How charter schools are dodging Colorado laws | The Colorado Independent:
How charter schools are dodging Colorado laws
Charter schools have been using waivers to get out of teaching comprehensive sexual health classes, state mandated hiring and firing practices, substitute teacher policies and many other rules. Who’s watching? Nobody.
Educators say people without college degrees, including high schoolers, are teaching in Pre-K through fifth grade classes at the Community Leadership Academy, a publicly funded charter school in Commerce City.
At the Golden View Classical Academy, in Golden, students are learning that real marriages are just between men and women, and that condoms are ineffective in preventing sexually transmitted diseases.
Though these educational practices seem to defy Colorado law, charter schools have found a legal workaround, and many Democratic and Republican lawmakers are looking the other way. After all, charters have been the darlings of education reformers from both parties for more than 20 years.
In 1993, Colorado’s first two charter schools enrolled just 187 students. Now 226 charter schools educate more than 108,000 students statewide, making up roughly 12 percent of the total K-12 public school enrollment.
Though hundreds of laws govern public schools, many of those rules are being waived for charters both by school districts and the state Board of Education.
Currently, the Board of Education automatically grants 18 waivers involving laws related to benefits, hiring and firing at charter schools. The state makes this process easy because nearly every charter school requests these exceptions.
Golden View Classical Academy.
Photo by Derec Shuler
The Board also grants non-automatic waivers, which require charter schools to explain why they should be given a pass on rules that apply to all other schools. That’s how Golden View Classical Academy dodged state sex-ed requirements.
Individual school districts set additional policies for how charter schools obtain waivers. Jefferson County, for example, offers 42 automatic waivers and dozens more non-automatic ones. Non-automatic waivers must include a replacement plan explaining the rationale for the exception and how it is tied to the school’s mission, how the school will meet the law’s intent and how the waiver’s impact will be evaluated.
In JeffCo, replacement plans must be submitted when charters turn in contract applications.
But seven JeffCo charter schools’ waiver applications reviewed by The Colorado Independent included incomplete replacement plans, and in 10 cases, blank sheets of paper with nothing but the title of the district policy where the plan should be. All but one of the applications were for five-year contract renewals with the district.
Montessori Peaks in Littleton submitted blank sheets of paper instead of replacement plans for some district waivers.
In Golden, Free Horizon Academy – which applied for dozens of waivers — merely referred to its employee handbook or school policy manual in its replacement plans. Yet the word “waiver” never appears in the manual as it applies to district policies, and there is no justification or plan for evaluating waivers, as the district requires.
