MUSD’s six charter schools to evolve over next year

MUSD is undergoing a number of big changes. Most will be evident when school resumes Aug. 5.

But the biggest one won’t.

The halls of the previously K-through-fifth-grade elementary schools will now have sixth graders roaming them. Free kindergarten will be available only half days. And, the middle schools will be de facto junior highs with only seventh and eighth graders.

The largest change, though, is the conversion of five of the district’s six elementary schools and one of the two middle schools into charter schools. Only, it won’t really be noticeable.

The schools — Butterfield, Santa Rosa, Santa Cruz, Maricopa and Saddleback elementary schools and Maricopa Wells Middle School — will operate status quo using the upcoming school year to plan their metamorphosis into full-blown charter schools for the 2014-15 year.

“We’re doing this to improve educational programs for our students,” Superintendent Steve Chestnut said.

At each school the principal will team with parents, PTO and site council members and others in the neighborhood community to be “in charge of defining their educational focus within the budget parameters,” Chestnut said.

Each school group will work to figure out what kind of school would be best — maybe it will be one with a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) focus or a language-immersion emphasis or one that embraces full parental participation.

“There have been good discussions already between principals and parents. … Focus discussions have started,” Chestnut said. Ongoing discussion must include developing education, business and operational plans.

The Maricopa Unified School District governing board, acting as an authorizing agent under state law, chartered the schools in June to offer more choices to parents, improve academic achievement and gain more state funding, joining a growing number of districts seeing charter conversion as the future.

Districts chartering schools stand to gain about $1,000 more per student, according to figures from the Joint Legislative Budget Committee. A committee staff report forecasted that some 30 schools in districts will be chartered in the 2013-14 school year, 60 in 2014-15 and up to 90 by 2015-16 growing the baseline state funding by $5 million to $52 million by the 2016-17 school year.

In the first year of conversion, only new kindergarten and transfer students qualify for additional funding. However, by the second year, all students qualify for funding. Chestnut estimated that by year two, MUSD charter schools will receive $5,438 per pupil versus $4,274 per pupil in traditional district schools, yielding an additional $4 million to the district.

Chestnut said the charter idea came to fruition after the district’s strategy planning committee — a group of about 30 community members, students, teachers, classified staff, principals, board members and a district administrator — met throughout the spring semester to devise a long-term student academic improvement plan.

While the committee did not specifically mention charters, Chestnut said there was “a kind of a consensus from the strategic planning group that we need to be innovative to prepare our students for a competitive world.”

There are five charter schools already in the community, he pointed out. “We live in a consumer-oriented society that has lots of choices, and parents want choices.” 

The superintendent will have an information coffee this month to answer community questions. (InMaricopa.com will announce the time and place when they are set). Then in August, Chestnut said, he will go to the school board with a recommendation to formalize the chartering procedure and set deadlines for determining how the individual schools will look.

***ADVERTISEMENT***Chestnut has said he is consulting with Superintendent Debbi Burdick of the Cave Creek Unified School District, which has chartered four schools and is a strong believer that school choice is the way to market a district.

There hasn’t been a downside to charter conversion, Burdick said. She has talked to at least 20 other districts about Cave Creek’s successful foray into charter conversion.

“We want education in Arizona to be the best it can be,” she said. “Districts shouldn’t get caught up in competition, but in helping each other.”
According to the Arizona Charter Schools Association, the state leads the nation with the highest percent of charter schools with 535 charter schools, including district-chartered schools, out of more than 2,000 schools in the state and 145,000 charter students out of 1.1 million students.