CHARTER GROUNDWORK

Groundwork laid for charter schools

Charter schools - two baggage-laden words - were hardly mentioned in the June election.

But with a fresh Tory mandate and a new education minister, charter schools need a closer look. They may be closer than we think.

Charter schools, which currently exist only in Alberta and British Columbia, are based on government charters that license businesses, churches or parents' groups to provide alternatives to public schools.

The rap - among others - is that they siphon resources from public schools already reeling from cuts.

Sensitive to the controversies, the Mike Harris government has proceeded very, very carefully.

The Tories' re-election ``Blueprint'' doesn't rule out charter schools. It merely says ``every Ontario student has the right to publicly funded elementary and secondary education.'' Charter schools are publicly funded.

And the reality is that most of what else is needed for charter schools is in place or promised.

The key requirements are a shift of control from elected school trustees to parents and a shift of budgeting, hiring, firing, dress and discipline from school board to school.

Which of these elements are now in place?

Bill 160 both weakened school boards and created parent councils, renaming them school councils. The Tory Blueprint promises to strengthen them:

``We'll give a majority of parents at any school in Ontario the power to impose a dress code or require a uniform for students.''

``Principals of schools that fail to meet minimum standards will be required to work with their school's parent council to develop and implement a turnaround plan.''

Another key shift in power from boards is also in the works: ``Vice-principals and principals will be given the right to expel students for Code of Conduct violations.''

Which elements are missing?

There are basically two. Charter schools would need to have budgetary discretion and the power to hire and fire principals, free of school board supervision. Making schools accountable to Queen's Park rather than elected school boards would do this.

An obvious justification for lifting this job from school boards is in the Blueprint, which promises ``to find and eliminate waste such as the costs of administration and the education bureaucracy.''

It might be a hard sell to give to unelected school councils the powers and spending discretion stripped from elected school boards.

Even here, however, a funding formula based on enrolment - as easily applied to a school as a district - smooths the path to charter schools.

Will the government take the next steps? Big problems remain.

Half of 843 schools surveyed by Parents for Education are already too small to justify full-time principals, vice principals, librarians and secretaries.

Adding a charter school to a small town could draw away enough students to kill a local public school - and several surrounding ones - just as surely as the Tories' school closing policy.

This means charter schools would be a big city thing. But the only justification for putting them in Toronto, Hamilton and Ottawa is that government cuts have created a demand for them.

Step-by-step, programs for sports, music, drama, single mothers, pregnant women and adult education have fallen to the axe.

This creates a niche for schools focused on football, violin, adult education and the like.

But what could possibly justify giving public money to charter schools to recreate the programs - some superb - that died under the Tory budgetary axe?

The answer may come quickly. It's a political axiom that the toughest things should be done as far from the next election as possible. And have no doubt - bringing charter schools to Ontario may be as tough as it gets. It should be.