Panel to study issue of charter school

I first started at the Bemidji (Minn.) Pioneer as an intern in the summer of 1996. That would begin six years as a news reporter, sports reporter and copy editor for a small, six-day-per-week daily newspaper in northern Minnesota. I wrote a large range of stories from multiple beats, to features to sports, my favorite being the coverage of the Red Lake Reservation High School basketball team named the Warriors. Here is a collection of my stories from my time at the Pioneer.

Oct. 28, 1999

By Devlyn Brooks

An ad hoc committee of Bemidji School Board members, school district officials and parents will meet for the first time tonight to consider whether the Bemidji School District should sponsor a charter school.

Organizers asked the school board at its September meeting to sponsor the proposed charter school, which is tentatively named the Schoolcraft Learning Community.

By law, the school district has 90 days from the group's presentation to consider the request. If the school district declines to be the sponsor, the charter school group may still ask the state to sponsor it.

The ad hoc committee dilemma is that the charter school group almost needs a decision at the Nov. 15 Bemidji School Board meeting, giving it less than three weeks to form a recommendation. If the district rejects the proposal, the charter school group would then have to approach the State Board of Education and organizers hope to do so in December.

According to Louise Mengelkoch, and organizer of the charter school, the State Board of Education meets the first week of December, and then as of Dec. 31, the board is being eliminated under a government restructuring program.

She added that in the sense of time it would behoove the charter school to present to the State Board of Education this year.

"They are familiar with the proposal, Mengelkoch said, adding that after the first of the year, the group would have to work with an entirely new bureaucratic system.

School Board member Carolyn Jacobs said she could not guarantee that the committee would have a recommendation for the School Board by the November regular meeting because of the short amount of time they have to consider the proposal.

She added that if the committee is not able to produce a recommendation by the November meeting, they may continue to meet into December.

The charter school group has been organized since May, and would like to see a school focused on the arts, foreign languages and natural science studies.

Mengelkoch said the group would like to see the school operating next fall and a site for the school is being considered at Concordia Language Villages located northeast of Bemidji on Beltrami County Road 20.

Charter schools, although publicly funded, are able to take different approaches to the teaching process and can focus on certain academic areas, such as the arts at the proposed Schoolcraft Learning Community.

However, the state's same academic standards are applied to students at the charter school just as they are to students in traditional public schools.

Should the Bemidji School Board choose to sponsor the charter school, its role would be to form an agreement regarding student improvement, the school's goals and the school's business practices.

If the charter school did not meet the conditions of the agreement, the school district could close the school.