Constitutional Math: 8 > 4

More changes afoot?

During the recently concluded session of the General Assembly there was a lot of talk about amending the North Carolina Constitution to overhaul the way public education is governed.  Representative Bryan Holloway (R-Rockingham & Stokes) introduced a bill that would do just that, but after a few hearings and amendments the project was slipped onto the back burner.  The idea was that Holloway's bill (HB823) would be taken up during the special session that the legislative leadership planned in Spetember for consideration of constitutional amendments. 

Now comes a report from Carolina Journal about the September session, and the amendment on public education governance doesn't get a mention:

Politicos Brace for Down-and-Dirty Amendment Fight in September 
http://www.carolinajournal.com/exclusives/display_exclusive.html?id=8146

If the leadership has given up on the idea, it's probably just as well.  Holloway's original plan was just to make the Superintendent of Public Instruction a full member of the board and give her control over all state-level appointments of administrative and supervisory education personnel.  The bill as amended does that, but (and here's the rub) it also removes the General Assembly's power to confirm the governor's appointments to the State Board of Education. 

True, the amended bill gives the GA four appointments of its own, reducing the governor's appointees to eight (from the current eleven).  But eight is still a voting majority of the board's membership of 15 (the State Treasurer and Lieutenant Governor are also members), thus leaving an anti-charter governor in a position to lay a lot of land mines for charter schools during her term.  Too many for Charter Guy's comfort, anyway.  The bill would also reduce the current eight-year term of state school board members to a more reasonable six--a good thing, in Charter Guy's opinion. 

It's hard to imagine why any legislative body would willingly surrender its power to determine who will constitute the majority of an important policy-making board.  And to trade that power for a measly four seats seems like the kind of deal made by one who doesn't understand the equation 8>4. 

If this bill resurfaces during the September session, let us hope that the leadership brushes up on some basic math first.

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.