Cotham, now with GOP, backs new Republican effort to ease charter school approvals

Democrat-turned-Republican state Rep. Tricia Cotham is out front on a new GOP bill to make it easier for charter schools in the state to get approved or renewed and shift such decisions away from the state board.

The bill would strip the State Board of Education of power to vote on charter school applications, amendments, renewals and terminations. Instead, those duties would fall to a newly created Charter School Review Board. Current members of the Charter School Advisory Board, which makes recommendations to the SBE, would become the initial members of the new review board.

The North Carolina Superintendent of Public Instruction would be the board's 12th member. The state board could still hear appeals.

The move would, at first, shift independent oversight of charter schools from a board largely appointed by the governor to a board largely appointed by the General Assembly.

The State Board of Education is 13 members, 11 of whom are appointed by the governor and can serve for up to eight years. The Charter Schools Advisory Board is 11 members, eight of whom are appointed by the General Assembly, two of whom are appointed by the State Board of Education and one appointed by the lieutenant governor.

“We have to evolve and I believe that the state is changing, especially after what [parents] saw firsthand in their home, with COVID and learning,” Cotham said last week when announcing her party change. “One-size-fits-all in education is wrong for children.

“It might be OK for adults, but I am about children,” she said.

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Charter schools are a top educational priority among Republicans and have many Democratic supporters, though many other Democrats argue they take focus and funding away from traditional public schools that still serve the vast majority of public school students. Opponents also argue charter schools, unless they do a weighted lottery, are often less diverse than the traditional public schools in the same geographic area.

Charter school proponents champion the choice they give some families and their regulatory freedom to be more innovative than traditional public schools.

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After taking over the North Carolina General Assembly majority in 2011, Republican leadership lifted the state’s cap on the number of charter schools. The number operating has doubled to more than 200 schools and prompted the State Board of Education to repeatedly push lawmakers for more staffing to oversee the schools.

As of May, there were 203 charter schools with more than 130,000 students. Seven more were expected to open in the fall of 2022 with five applications for new charter schools to open in 2023, according to the state.

Charter schools are public schools in North Carolina, operated by independent nonprofit boards of directors. Families apply to get their children into them. Charter schools have regulatory flexibility that traditional public schools do not, allowing them to teach in very different ways.

The current State Board of Education approves most charter school applications and renewals and largely goes along with state Office of Charter Schools and the Charter School Advisory Board recommendations.

Occasionally, the board rejects charter school applications that had been recommended, such as one submitted last year by American Leadership Academy, operated by a national charter school chain that was founded by a for-profit business owner with financial dealings with the schools. But the state board sometimes conducts reviews the charter school board does not.

In February, the state board rejected Heritage Collegiate Leadership Academy of Wake County’s application to open, despite the charter board’s recommendation. At the time, the board cited the serious issues at the founder’s previous charter school that nearly forced its closure. The Office of Charter Schools and the Charter School Advisory Board had not looked into school leadership’s background and, as a standard practice, review only the application at hand.

Legislative supporters said the move would expedite approvals.

"Requests from charter schools take months to gain approval under the current process," said Rep. David Willis, a Union County Republican and another sponsor. "Oversight from the CSRB will speed up the process for requests from charter schools and grant those schools the ability to act more quickly in accordance with the CSRB decisions.”

The state board would still have authority over education and policy at charter schools.