RI Needs More Charter Schools

Rhode Island spends a lot of money on public education (more per student than many other states spend) for generally poor results, especially in schools located within our inner cities. Students who drop out and don’t graduate are just the tip of the iceberg; many of their peers who do graduate are poorly educated and need another year or more of remedial training to catch up to where they should have been at graduation time. Many of course do not get that remedial education and don’t move forward with additional schooling at a higher level. Any state with a poorly educated workforce will find it hard to compete for employers who need exactly the opposite – students proficient in basic math, science, and English. As we continue to lose jobs here in the Ocean State this education problem becomes of ever greater concern.

That’s why a process of transformation is taking place these days, pushed by the U.S. Department of Education with its Race to the Top competition and templates for reform for states to employ. Under the leadership of Deborah Gist, Education Commissioner, we are at last revamping a public education model based on an outmoded industrial formula into a system where teacher performance and merit and not just seniority come first, among other reform practices.

Now add charter schools to the situation as a public education alternative. Charter schools are essentially a response to a public education system that too often has failed its students. Parents who cannot afford a Catholic or non-denominational private school education for their children look to the chance of a charter school opportunity like a rescue lifeline. Generally speaking, charter schools perform well. Students often end up achieving higher scores than they would in a municipal public school and they are more motivated to do well.

Charter schools are not welcomed by everyone in the community, however. Vested interests in the public school model, particularly the custodians of that model – teacher unions, oppose charter schools on principle, arguing that in practice they’re not what they claim to be and they take financial resources away from the public school system. We’re seeing this debate going on right now locally, as an application to establish two new elementary level charter schools in Providence has developed into a fierce back and forth. To opponents, allowing a charter school to operate in their community generates the fear and loathing that allowing a Walmart into a local economy can cause. A previous application to allow a charter school in Cranston was defeated last year.

Also weighing in are parents who oppose charter schools. One might, at first glance, consider it odd that parents in a community with struggling, under-performing public schools would take such a stance, but parents have already demonstrated that they can be the most vociferous of opponents. The reasons behind this varied: they buy the argument that the presence of a charter school only serves to hurt public schools; they believe in the primacy of traditional public schools; they distrust for-profit-based education; they believe that charter schools’ student selection processes (application or lottery) don’t end up serving the needs of the most disadvantaged students, or they simply don’t like change.

Somehow these arguments pale in comparison to the pressing need that exists to shake-up our primary and secondary public education system. I personally believe that if an alternative educational model, like a charter school, is available to us, we should use it. As an employer, I need well educated workers, so I am naturally open utilizing the best means to produce them. There’s nothing inherently wrong or unfair abut introducing competition into the educational model – competition in education, as in business, is good. That’s why so many of our community leaders support charter schools.

Remember, too, that charter schools do not operate outside the oversight of educational authorities. Charter schools are licensed and then regulated. A charter school that fails to deliver the goods for its students will not operate that way for too long, and it can be closed down, or operated anew by a new provider.

We need to strip away the falsehoods and fear promoted in opposing charter schools. Hopefully, the state Board of Regents, which is weighing the application for two new charter schools to be operated by Achievement First, will listen to the mayors of Cranston, Warwick, North Providence and Providence, as well as Governor Chafee and a host of supportive parents, and approve them.

Municipal Pension Commission a Good Idea

I don’t always agree with Governor Chaffee but on the matter of forming a commission to study the municipal pension situation, I think he’s doing the right thing. The commission has been tasked to study the various independent pension plans out there across the state, many of which are grossly underfunded, and come up with recommendations for legislation by the General Assembly this session. The commission includes labor leaders and municipal leaders so it aims to be inclusive. (So did Gina Raimondo’s study group, which also included labor representatives, though they complained later that the set of recommendations passed on to the legislature was a whitewash as far as they were concerned.)

The most immediate issue for the commission is to throw a lifeline to struggling cities and towns in the form of enabling legislation that will allow them to halt COLA payments to retirees. Otherwise, some mayors have asserted, they could go broke like Central Falls – or need advance state education aid payments like East Providence to cover the bills. Beyond COLA relief the commission will study ways in which municipalities can bring these plans into line with the guidelines that cover plans under the state system. In passing pension reform last fall the legislature did sketch out a reform mechanism for cities and towns, and we can expect the commission to further that mechanism.

Having enabling legislation in place to halt now unaffordable COLA payments to retirees will help stop the hemorrhaging that’s taking place in a number of RI cities and towns. Lawsuits will inevitably follow and all of this will end up in court, but, in the meantime, cities and towns will be in a better position to continue making payroll and pay retirement benefits, and not have to go hat in hand to the state for bailout payments. Plus, legislative assistance to troubled municipalities will help stabilize their sinking credit ratings.

2012 Will Be Tough for Some RI Cities & Towns

2012 is shaping up to be a most financially challenging year for a number of our struggling cities and towns. That’s because, despite some monetary pension relief provided by the reform legislation passed last fall, budgets at the local level are severely strained by the loss of state aid that’s occurred over the past few years and the weight of their independent and woefully underfunded pension plans that were beyond General Treasurer Gina Raimondo’s reach. Several municipalities are in trouble already, requiring state intervention measures, and others will probably make the news as 2012 unfolds.

First was the implosion of Central Falls, which required a takeover by the state and the imposition of a receiver; more recently the financial plague has struck East Providence and Woonsocket. Both cities have seen their credit ratings reduced to junk bond status in just the past two weeks. (Woonsocket almost didn’t meet its school payroll the last week of December and required an early payment by the state to be able to do so. East Providence will also require an advance payment to make ends meet.) And Providence, which made heroic strides to reduce its $100 million operating deficit under new Mayor Angel Tavares, still hasn’t closed its deficit gap entirely. North Providence, Pawtucket and Johnston have been operating on shaky financial ground for some time now.

Anticipating these problems, last year the General Assembly passed enabling legislation that sets in motion three state intervention steps – financial overseer, financial commission, and receiver - when a municipality falls into severe financial trouble and bond ratings drop. That’s what we’ve been seeing as the state appointed a receiver for Central Falls, with full powers over city government, and then in turn an overseer followed by a financial commission in East Providence, with powers limited to financial matters.

East Providence has been on the ropes in recent years, battered by its high labor costs, and the city witnessed a controversial move by its former school committee to unilaterally void the terms of its teachers contract during a time when the contract had expired, forcing pay cuts and imposing healthcare premiums on teachers for the first time. The school committee, backed by the mayor and city council, took such a move under the cover of severe financial conditions that it claimed threatened city bankruptcy. In court the East Providence Teachers Union lost its case, as the judge affirmed the city’s right to save itself under such threatening circumstances. That case has now moved to a higher court.

In the meantime, labor influence in the last election brought down the city government incumbents and installed labor friendly replacements. Now those incumbents find themselves in much the same sinking boat as their predecessors, with each side blaming the other for the situation at hand. What’s different this time around is that the state has intervened to manage and reorder the city’s finances.

A major driver in these municipal financial problems is the sorry state of most of their independent pension plans – plans outside the state-run Municipal Employees Retirement System (MERS). Many of these plans (there are some 35 of them statewide) are seriously underfunded, and the affected cities and towns do not have the money available to boost the funding levels anytime soon.

However, because those plans are protected by collective bargaining agreements at the local level, Gina Raimondo and the General Assembly declined to add them to the pension reform legislation. Instead there is new state guidance for reform contained in that legislation, which several mayors have openly stated is inadequate to the dire situation they are facing.

They have asked for more immediate relief in the form of authorizing the suspension of the COLA payments required of them, just as was ordered in the state legislation, and Governor Chafee and Treasurer Raimondo have indicated that they will urge the General Assembly to address these plans and their COLAs as soon as they return for the new session. At the same time, the state should also provide relief in the form of making certain state imposed mandates optional.

Of course any such potential relief by the General Assembly on authorizing the suspension of local plan COLAs will be vigorously opposed by labor and will end up in court along with the state pension reform law. So be it. The state is banking on prevailing in a court fight, even if it goes to the U.S. Supreme Court, as it may.