Call to Action - Charter Schools on House Calendar

The House’s Charter School Bill, HSB 242 awaiting a new bill number, was approved by the House Education Committee March 3 on party lines, placing it on the House Debate Calendar.

Download the full UEN Call to Action on Charter Schools 3/5/2021

The bill contains two kinds of charter schools: 1) chartered by the local school board and approved by the state board of education and 2) chartered by an outside entity known as a founding group model and approved by the state board. Details of the bill regarding the “founding group model.”

• Establishes a Founding Group-state board model (new attendance center, not authorized by the school district). This provision includes the same requirements for application but no vote of parents or teachers is required.
• Provides for a Charter school contract; requires DE to enter into a contract with approved charter school within 30 days, allows the initial contract for ten school budget years, allows delay of start up by one year, with the ability to request an extension if need more time.
• The bill defines “founding group” as a person, group of persons, or education service provider that develops and submits an application for a charter school to the state board.
• Possible chartering founding groups: university or college, private corporation related to the community, disgruntled parent group over a boundary or school closure, nonprofit, education management organization (EMO), former teachers or administrator, former school board members, community college, city or county, maybe even the state.
• Governance: the bill defines the “Governing Board” to mean the independent board of a charter school whose members are elected or selected pursuant to the charter school contract.

UEN opposes Charter Schools charters by an outside entity:

• Urban School Flexibility: School boards should be in charge of any charter schools in their communities. Provisions of HSB 242 expanding flexibility for Public Charter schools are only good if those flexibilities, oversight and authority to charter remain with the locally elected school board. We should expand Iowa’s existing charter school law to give that flexibility to school boards. The second chartering method, to allow outside entities to create charter schools without the school board’s authority or consent, is not good for Iowa.
• Public Oversight: taxpayer dollars should be overseen by locally elected public officials like school boards. We don’t need an “education management organization” with no Iowa connections telling Iowans what’s best for our students.
• We already have a public school charter law in Iowa.