Hooray! The cap is gone!

So, with the legal cap of 100 charter schools now consigned to the dustbin of history, new charter schools will soon be popping up around the state like mushrooms after a summer rain, right?

Uh, no.

OK, we didn't really think it would be that easy either. There were always going to be obstacles, of course. Anyone who's ever been involved in starting up a charter school, or even running one of our many fine existing charter schools, knows that there is a mountain of time-consuming work involved. Things of value, things worth creating, always take time. Rome wasn't built in a day.

But if the North Carolina State Board of Education had been in charge, Rome would still be under construction. And cap or no cap, the SBE is in charge, very much so when it comes to new charter schools. Having lost its favorite cap (the de jure model) in the legislature, the board seems intent upon finding a new one (the de facto model--very stylish!) in the board room.

Bill Harrison and the board have been mum about how long it will take the board to approve new charters, but the signs so far are not good. The Office of Charter Schools staff, which would have to examine the applications before approval, has been reduced. The board has received a grant to craft a new application process--but does a new proceedure mean that pending applicants have to 'start over' once the new process is in place? And what about recent applications that were rejected solely because of the cap; could they pick up where they left off, or will the board make them start over as well?

Between the bureaucratic obastacles that could be erected, and the length of time between the SBE meetings (generally a month apart) at which decisions regarding charter policies are decided, the board could easily delay the awarding of new charters until the spring of 2012 or later. And with the recently-adopted one year 'planning period' policy, it's entirely possible that North Carolina will see no new charters opened until the fall of 2013.

Meanwhile the board continues to wield the authority to close existing charter schools for a variety of reasons. Thus, it's possible that by this time next year there could be fewer than 100 charter schools in North Carolina. Wonder what the sponsors of Senate Bill 8 would think of that?