School district panel studying proposal on whether to sponsor 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.

Nov. 3, 1999

By Devlyn Brooks

A Bemidji School District committee studying whether the district should sponsor a proposed charter school met Tuesday and will meet two times next week, according to Bemidji School Board member Carolyn Jacobs.

Jacobs, who sits on the committee with board member Mary Auger, said about a dozen teachers, school administrators and parents will be discussing a host of issues from the financial impact of a charter school to who could attend it.

A group of Bemidji residents has been exploring creating a charter school since May. In September, the group presented the Bemidji School Board with a proposal for a school that is tentatively named the Schoolcraft Learning Community.

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 those conditions of the agreement, the district could choose to close the school.

Dave Bucher, the Bemidji School District's director of education, said the members of the district's ad hoc committee seem to hold "a fair amount" of support for the charter school, but are far from a recommendation.

One of the major concerns for Bemidji School Board members is the financial impact on the school district, which ultimately could be a mute point.

When a child transfers from a public school to a charter school, the public aid for that child follows -- meaning that every child leaving a Bemidji School District school for the charter school would give the district an even leaner budget.

As a result, some board members have said they fell if they agree to sponsor the charter school, it would be like shooting themselves in the foot.

Bucher told board members at a workshop Monday that the committee might not spend a lot of time considering the financial aspects of such a decision for that reason. If the district doesn't sponsor the charter school, it loses money, and if it does sponsor the school, it would still lose money for every child transferring.

Jacobs said the other financial consideration, however, will be the time spent by district administrators monitoring the charter school -- the duty of the sponsoring agency.

School Board members have said sponsoring the school wouldn't be a positive decision if it means overburdening Bemidji School District administrators.

The district's charter school committee will be forced to do the lion's share of its work in the next two weeks because the charter school organizers are in a bind, and they should have an answer at the Nov. 15 board meeting.

If the district rejects the charter school proposal, the group would then have the opportunity to ask the state to sponsor the school and the group hopes to do so at the end of the month. According to Louise Mengelkoch, an organizer of the school, the group would have to present its proposal to the State Board of Education on Nov. 30 and the board would then make a decision on Dec. 7.

After Dec. 31, the Board of Education is being eliminated as part of a government restructuring program, Mengelkoch said, and because of this, the group thinks that they should have a decision by the state by the end of the year. The group wants to open the school's doors next year so they don't want their proposal to get lost in a new bureaucracy next year.

The Bemidji School Board, however, legally has until its Dec. 20 meeting to give the charter school group a decision, and Jacobs has said there is no guarantee the school district's committee will have a recommendation at the Nov. 15 meeting.

Charter schools, although publicly funded, are able to take different approaches to the teaching process and can focus on certain academic areas. The state's academic standards, however, are applied to students at the charter school just as they are to students in traditional public schools.

The Bemidji charter school group wants its school to focus on the arts, foreign languages and natural science studies and is hoping to have a school located at the Concordia Language Villages.