By Harold C. Ford
Chris Matheson and Vincent Price are both veteran Flint educators that are passionate about providing an excellent education for Michigan’s school-age children, but they disagree on whether charter schools can offer that education as they are currently constructed.
“Charter schools have leveled the playing field and provided an opportunity to those without the ability to purchase the opportunity,” said Matheson, CEO of Charter School Partners (CS Partners), the second-largest charter school management company in Michigan.
“We have always had school choice,” Matheson explained, “but prior to the advent of charters it was restricted to those with the financial means to afford a private school education.”
Price, a teacher and administrative veteran of both public and charter schools, offered a different view.
“This [charter school movement] has nothing to do with equity for children,” he said. “It has everything to do with capitalism … making money off children.”
A brief note on charter schools’ structure
Charter schools are a sort of public-private hybrid that require an authorizing institution, often a public university, to provide some oversight. Additional governance may be provided by non-profit boards and management companies that are often for-profit enterprises.
As reported by Bridge Magazine earlier this year, more than 80 percent of charters in Michigan are managed by for-profit companies such as Matheson’s CS Partners.
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. Affiliation with religious institutions is forbidden, as is religious education.
On state aid
In Genesee County during the 2023-24 school year, 14 public charters were listed by the Michigan Department of Education. Their combined enrollment – 6,442 students – would have made charters the second largest school population in the county, second only to Grand Blanc Community Schools.
(The only charter in Genesee County managed by Matheson’s Brighton, Mich. based CS Partners was Grand Blanc Academy, which reported an enrollment of 325 students for 2023-24.)
Overall in the same school year, about 11 percent – 152,000 of Michigan’s approximate 1.4 million K-12 students – attended charter schools.
As East Village Magazine previously reported, assuming the formula remains the same, Michigan’s charter schools stand to get about $1.5 billion in state aid from the proposed $20.6 billion for schools in the 2024-25 school year.
This sparks concern for Price, who told EVM he had worked for four charter management companies over his career thus far.
“None of them are located in Flint,” he said. “State aid that is supposed to be going to our children is leaving the community.”
Further, he argued that management companies and authorizers “are in bed together.”
“Management companies make authorizers money, [and] they get a percentage of state aid allocation,” Price said, adding that while there are some nonprofit charter school management companies, “the vast majority” in Michigan are for-profit.
For his part, Matheson said that management companies typically do receive 7-14 percent of the state aid allocated to a charter school for services like “guidance, training and support in all areas of school operation: academic performance; special education; facilities; food service; grants; compliance; budget and accounting; human resources; marketing and enrollment.”
The amount charged by Education Management Companies (EMCs or EMOs), he said, is not uniform and can vary from client-to-client depending on the services provided and the contract stipulations.
“The authorizer has a contract with the [charter] school board and the school board often hires an EMO to manage the school,” Matheson explained. “The authorizers offer support and training to the school board, the EMO, and school personnel.”
On oversight
“There’s no regulatory body within the state of Michigan to have any real type of oversight over authorizers,” Price charged, noting that he believes charter schools overall need more oversight.
“Every three years or so, the state asks them [charters] some questions. I wouldn’t even call it an inspection,” Price contined, describing interactions with the state as a superficial review of “processes in place.”
“No one really checks to see if you follow through on these processes as long as you have them written down somewhere,” he said. “The information is not made public.”
When these concerns were brought to Matheson, though, he disagreed.
“Charters have the same accountability as traditional public schools,” Matheson said. “And they must abide by the parameters of their charter contract.”
He added that authorizers are public bodies entrusted with oversight and support of the charter schools they authorize, and they answer first and foremost to the board of trustees per the charter school contract.
Further, he said, authorizers monitor compliance tasks such as monitoring required standardized tests, and they do report results to school officials and the public.
But Price pushed back on Matheson’s claim that charters face the same accountability as traditional public schools.
“The Michigan Department of Education has zero evaluative power over the authorizers,” he said. “There’s no recourse to address the authorizers, [and] it’s not based around what’s best for children.”
Price added that right now, charter boards “function as yes-men for the authorizer,” when they really should “function as independent bodies.”
And as to the frequency of evaluations charters encounter, Price said: “I’ve never been evaluated.”
Proposed transparency legislation
At least some of Price’s stated concerns are now up for discussion in the Michigan Senate.
As EVM previously reported, Senator Dayna Polehanki (D-Livonia) recently introduced a legislative package to increase transparency and oversight of the state’s charter schools.
The legislation, if passed, would make charters subject to requirements of the Open Meetings Act and the Freedom of Information Act; mandate detailed financial reports by EMCs; and require charters and EMCs to follow a bidding process similar to public schools, among other stipulations.
“We do love our charter school kids, the parents, the teachers, the support staff, the principals,” Polehanki said. “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.”
On students served
Among his most full-throated critiques, Price said that charter school management companies “come in and try to prey on inner city students.”
During decades of domination in Michigan’s state government, Republican Party officeholders, primarily representing rural and suburban communities, fostered a charter system, in part, to promote competition in the state’s education marketplace.
However, charters are now more common in urban areas that are often Democratic Party strongholds (places like Flint and Detroit) and often draw students from school districts that are predominantly African American.
Matheson explained the attraction of charters in the following way:
“Some families value smaller class sizes; others want an academic program that prioritizes experiential learning, like project-based learning, and others desire increased flexibility in the delivery of instruction.”
“In short,” he said, “one size no longer fits all—if it ever did.”
Matheson went on to say that families “want a strong culture, safety, an inclusive and welcoming environment” and choosing a charter option is “about finding the right, or optimal, learning environment for the individual learner.”
But Price viewed that claim differently.
“There is no community,” he lamented. “There is something to kids staying on the same street in the same neighborhood all going to school together and being friends … Our inner-city kids are missing out on that experience.”
Common ground
Regardless of their differences in opinion, it is inarguable that both Matheson and Price want success for all children — no matter their school setting.
“Absolutely,” Matheson responded when asked if he wished success for both charters and public schools. “To cheer or root against either charter public schools or traditional public schools is, in effect, to cheer for the failure of children, and I just do not understand folks who choose that path.”
Price affirmed the same.
“I like the flexibility charter schools could provide,” he said. “But there has to be support given to the charter boards.”
Price added that he would have opted for increased support for public schools as an alternative to the creation of charter schools, viewing the funding as a way to incentivize traditional public schools to be more innovative and be able to afford such programming.
“Instead,” he concluded, “you created a whole other system.”
This article also appears in East Village Magazine’s September 2024 issue.
