Charter School Threatens Future of Public Education

Alyssa Blair, News Editor

On March 27, the acting commissioner of the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education in Massachusetts, accepted an application for the Hampden Charter School of Science (HCSS) to open a branch on the property of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield, on Main Street in West Springfield. This charter would be an expansion of the existing HCSS in Chicopee, MA.

A charter school is a publicly funded, independent school where students must apply and be accepted in order to attend. The prospect of a charter school in our city brings problems that pose a direct threat that could be detrimental to not only the West Side community, but also the concept of public education as we know it. One large difference between a charter school and a public school is the fact that students must be selected from a pool of applicants. Often, they must be in good academic standing in order to attend. Charter schools only take the best from the applicants, and are able to turn away those who have too many disciplinary referrals or have specific learning accommodations like a Individualized Educational Plan (IEP) or a 504 plan. Unlike charter schools, public schools don’t have the option to reject students with such learning accommodations. While some parents favor charter schools over public schools because they believe educational environment is more elite, this isn’t always or often the case.

“Its been found the charter schools really skim the students that are the easiest to teach and the most accomplished,” said Mr. Franco, a WSHS history teacher and opposer of the HCSS charter.

Although they use an exclusive application process that is very similar to a private school, charter schools use public tax dollars since they are, by definition, a public school. However, since they are independently run, charter schools don’t have to follow the same federal guidelines of releasing certain financial reports to the public, which public schools must do. This begs the question as to where and what these tax dollars are being used for, and who profits from it.

In our town’s case our high school has already made tremendous improvements in the last few years. “Not only will the opening of HCSS have a deleterious impact on our public finances and lead to tax increases, as the State of Massachusetts does not fully reimburse charters, but it will also place enormous pressure on the already high-performing West Springfield Public Schools, which recently reached all-time bests in both graduation and dropout rates,” Mayor William Reichelt told Masslive in April 2018. The most logical step to keep such improvements going would be to provide more funding to WSHS in order to provide adequate services to the students who need extra help. How can we do that if we lose a portion of our funding to the charter school? Already, HCSS has cost West Springfield $2 million as a stipend for transportation costs and the amount of expected students. Many times, charters who cost towns more money and create higher city taxes will leave after only a few years of being open. In 2014, a Florida paper found that 119 charter schools closed between 2008, and 14 of those didn’t make it through their first school year. What’s the point of even opening if this could happen in the end?

“I call them ‘chatter schools’ because they talk a lot about themselves and then move from one community to another,” said Mr. Franco, a WSHS history teacher and extreme opposer of the charter school. While the overall loss of funding and rise in city taxes due to the charter school is a huge problem, it is also a long term issue.

One of the more immediate and alarming concerns of the charter school lies in the fact that the public has no knowledge for where charter school funds are being used. The HCSS, as well as several other Massachusetts Charter Schools in eastern towns like Saugus and Everett, have been alleged to hold ties with Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish religious leader and multi millionaire who lives in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. Gulen is known in Turkey for speaking out against the government, and even participating in a failed coup, which is a forced government takeover. He funds several hundred charter schools around the country, and he has been accused of syphoning money from tax money in several US charter schools to fund his anti government campaign in Turkey, as well as in several of his personal businesses. Two of these, Apple Education Services and Ace It Education, are located in New England and have raised suspicions due to irregularities in their tax reports. States including New York, Colorado, Utah, Oklahoma, and Nevada, as well as the FBI, have all investigated these claims, and the government of Turkey hired a team of highly skilled lawyers to expose the truth of the Gulen founded charter schools in Turkey.

“It’s almost as if they see it as free picking for taxpayer dollars to provide a fragment of an education but charging top dollar and then making money and using it as a business venture verses what public education is supposed to be which is to give [students] the content you need through higher levels of education,” said Mr. Scott, a WSHS science teacher. HCSS CEO Tarkan Topcuoglu denies that they hold any connections to either the controversial companies and the Turkish millionaire, and the allegation has since been proven false. However, the other Eastern Mass charter schools have not denied the claims of business dealings, and the HCSS has admitted to communicating with the schools under accusation

We can’t put a price on our education. It builds character, teaches us problem solving, and forms our abilities to think and be independent, functioning members of society who are ready to take on the world.

— Alyssa Blair

“We can’t put a price on our education. It builds character, teaches us problem solving, and forms our abilities to think and be independent, functioning members of society who are ready to take on the world. “

— Alyssa Blair

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The worst part of this whole circumstance is the fact that the townspeople of West Springfield and the public school were essentially left out of the whole discussion and decision making process. With the exception of a single public forum that was held in Westfield several years ago when there was a possibility of the charter being opened there, there has been no outlet for city members voices’ on the topic of a charter school making their home on Main Street. “West Springfield stakeholders missed out on the opportunity to voice their concerns and present an argument on why West Springfield would not be a proper host community for the charter school,” wrote Senator James T. Welch and Representative Michael J. Finn in a letter to Governor Charlie Baker while asking to repeal the Commissioner’s go-ahead to open the school.

The first open forum on the topic of the charter school took place on May 30 at West Springfield High School. West Side residents, city officials, WSPS teachers, members of the West Springfield Teachers Association (WSEA) and others gathered to watch the documentary Killing Ed followed by a panel discussion about the charter with a several state representatives and Turkish officials. The event was co-sponored by the WSEA and the Turkish-American Society of Western Mass. Charter schools contribute to the much larger problem that has been brewing for decades in the United States- the privatization of our nation’s education.

We can’t put a price on our education. It builds character, teaches us problem solving, and forms our abilities to think and be independent, functioning members of society who are ready to take on the world. Expanding charter schools cause problems and dramatics that take the focus away from the whole purpose of education. A school’s purpose is to educate students, not to make a profit. It’s time to speak out against this injustice, for if we don’t now, who knows where the future of education could lead on this downward spiral.