrisburg. More is known about the impact on school district finances.

Charter schools in Philadelphia have always been able to appeal revocation actions to the CAB. Community Academy Charter School, which the SRC wants to close, is in the process of such an appeal.

The state began collecting the $2-a-pack cigarette tax on Wednesday, and on that day the District posted a new and revised charter application on its website. Applications are due Nov. 15.

In a statement, the District said that all applications would be considered "in the context of the District’s budgetary constraints."

About 200,000 students attend publicly funded schools in Philadelphia, with about a third of them in charters and the rest in traditional District schools. The District has been requiring that charter schools agree to enrollment caps for their renewals, which it says is necessary so it can plan and manage its finances.

"In overseeing this system, the District must consider the impact that each type of school has on the system of schools in terms of budgeting, choice, and quality," said the District statement. "The District acknowledges the important contributions of charter schools in providing choices to families in Philadelphia, while concurrently the District recognizes the broader impacts inherent in the opening of new charter schools."

The charter office has recently beefed up its staff to six people, but its executive director position has been vacant for months. Those six people must evaluate any new applications, as well as manage renewals overall, while monitoring the 86 charter schools in the city.