At the Pittsburgh Public Schools' public hearing on Feb. 23, Homewood native Arnold Perry called on the school board to approve a charter school he believes will have a positive impact on children and families throughout the city.
Perry was among four who attended the meeting to speak in support of the K-8 Robert L. Vann charter school, vowing not to rest until it is approved. But two days later, the board voted against the charter school.
"I'm so disgusted," Perry said a few days after the vote. "We're going to keep pushing. We need to figure out a way to help these kids."
But if recent results are any indication, a charter school — a public school run independently of the district — might not be one of them. In a climate where school districts and charter schools compete for much-needed funding, advocates say it has become nearly impossible to get a charter school approved in Pittsburgh. Although the approval process is supposed to be objective, critics say decisions are influenced by the controversy surrounding charters, instead of the merits of individual applicants.
"As long as the charter school meets the requirements, generally the school district has to approve it," says Tim Eller, head of the Keystone Alliance for Public Charter Schools. "Unfortunately, what we're seeing in the past few years is districts [that] are pushing back on charter schools."
Now the only hope for the Vann school lies with the Pennsylvania Department of Education charter appeals board, which is designed to serve as an independent decider in charter approvals. But here too, charter advocates say bias persists, and recent statements by Gov. Tom Wolf indicate that getting a charter approved could become even more difficult at the state level.
"I wouldn't say the prospects are too good for getting a charter approved," says Randall Taylor, a former Pittsburgh school-board director who has been advocating on behalf of the Vann school. "It looks bad for the charter-school movement."
The Robert L. Vann proposal calls for a K-8 "micro-society" school with a curriculum that would engage students by making connections between the classroom and real life. The school would have an extended school year with 190 days and would incorporate elements of the nationally recognized Harlem Children's Zone, which provides students with wrap-around services such as health care and after-school programs.
"We have a lot of retired educators who are part of it," says Taylor. "We plan to give the parents and the community a real plan and a real stake in their children's education. That's very different from anything the district is doing and anything the district can do."
Charter schools are controversial; critics say they unfairly drain funds from traditional public schools without, in many cases, educating students any better.
Although the Vann school would serve students throughout the city, it would be based in Homewood, a neighborhood with struggling academic institutions. At Faison K-5, only 26 percent of third-graders scored proficient or advanced in reading on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment tests last year. At Westinghouse Academy, the neighborhood's 6-12 school, only 35 percent of eighth-graders were proficient or advanced in reading.
"When I visited Faison, I wasn't impressed, and I realized the Pittsburgh public schools didn't have a lot to offer. I'm not exaggerating — it's a mess," says Perry, who will serve on the Vann school's board if it's ever approved. "I looked at what [Vann wanted] to do in terms of working with our children and I was inspired."
This is the second time the board has denied the charter school's application. Last year, Robert L. Vann was among three charter applicants, all denied by the board. This year, the charter school was the only one to apply. Since 2008, the district has approved only two charter schools out of 15 proposed.
According to the report by the charter application-review team, the application was deficient in eight of the nine criteria used to evaluate applications. The criteria, which comes from the state charter-school law, includes community support, financial viability and curriculum.
The review team deemed the application's curriculum deficient because the proposal included curriculum only for grades K-2. According to the proposal, the school would open with students in grades K-2 and later expand to K-8.
"It is mandated that the curriculum that needs to be submitted, needs to be submitted for every grade that's being proposed," says Lisa Augustin, the district's director of assessment, who led the team. "We go by the documentation that was submitted to us by the deadline."
The review team also said the school would not be financially viable because the application did not include a description of insurance plans. And according to budgets provided in the application, the school's monthly cash flow would be negative for the first seven months of operation.
"They have very specific budgeting criteria that they have to submit," Augustin says. "If they submit a budget that has negative balances, that is a deficiency. Anything that is required in the daily operation of the school, if they don't demonstrate that they can do that, that's a deficiency."
The only area where the team deemed the application sufficient was in terms of the location identified for the school. The team said the application demonstrated that the building would comply with all federal, state and local health and safety regulations.
"We have an obligation to vet those applications and make sure the board has the information to make their decisions," Augustin says.
At the school board's vote on Feb. 25, director Mark Brentley was the lone vote in support of the charter proposal.
"I have said since we started approving charter-school applications, they are highly political," Brentley said at the meeting.
But fellow school-board member Regina Holley disagrees. She says she based her vote on the recommendation of the review team that evaluated the charter application.
"That's why I didn't vote for it," Holley says. "I vote on the recommendation from the data they give us from the actual proposal."
But advocates say charter approvals are highly subjective. While the state does outline what criteria should be used in evaluations, determining whether an applicant meets the criteria isn't so cut and dry.
"One person's definition of a quality academic program is going to be different from someone else's," says Eller, of the Keystone Alliance for Public Charter Schools. "School districts kind of have a bias because the charter school is going to be their competitor."
Eller says that charter-school advocates would like to see an independent state authorizer for charter schools who would be able to evaluate applications objectively. And in some ways, the state's charter appeals board attempts to serve in this capacity as a nonpartisan authority.
"The appeal process enables applicants that are denied at the district level the opportunity to present their application and their arguments about why the denial was wrong to an independent body," says state Department of Education spokesperson Jessica Hickernell.
But charter approval by the state appeals board isn't easy to achieve, either. Last year, eight charter-school applicants filed appeals at the state level. While six of the appeals are still pending, one, for the Vann school, was denied and another was approved.
Since 2011, four of the appeals filed at the state level involved charters in the Pittsburgh Public Schools district. Of those, three appeals were granted and one, the Vann school, was denied.
In order to appeal, applicants must collect either 1,000 signatures of support for their charter school, or the signatures of 2 percent of the school district's population, whichever is fewer. They must then demonstrate why their application meets the state's criteria for charter schools.
"I'd encourage [the Vann school] to appeal the decision," says Eller. "If the applicant believes they have a quality program, any program is going to be an improvement for students. We continue to advocate for quality programs."
But the Vann charter school lost its appeal last year, and there is no guarantee it will win this year. Advocates argue that the appeals board, too, favors school districts.
A new piece of legislation referred to the state House of Representatives education committee on Feb. 18 would change the dynamic by placing both a parent and charter-school manager on the charter appeals board. The house has yet to vote on the bill.
Other changes at the state level could also mean fewer charter approvals. Earlier in February, Gov. Wolf demoted Bill Green, the chairman of the Philadelphia School Reform Commission, after Green approved five new charter schools. Wolf, a Democrat, is warier of charter schools than his predecessor, Tom Corbett, a Republican.
"The Wolf administration continues to believe that the district's financial situation cannot responsibly handle the approval of new charter schools," said a statement from Wolf's office. "Gov. Wolf remains committed to restoring cuts and delivering more funding to public schools across the commonwealth to ensure our children have the resources necessary to succeed. It is imperative for both our children and our economy that we reverse Pennsylvania's public-education deficit."
Wolf was also expected to make a statement about charter-school reform during his March 3 budget address, but details weren't available at press time. But regardless of that, or any other announcement, Taylor says the fight for charter schools in the city will continue.
"We're going to continue this battle because the kids need it. So we're going to keep at it next year and the year after," says Taylor. "I think we are going to be successful one day because we have to bring a real school to that community."
