In Illinois, Two Steps in the Right Direction...

The Illinois General Assembly took two steps in the right direction with the passage of Senate Bill 612 last weekend, becoming the first state to respond to President Obama’s and Secretary Duncan’s appeals to lift caps on charter school growth...

• SB 612 increases the cap in Chicago from 30 to 75 and boosts the cap outside of Chicago from 30 to 45.  Five of the new spots in Chicago are reserved for dropout recovery programs, each of which may operate up to 15 campuses within the city.  The bill preserves the ability of the first 15 charters that opened in Chicago to continue their successful replication efforts. 
• Critical to efforts to expand chartering outside of Chicago, the bill also creates an independent charter school authorizer task force, which will submit legislation to create a new independent charter school authorizer for the 2010 session.

As compromise measures, the bill requires minor new reporting requirements as well as a requirement that 75% of all teachers become certified, with a three- to four-year grace period for charters depending on when they opened.  Almost 80% of the state’s charters already meet (or almost meet) this target.

Separately, and troubling for public charter schools in Illinois, the Illinois General Assembly also passed SB 1984, which requires all public charter schools to comply with the provisions of the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Act.  This bill is a reaction to the current effort to unionize three public charter schools in Chicago, at the heart of which is a legal dispute in front of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) about whether charters are public employers governed by the Illinois Educational Labor Relations Board (IELRB) or private employers governed by the NLRB.  As a result of SB 1984, charters will be considered public employers covered by IELRB, which will allow unions to use card check procedures to unionize charters – bad policy that exists in states such as California and may become the law of the land for private employers soon via the Employee Free Choice Act currently being debated in Congress.

Kudos to charter advocates in Illinois for fighting a tough battle and making significant gains on the caps and authorizer issues.

TZ