Districts Review Charter School Plans
Aug. 23–Erie, Millcreek pursue compromise for special-ed students Uproar from some parents of special-education students has both Erie and Millcreek school districts rethinking their charter school policies.
Administrators from both districts met Monday to reach a compromise with the small group of parents who say an agreement dissolving the districts’ respective charter schools is discriminatory.
Under a February agreement dissolving Millcreek’s Global Academy Charter School and Erie’s Northwest Pennsylvania Collegiate Academy Charter School, special-education students must return to their home districts when school begins.
Other students who were enrolled in the charter schools are “grandfathered in” and allowed to continue their education through graduation without returning to their home district.
“They’re discriminating against disabled children, not giving them the same opportunity as regular-education children,” said Amy Coffman, the mother of two sons who were enrolled in Global Academy.
Coffman has filed a complaint with the state Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights on behalf of her sons, 7-year-old Ben Coffman, who has a learning disability, and 5-year-old Noah Coffman, who requires speech therapy.
Erie schools Superintendent Jim Barker said both districts are now reassessing the dissolution agreement.
“We should settle this in a manner that’s in the best interest of the students and the two communities,” Barker said. “It would be my advice that we try to compromise without litigation.”
The group did not reach a final resolution Monday.
But Barker said that he would like to see the 14 special-education students in the Erie School District who are affected by the agreement stay in Millcreek schools until they reach a transition grade — moving from elementary to middle school, or from middle school to high school.
The school boards of both districts would have to approve that plan or any other.
“We’re fairly confident we will have a mutual agreement that we can take to our boards that will resolve this matter to the satisfaction of both parties,” Barker said, adding he hoped to schedule a special voting meeting of the Erie School Board next week.
Maryann Anderson, Millcreek Township School District’s supervisor of special services, would say only that both districts are working to resolve the issue.
Parents have had the option to send their special-needs child to a charter school in another district.
But now that the charter schools have been dissolved, the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act says home districts must educate special-education students as long as the districts can provide a “free and appropriate” public education.
Administrators in Millcreek and Erie could have designed an agreement that would have returned all charter students to their home schools. But that would have meant uprooting the nearly 220 students who attended Global Academy –nearly all of them from the Erie School District — instead of just the 14 special-education students.
Where the special-education students are taught also has an effect on the budgets of both districts.
Using a complex formula under the charter agreement, the Erie School District paid Global Academy about $196,000 — or about $14,000 per student — to teach the special-education charter students. If those same students are taught in Erie schools next school year, it would cost the district only $49,000, or $3,500 per student, Frank Scozzie, assistant to the district superintendent, has said.
Millcreek’s Anderson said the cost of education is an issue for all students, not just special-education students, and that money wasn’t the district’s chief concern.
“What we’re trying to do is negotiate the fairest way to educate these students,” she said.
Meanwhile, Coffman, the Erie mother, still isn’t sure what classrooms her sons will be sitting in when school begins.
Allowing Erie students to attend Millcreek schools until a transition grade as Barker suggested sounds reasonable, she said.
“I don’t want to sound cynical, but I don’t think the districts thought people would be so upset about this,” Coffman said. “Now that they know we are, maybe they’re willing to compromise.”
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