Pommer derides enrollment exclusion

Democrat says charter schools ‘cherry pick’ students they want
By John Fryar
The Daily Times-Call

DENVER — Some Colorado charter schools are “cherry picking” the students they’ll admit and weeding out “kids that they don’t want,” a local lawmaker charged on Tuesday.
Even though semi-independent charter schools are technically public schools and get government funding, “we’ve built a separate set of schools that are quasi-private,” said Democratic Rep. Jack Pommer, whose House district includes parts of both the St. Vrain Valley and Boulder Valley school districts.
During a budget hearing with Colorado Department of Education officials, Pommer reported that parents and local school district officials have complained to him that there’s little they can do to prevent charter schools from turning away certain students they would rather not admit.
Pommer did not specifically name any such schools during the hearing. But several State Board of Education members said such exclusionary practices are illegal because charter schools have to have open-enrollment policies.
“I don’t know legally how the school can cherry-pick,” said Randy DeHoff, a Republican education board member from Littleton.
Evie Hudak, a Democratic state board member from Westminster, agreed with DeHoff but added that “it’s true that some charter schools counsel out students” who don’t fit into a school’s particular educational program.
Boulder Democrat Jared Polis, vice chairman of the state board, said the exclusionary enrollment practices Pommer described are not only illegal, but that local school districts shouldn’t allow them.
Polis said he thought the state board would be unanimous in saying that school districts should not allow preferential admissions policies by the charter schools within those districts.
But Pommer told Polis and DeHoff during a break in the hearing that school districts “all over the state” say there’s little they can do about the creation or practices of charter schools within their local jurisdictions.
Those local school districts fear they’ll be overruled by the State Board of Education, or that would-be charter schools will bypass the districts entirely and seek authority to form and operate themselves under a separate charter school law, he said.
Pommer charged that some families can’t even get their children into charter schools in their own neighborhoods because slots have been filled by children of the charter schools’ board members or employees.
Meanwhile, Pueblo Democratic Sen. Abel Tapia aired a separate charter-school-related complaint during Tuesday’s hearing.
Charter schools, which began forming under a 1993 law sponsored by Gov. Bill Owens when he was a state senator, were supposed to be laboratories for education innovations that could be adapted by conventional public schools, said Tapia, the chairman of the budget committee.
Tapia said he’s seen little idea-sharing between charter schools and public school districts in the 13 years since.
Polis suggested the blame may lie both with some charter schools, which may be too protective and “proprietary” about their techniques, and school districts with “an excess of pride” that don’t want to implement ideas they didn’t come up with for themselves.
“There is a lot of room for improvement” on both sides, Polis said.