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The Charter Blog
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Tuesday, July 31, 2012
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NAPCS Resource Roundup
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National Charter Schools Conference Videos
Videos from the National Charter Schools Conference general sessions are now on our YouTube channel. Check out Bill Cosby interviewing Deborah Kenny about empowering quality teachers, our expert panel—including Howard Fuller and Rocketship CEO John Danner—discuss the future of public charter schools, our new President and CEO Nina Rees’s keynote remarks, Interim President and CEO Ursula Wright’s State of the Movement address, alumni success stories, and student performers.
NAPCS Testifies Against Proposed I.R.S. Regulations Forcing Charter School Educators Out of State Retirement Plans
NAPCS led charter advocates from across the country in testifying at an Internal Revenue Service (I.R.S.) public hearing against proposed regulations that likely would force states to prohibit public charter school educators from participating in state retirement plans. The proposed regulations, released in November 2011 and titled “Determination of Government Plan Status,” would affect an estimated 95,000 public charter school employees nationwide – potentially forcing more than 93 percent of the nation’s charter school workforce to either leave their public charter schools or lose their state pensions. Those testifying against the proposed regulations on behalf of the NAPCS includes: Renita Thukral, Senior Director, Legal Affairs, NAPCS; David Dunn, Executive Director, Texas Charter Schools Association; and Jill Gottfred, Policy Manager, Illinois Network of Charter Schools. You can learn more about the issue on our website, advocacy update and press release.
Financing Facilities
Despite the growing body of evidence suggesting public charter schools are making a difference for our least served students, the challenge of securing affordable facilities continues to confront nearly every charter school. Here are some recent resources on the issue:
- The Colorado League of Charter Schools has undertaken, the Charter Schools Facilities Initiative, a nationwide effort to empirically assess charter school access to facilities and to use the data to impact policy and practice.
- In An Accident of History, former NAPCS CEO Nelson Smith argues that school facilities should be a municipality-wide concern, not just the province of the traditional district. Further, some impartial entity (a mayor, a real estate trust, a municipal building corporation) should manage the building stock on behalf of all the kids, not just those in district schools.
- A co-publication by NAPCS and Orrick, Public Charter Schools: Borrowing with Tax-Exempt Bonds, discusses the emergence of borrowing through the issuance of tax-exempt bonds as an effective option to obtain low-cost facilities financing.
- Fitch Ratings, a global rating agency that is one of the smaller bond financing suppliers for public charter schools, published an “exposure draft” that includes a number of proposed amendments to existing credit rating criteria. In short, these ratings adjustments will make it more expensive and even harder for charter schools to access tax-exempt bond financing to finance their facilities.
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Posted by:
NAPCS Pressroom
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Friday, July 13, 2012
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Whose School Buildings Are They, Anyway?
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A couple of years ago, in a speech at the National Charter Schools Conference in Chicago, I said it was time to break the traditional district monopoly on public school facilities. The audience’s response was really strong – confirming that this was an issue whose time had come.
Two decades ago the charter movement began dismantling districts’ “sole proprietorship” on academic offerings; yet today, public charter schools still have to beg for access to school buildings bought and paid for with tax dollars. We’ve managed to win a facilities allowance here and co-location there, but still enjoy no fundamental right to public school space – nor an adequate supply of public funding with which to build our own.
So it’s time to reframe this issue. School facilities should be a municipality-wide concern, not just the province of the traditional district. And some impartial entity (a mayor, a real estate trust, a municipal building corporation) should manage the building stock on behalf of all the kids, not just those in district schools. That’s the point of my new report, An Accident of History.
It was fun tracing the roots of this dilemma way back – to 1642, in fact – and then looking at a variety of solutions for creating a more equitable way of financing, developing, and deploying public education facilities. The title really makes the central point – that the laws and policies governing public school facilities wouldn’t resemble their current shape had there been charter schools (or substantial numbers of other public non-district schools) when they were written.
Education Next is also running an article drawn from the report. I’m hoping that readers of this blog will ask mayors, school boards, and lawmakers the question its title poses: Whose School Buildings Are They, Anyway?
And I’m really looking forward to your comments, questions and disputations. Let’s get this argument started!
Nelson Smith is a consultant on education policy and former president and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.
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Posted by:
Nelson Smith, education policy consultant
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Monday, July 09, 2012
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NAPCS Testifies Against Proposed I.R.S. Regulations Forcing Charter School Educators Out of State Retirement Plans
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This morning, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (NAPCS) led charter advocates from across the country in testifying at an Internal Revenue Service (I.R.S.) public hearing against proposed regulations that likely would force states to prohibit public charter school educators from participating in state retirement plans. The proposed regulations, released in November 2011 and titled “Determination of Government Plan Status,” would affect an estimated 95,000 public charter school employees nationwide – potentially forcing more than 93 percent of the nation’s charter school workforce to either leave their public charter schools or lose their state pensions. Those testifying against the proposed regulations on behalf of the NAPCS includes: Renita Thukral, Senior Director, Legal Affairs, NAPCS; David Dunn, Executive Director, Texas Charter Schools Association; and Jill Gottfred, Policy Manager, Illinois Network of Charter Schools. You can learn more about the issue on our website and press release.
IRS Building image via Google Images
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Posted by:
NAPCS Pressroom
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6:00 AM
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