The Illinois State Charter School Commission met on May 15 in Chicago to consider a motion to consolidate 18 separate appeals from the Illinois Virtual Charter School @ Fox River Valley, and the SCSC ruled that the appeals would have to be brought before it individually, the Daily Herald reports.
All 18 school districts that received a charter application for the virtual K-12 school, which would be managed by the Virginia-based for-profit company K12 Inc., denied the application, most by unanimous vote. Virtual Learning Solutions, which would technically operate the online charter school in Illinois, had the only remaining option of appealing to the SCSC, but setting 18 separate hearings was impractical both for the charter school operator and for the commission.
“Virtual Learning Solutions provided the same charter application to all 18 school districts,” the nonprofit’s attorney, Elisa Westapher, argued before the commission. “We are requesting one charter for one charter school, not 18 charters for 18 charter schools,” the Daily Herald quoted her as saying.
An attorney representing several school districts also spoke at the meeting, though. Respicio Vazquez said consolidation was not appropriate because of the different student body demographics and sizes, budgetary realities, and programmatic needs that caused each district to independently decide to reject the charter school proposal in the first place.
The initial proposal, which was posted by several school districts, was unmanageable and difficult to follow. However, the bottom line was that the company would receive, from the coffers of the public school districts, $8,000 for every student it could convince to leave the public schools and enroll in the virtual charter school.
Given that elected officials, namely the school boards in these 18 districts, democratically voted to reject the charter as they received it, allowing Virtual Learning Solutions to beef up or trim down the proposal during the appeal process seems incredibly undemocratic. And it seems to ignore the reality that online courses don’t work too well at this point, let alone entire online schools.
“I see no reference to the best interests of students,” one teacher union leader who attended the meeting was quoted as saying. “I see reference to what works for you, the commission, as adults.”
