The clock is ticking on charter school authorizing agents to re-apply for Education Department approval this year. Authorizers may be a college or university, school district, or certain nonprofit organizations, and must have a $2 million fund balance and be located in Minnesota, among other criteria.
On April 11, the House Education Reform Committee approved
HF134/
SF55*, sponsored by Rep. Kelby Woodard (R-Belle Plaine) and Sen. David Hann (R-Eden Prairie), which would extend the deadline to be re-approved by one year, to June 30, 2012. It goes next to the House Civil Law Committee.
Charter school statutes were amended in 2009 and 2010 to require that authorizers and the schools with whom they contract demonstrate their financial, governance and management accountability. Some authorizers have been rejected because they haven’t met new standards and goals. If an authorizer’s reapplication is not approved, a charter school must seek a new one or close.
The proposed extension could help erase a bottleneck of reapplications and new applications created by the current timetable, said David Hartman, acting supervisor of the department’s charter school center.
The bill would reiterate that the education commissioner may terminate an authorizer’s ability to charter a school for specific reasons listed or “for any good cause shown.”
Assistant Education Commissioner Rose Hermodson said the language would “protect students and ensure appropriate use of taxpayer dollars” by giving the department some leeway to use its best judgment in certain situations that recently have come to her attention, including loans to charters that aren’t approved.
“I do think there’s need for us to have a little broader authority and to be able to use it in a way that does not negate our work with charters, and in order to work with them to be the best that they can be,” Hermodson said.
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