Richmond County Schools Superintendent weighs in on charter schools
HAMLET — Richmond County Schools Superintendent Dr. Cindy Goodman, responding to news of charter school selecting sites in Wadesboro and Monroe, said while some charter schools are successful most of them are failing, yet continue to divert funding from traditional public schools.
“The (charter schools) concept began as an idea that public school money could be used to start a sort of incubator school, to try innovative concepts and ideas that might be more difficult to try in a public school district,” she said Friday. “Some independent group could use public funding to try an innovative idea. They evolved to people wanting to run parallel schools.
“They, unfortunately, haven’t been very successful,” Goodman continued. “They’ve had mixed results: some have been successful, some have not. Not surprisingly, their success runs right along income levels. They have their challenges, just like traditional public schools have challenges.”
Former state senator Eddie Goodall, an advocate for charter schools in North Carolina, told the Anson Record last week that he and a team have been working to complete the application for a charter school in Wadesboro by the state deadline.
Asked what a successful relationship between a traditional public school district and a charter school might look like, Goodman said funding would likely be a point of contention but stopped short of ruling out the possibility.
“I think any time, obviously funding is always a finite number, and any time there’s a perception that anyone gets more than their fair share or less than their fair share, it sets up an ‘us against them’ mentality,” she explained. “The original concept, again, is an incubator-type school, to come up with innovative ideas that can be successful. If I see a charter school that is successfully educating the most challenging groups, I want to find out what they’re doing and try to replicate it in our schools.”
The problem, she added, is that in North Carolina, charter schools are not demonstrating such success.
“Unfortunately, they’re having even fewer successes than we are,” she said. “Statewide, I think there are more failing charter schools than there are failing traditional public schools. They have to take the same assessments we do. They are failing schools. Failing charter schools.”
The North Carolina Association of Educators endorsed Goodman’s husband, Rep. Ron Goodman, Wednesday, as a “pro-education candidate.”
“He sent it to me,” she said. “I was not one bit surprised. I would have been extremely surprised and sorely disappointed had he not been (endorsed.) He has to live with me, so he is an advocate for public schools. I don’t think Ken makes any apologies about being pro-ed.”
Asked for specific reasons she believes her husband received the NCAE endorsement, Goodman said he has Richmond County Daily Journal | Richmond County Schools Superintendent weighs in on charter schools:
