By Harold C. Ford
New legislation proposed in the Michigan Senate aims for greater transparency in public charter schools’ operations and financial reporting.
The package of bills comes at a time when such schools’ enrollment is high and options for the state’s school-age students are vast, but the legislation’s sponsor, Senator Dayna Polehanki (D-Livonia) says she’s “optimistic.”
Expanding options
Modern public-school systems, including Flint Community Schools (FCS), now compete with multiple school enrollment options that were not available a few decades ago.
For most of the 20th century, the choice for most students and their families was binary: the local public school system or parochial schools that operated under the aegis of the Roman Catholic Church.
Today, options for Michigan’s kindergarten through 12th grade (K-12) students have grown to include over 3,500 local public schools; possible enrollment in public schools outside the student’s home district via the state’s Schools of Choice program; 900 private schools, a majority of which (74 percent) are affiliated with a variety of faith traditions; virtual/online courses; homeschooling; and charter schools – the focus of recently proposed transparency legislation.
Choosing charters
In the 2023-24 school year, charter school enrollment in Michigan rose for the 17th time in the last 18 years, according to a February Bridge Magazine report.
“People are leaving traditional public schools and a lot of them are choosing charter schools,” said Tara Kilbride, interim associate director of Michigan State University’s Education Policy Innovation Collaborative, in the same report.
Assessments of student performance in charters compared to public schools have been mixed. However, a June 2023 article in Education Week reported that charter school students “now show greater academic gains than their peers in traditional public schools … From 2014 to 2019, charter school students gained, on average, the equivalent of 16 days learning in reading and six days in math over their peers in traditional public schools.”
In Genesee County during the 2023-24 school year, 14 public charters were listed by the Michigan Department of Education. The combined enrollment of those charters – 6,442 students – made it the second largest school population in the county, trailing only Grand Blanc, Mich.’s public school system.
Last school year, those charter students represented $61,894,736 in state aid that might have funded the county’s 21 public school systems otherwise, as EVM previously reported.
Overall in the 2023-2024 school year, about 11 percent – 152,000 of Michigan’s approximate 1.4 million K-12 students – attended charter schools.
Assuming the state aid formula will remain the same, about $1.5 billion in state aid will be sent to charters from Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s proposed $20.6 billion school aid budget for 2024-25.
Charters’ history & structure
Bluff View Montessori School in Winona, Minn. emerged as the nation’s first charter school in 1991. The charter school movement slowly grew from there, making its way to Michigan in 1994 and later boosted by the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act from the George W. Bush administration.
According to a June 2021 academic report in Hoover Digest, “forty-four states — plus the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and Guam — have public charter school laws on their statute books, laws that have led to more than 7,500 schools employing 200,000-plus teachers and serving 3.3 million students.”
During the 2023-24 school year, there were 363 charter schools in Michigan.
As for their structure, Michigan’s charter schools have always been a sort of public-private hybrid. Their existence in the state requires an authorizing institution, often a public university, that provides some oversight. Additional governance may be provided by non-profit boards and management companies that are often for-profit organizations.
In a 2023 opinion piece, former president of the State Board of Education Cassandra Ulbrich noted that more than 80 percent of charters in Michigan are managed by for-profit companies – companies which can handle all of the functions at the school or perform individual functions such as payroll, hiring, and budgeting.
Like public schools in Michigan, public charters receive state funding, are required to administer standardized tests required by the state, and must be open to all students in terms of enrollment. They are also required to comply with public records laws, and their affiliation with religious institutions is forbidden, as is religious instruction.
Promoted by Republicans, a transparency target for Democrats
During decades of dominance in Michigan’s state government, Republican Party officials fostered a charter system, in part, to promote competition in the state’s education marketplace.
But with so much state funding now going toward that system, Democrats are seeking greater oversight of charter schools.
Michigan State Senator Dayna Polehanki (Photo courtesy Michigan Senate Democrats)
“We do love our charter school kids, the parents, the teachers, the support staff, the principals,” Senator Polehanki told East Village Magazine in early July 2024. “However, when over 80 percent of charter schools in Michigan are run by companies that use our taxpayer dollars to turn a profit, because that’s what companies do, it’s important that they’re not allowed to continue to do so in secret.”
That’s why Polehanki introduced a legislative package in June – Michigan Senate Bills 943 to 947. The bills would introduce the following provisions:
- Charters would be subject to requirements of the Open Meetings Act and the Freedom of Information Act;
- Detailed financial reports by educational management companies (EMCs) would become mandatory;
- Contracts with EMCs would require financial audit reports;
- The lease or purchase of buildings from an EMC would be prohibited;
- A charter school board that leases or purchases a building must demonstrate fair market value;
- Charter schools and EMCs would be required to follow a bidding process similar to that of traditional public-school districts;
- A representative of the charter school authorizer would be required to attend two school board meetings each school year and present an overview of the work they’re doing to provide oversight for the charter school.
Other requirements that may emerge from the Michigan House, Polehanki explained, include a requirement that charter schools must post their high and low average teacher salary range on their websites, and any signage or marketing materials must indicate who a school’s authorizer is.
“My bill package doesn’t do away with charter schools,” Polehanki added. “What it does do is bring charter schools closer to the transparency required of traditional public schools.”
The move toward greater transparency requirements for charters has already garnered the support of other public officials, including Michael Rice, Michigan’s superintendent of instruction.
“Parents should be able to choose whether they want their children educated in traditional public schools, charter schools, private schools, or parochial schools, or at home,” Rice said. “However, charter schools, like traditional public schools, are publicly funded and should operate in an open and transparent fashion with the involvement of their local communities.”
While it’s too soon to tell if Polehanki’s transparency legislation will pass, the Flushing High School graduate told EVM she’s “optimistic.”
The bill package is currently being considered by the Senate Education Committee, over which Polehanki presides.
This article also appears in East Village Magazine’s August 2024 issue.
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