Angelo Garcia’s plans to expand Segue Institute for Learning began the day after the school first opened 12 years ago.
Garcia, Segue’s founder and head of school, was excited to see his vision to help city middle school students come to fruition in 2009. But almost immediately, he was thinking of how to expand to younger ages.
In 2015, Segue got approval to add grades three, four and five, but enrollment remained capped at 240 students.
That changed last December when the R.I. Council on Elementary and Secondary Education granted preliminary approval for Segue to become a K-8 school of 360 students in a three-year expansion starting in the fall of 2021. Segue began publicizing the expansion to its long waitlist of families, hiring staff and spending $70,000 on playground upgrades.
But then, those plans were thrown into uncertainty because of legislation introduced this year that would suspend the expansion of charter schools – and the addition of new ones – for three years. That included six schools that had already been given the green light to open or expand. Segue was among them.
The measure, which passed in the Senate, has touched off a fresh debate over charter schools that has long simmered. Advocates for the moratorium frame the issue as a zero-sum game in which charter schools take away money from traditional public schools, while opponents point to the racial and socioeconomic-based learning gaps charter schools can help bridge.
‘Our children need every penny we can give them.’
MARYELLEN GOODWIN, Providence state senator
Exacerbating the controversy is COVID-19, which has strained state and municipal coffers while laying bare the shortcomings of the education system, particularly for minority, multilingual and low-income students.
About 380 people signed up to testify on the bill before the House Finance Committee on March 23 and a second day of testimony was scheduled for the following week.
State Sen. Maryellen Goodwin, D-Providence, who sponsored the Senate bill, said the moratorium gives the state time to reevaluate its funding formula, including the per-pupil allocation that gets reduced from public school districts when students attend charter schools. The 5,835 seats potentially created by the six new or expanded charter schools would siphon $66.9 million in state aid from public districts, including $6.5 million in the upcoming fiscal 2022 year, according to the bill. Municipalities, which are also required to contribute to charter schools in their district, would allocate a combined $24.5 million over 10 years, including $2.4 million in fiscal 2022.
“Our children need every penny we can give them,” Goodwin said. “We know money is tied to achievement of students, and outcome.”
At the top of Goodwin’s mind is the troubled Providence schools.
That a majority of the new or expanded charter schools target Providence students puts the school district even more at risk, according to Francis Flynn, president of the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers and Health Professionals.
Flynn described charter schools as “an experiment” that ultimately helps a select few at the expense of the rest.
Garcia sees it differently. Rather than look at state and municipal funding for education as belonging to a certain district, he said money should travel with the student.
He agreed that public school systems needed an overhaul. But to make the 120 families who already submitted applications for new spots at Segue wait was an injustice and a human-rights issue, he said.
In a letter to the Senate, R.I. Education Commissioner Angélica Infante-Green warned that the bill will “further marginalize the voices of people of color in Rhode Island.”
Infante-Green touted the record of existing charter schools such as Achievement First, where multilingual learners outperform students in that category in all other districts.
Janie Segui Rodriguez, who works for Achievement First and recently started an advocacy group called Stop the Wait seeking to block the bill, has seen how a charter school benefited her daughter, Nyrsalee.
Nyrsalee struggled with academic performance while at her local public elementary school, but she never secured the individualized education plan she needed despite repeated testing.
Rodriguez worried that her daughter, unable to write a complete sentence as a then-fifth grader, would struggle to land a job later in life, or even be unable to write an email.
After she transferred to Achievement First Providence Mayoral Academy, Nyrsalee was again tested and at last shown to have a severe arithmetic disability that guaranteed her IEP. In the two years since, the seventh grader has made significant strides, particularly in writing.
“If she had to wait three years, she still wouldn’t have that IEP,” Rodriguez said.
Gov. Daniel J. McKee has made it clear he does not support the bill, voicing his opposition in testimony before the House Finance Committee and at a rally organized by charter school advocates on March 30.
Goodwin was not ready to back down. She was not interested in a “compromise” bill that let already-approved schools continue with their plans. She pointed to the 30-6 Senate vote to indicate that she has support for a veto override.
Nancy Lavin is a PBN staff writer. Contact her at Lavin@PBN.com.
