By Andy Brack

Not all charter school applicants are created equal.

Take the case of a North Charleston group that sought to start a charter school last year. On the North Charleston group’s application cover page, it misspelled a slogan as “Becuase learning is a lifelong experience!” Before a state advisory board could consider its application, the group withdrew it.

But under a proposal that will soon be taken up in the S.C. House of Representatives, it might get easier for organizations to become charter schools without much local input.

Charter schools are specially licensed public schools to which parents in some counties can choose to send their children. These innovative schools currently have to be approved by the state and local school boards, but operate outside the traditional school system. They generally have more freedom from regulations that apply to most schools.

For many, charter schools provide a public school option that also gives ­parents a choice about where their kids go to school. Currently, there are 23 charter schools in South Carolina. Another nine or 10 are expected to open in the fall.

Under the legislative proposal that will be considered on the House floor, local school boards may be cut out of the loop. Lawmakers propose creating a special statewide school district for charter schools that allows a new bureaucracy to consider and approve whether groups should be able to start new schools.

Proponents of the measure say it’s needed because some local boards are opposed to charter schools and as such, parents in those districts don’t have the options for school choice available to them.

“There seems to be a good bit of resistance of local school districts to issue a charter,” says state Sen. Larry Grooms, R-Bonneau, who is sponsoring a charter school bill in the Senate.

Opponents, including the state Board of Education, say the current charter school system, started just a few years ago, is on track to have 50 charter schools across the state in five years. That’s quite a large number for a state the size of South Carolina.

“We feel like the present system under the Charter School Act is working,” says Carolyn Donges, interim director of the state’s Office of Safe Schools, which oversees charter schools.

Critics maintain the proposed new statewide charter school district would create another statewide school bureaucracy. In addition to the state Department of Education, there would be a statewide charter school bureaucracy.

“It’s creating a new school system that’s not accountable to the local needs,” says state Sen. Phil Leventis, D-Sumter. “It’s the antithesis of accountability.”

And while advocates say administrative costs would be limited for the new bureaucracy, it’s curious that one of the prime supporters of the bill, Gov. Mark Sanford, is pushing for more bureaucracy since he’s the fellow who is supposed to be against more government.

Scott Price, spokesman for the South Carolina School Boards Association, says his group has no major problem with the new charter school initiative, except that control is put under the governor’s office for the first few years, instead of with the Department of Education.

“What we don’t like about this legislation is a whole new oversight board,” he says. “We don’t feel we need to be growing government or government bureaucracy.”

It looks like the House will pass the charter school bill easily, but it might face more scrutiny in the Senate.

But what observers should really look for is an interesting political dynamic: Will some House members and senators use a vote for the charter school bill as a vote for school choice?

If they use this vote as a way to highlight how they’re for school choice, it could make it tougher for Sanford to pass his “Put Parents In Charge” school voucher proposal.

We hear many Republican and Democratic lawmakers, particularly those that represent good school districts, are concerned about the impact of the voucher plan. But they also want to be “for” school choice. The charter bill might allow them to have their cake and eat it too.

Andy Brack publishes the South Carolina Statehouse Report (www.statehousereport.com), a business forecast of developments in the South Carolina Legislature and state government. He can be reached at brack@statehousereport.com.

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