Pittsfield School Committee Endorses Moratorium on Charter Schools

PITTSFIELD, Mass. — The School Committee on Wednesday night endorsed a joint statement with United Educators of Pittsfield to support a moratorium on charter schools.

State Senate bill 326, filed by state Sen. Marc Pacheco, D-Taunton, seeks to halt the state's granting of charters to Commonwealth charter schools until September 2018.

The move comes on the heels of two reports questioning the efficacy of charter schools and the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education's oversight of their legislatively-mandated goals.

"This moratorium will allow time for an independent evaluation for our charters schools to determine whether charters are meeting their intended goals on improving education for all students," read Chairwoman Katherine Yon.

Yon and committee member Cynthia Taylor said they had attended the Massachusetts School Committee Association's conference on Cape Cod last week at which the association's new report on charters, "Who's Being Served," was discussed.

Yon said the concern is that children with disabilities, who are living in poverty and who are English language learners were not being equitably served by the state's 81 Commonwealth charters, exacerbating rather than closing the achievement gap. Charter school teachers also do not have to meet the more rigid and ongoing licensure standards as other teachers in the state.

The Berkshires has only one charter school but it affects the whole county, Yon said.

Late last year, State Auditor Suzanne Bump released a report criticizing DESE for failing to adequately document the innovative programs and best practices that charters were supposed to create as models for public school districts and to maintain reliable data, including on enrollment, to analyze their performance.

Bump last month testified before the Joint Committee on Education, Yon said, quoting her: "I have a responsibility to the taxpayers and to our kids to speak up when I see such enormous sums of taxpayer dollars put into private hands without evidence of its benefit."

The statement passed unanimously with little discussion and will be submitted to the city's state representatives. Taylor said state Sen. Pat Jehlen, D-Somerville, vice chairman of the Committee on Education, recommended the School Committee speak out

"She really stressed that we can have a voice in the Berkshires," she said. "You really have to make yourselves heard by your legislators over and over and over. She stressed that to everyone."

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