By JOEL ABRAMSON
The upcoming election will be transformational on both the national and the local level. We have a divided nation politically but one topic that unifies us is that we all want our children to receive the best education possible. Question 2 will allow the voting public to decide whether we will raise the amount of charter seats in the state by approximately 1 percent a year or dictate to our neighbors where they send their kids to school. This ballot initiative does not impact any family who is pleased with the education their children receive but simply provides many urban families with the opportunity to try another option. There are currently 32,000 kids that have opted to attend a charter school and 1,000 in Lynn that have been placed on wait lists.
I grew up in Lynn and proudly attended the Lynn public school system. My wife and I have supported academic and athletic programs in Lynn, Swampscott, Marblehead and Danvers for decades. We currently co-sponsor the annual Scripps Spelling Bee with the Daily Item. Our passion is to help better educate our students which we believe will cure a lot of our economic and cultural woes. We do not believe that anyone should tell our kids what “public” schools they should attend. We also strongly believe that charter schools complement the fine work that is performed by traditional schools and help make a strong entity even better.
I would like to provide some information that I hope the voting public will consider when they vote on November 8. First, a charter school is a public school that is closely monitored by a public board of trustees and they must abide by the same laws that public schools do. If they don’t meet the standards set forth by the Department of Education the charter is not renewed.
Charter schools can and in many cases do coexist with traditional public schools. A perfect example is what happened in Salem which was designated as a “struggling level 4 district by the state a few years ago. ” One elementary school dropped into the lowest performing category and eventually became a charter school. And after an intense community and state plan was implemented the Bentley Elementary School shot up from level 4 to level 1.
The Lynn Public Schools saw growth in both the MCAS and PARCC tests which can partially be attributed to the direction set forth by Superintendent Latham. The Kipp School displayed extremely positive results as well. Some of their achievements are as follows: Kipp’s class of 2020 had the 10th highest PARCC math achievement results in the state out of 311 school, Kipp’s class of 2021 had the 2nd highest math student growth percentile in the state and their 7th graders out-achieved Boston Latin Academy one of the finest schools in the country. The point is that charter schools can and do coexist with the public schools and they don’t deprive traditional public school students of a fine education.
A study by Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes stated that Boston charter schools “gain an additional 13 months in math and 12 months in reading per school year .” Another Stanford study found that that charter students in Boston progressed four times faster in reading and six times in math than children at traditional public schools. An MIT study showed that last year Boston charter schools better serve students with special needs resulting in higher test scores.
The objective in most cases is to send our children on to college or to a trade or technical institute. A recent study depicted that less than 10 percent of kids of color from public schools in urban communities graduate from a four year college. Charter schools on a national basis graduate seven times that amount and last year Kipp Lynn graduated 88 percent of their seniors. The average college grad earns 1.5 million dollars more than a high school graduate and pays approximately $400,000 more in taxes over their lifetime. If we brought the public school graduate rate up to that of the charter schools our national debt would be negligible.
The question most used by the “No voters” is that charter schools take money away from the public schools and that is simply not true. Massachusetts has one of the most generous reimbursement programs in the country compensating the public schools for five years AFTER a child leaves the public schools to attend a charter program. This provides the school committees and the administrators five years to adjust to this transfer of the student base. The issue is not whether kids leave the public school and go to charter, tech or parochial schools it’s the ability to adjust to a generational move from urban cities to the suburbs.
Our governor, the majority leader of the House of Representatives and, believe it or not, both presidential candidates support the charter school option and I ask you to do the same. Please allow our children to go to the school of their choice. It’s the right thing to do for all of us.
Joel Abramson is the owner of Flagship Travel in Marblehead and sits on the board of trustees of the KIPP Academy.