Charters get nice surprise: Renewal, expansion OKs

Charter-school operators and students cheered yesterday after the School Reform Commission approved expansions and enrollment increases for 22 charter schools for next school year.

The commission also voted to renew five-year charters for 11 other schools whose charters were due to expire this year.

The 200 or so charter-school officials, staffers, students and parents packed the SRC meeting ready for a fight yesterday, but it turned out not to be necessary.

Last Friday, the charter-school operators who applied to increase enrollments were told that the SRC would delay its vote until August, said Guy Ciarrocchi, executive director of the Pennsylvania Coalition of Public Charter Schools.

The coalition members made a flurry of phone calls over the weekend to commission members and others to complain that the charter schools couldn't plan properly for next year if the SRC waited until August.

"We have parents who have already registered their children at two or three public schools next year because of the uncertainty," Ciarrocchi said after the commission voted yesterday.

"We look at it as an important first step," Ciarrocchi added. "It's a small victory."

But Ciarrocchi, whose organization represents 67 charter schools in the city and 135 in the state, said that the uncertainty about the SRC vote shows that "this process didn't work."

He said that he would be happy to talk with school officials to improve the way charters apply to expand so decisions can be made in early spring, rather than at the end of the school year.

During his presentation on the schools that want to grow, Ben Rayer, chief of the district's charter-school office, said that allowing the charters to increase by the numbers they had sought would cost the district $85.4 million in addition to the more than $400 million in the budget for charter-school operations.

For example, KIPP Philadelphia Schools plans to add a kindergarten and a ninth grade next year.

It will get 150 additional students, but had applied for 230 more.

Commission member David F. Girard-diCarlo said he was concerned that the district has too many schools that are half-empty and that extending charter-school enrollments would create problems in neighborhoods where other schools would have to close.