When the Maryland State Board of Education overturned the Montgomery County School Board’s unanimous denial of two charter school applications in January, it accused local school board members of harboring “personal biases” against charter schools. Judging by the fact that Montgomery has not approved a single charter school application since 2003, odds are that the folks in Annapolis are right. One application was for Global Garden Public Charter School, a proposed K-8 International Baccalaureate program with an emphasis on foreign languages. Another submitted by Crossway Community Inc. would have expanded an existing pre-school/kindergarten Montessori program through sixth grade. But even though the State Board had promised both applicants a $550,000 grant once their charters were approved, both applications were summarily rejected by the Montgomery County board last June. A follow-up letter from state board President James DeGraffenreidt Jr. clarifies what the Montgomery school board is expected to do to remedy the situation within 90 days: “The purpose of the remand was to require the local board to provide a legally supportable rationale for its decision or, alternatively, to grant the charter if its review reveals that there is no legally supportable rationale for denying the charter. …” Reading comprehension is apparently not county school board members’ best subject. They reportedly told Ashley Del Sole, a founding board member of Global Garden, that despite DeGraffenreidt’s clear directive, they will not be re-evaluating the group’s original application but will merely provide an alternate explanation they hope will pass legal muster this time. They will also require Global Garden to submit a new application by the April 1 deadline — 25 days before the review period is over — so Global Garden will not know exactly why its first application was denied.
Officials of the monopoly public school system are hostile to charter schools because they’re afraid that the same thing that happened in neighboring D.C. will happen in Montgomery: Thousands of families will flee their cookie-cutter public schools and take advantage of the individualized education offered by the charter approach to public education.
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Maryland has one of the weakest charter school laws in the nation. Unlike the District’s, which was ranked first in the nation by the D.C.-based Center for Education Reform, local school boards in Maryland have full control of the process. That effectively gives county teachers unions veto power, which they use to prevent competition from charter schools. The solution is to remove that veto power as soon as possible.
