Mandarin School Charter Approved
The state Department of Education’s approval of a new charter elementary school to open in September could cost the district up to $1 million.
The school — Princeton International Academy Charter School (PIACS) — will serve the West Windsor-Plainsboro, Princeton, and South Brunswick school districts and will be the first public school in the state to teach students through Mandarin-English dual language immersion. It will also be the first public school in the area to educate students through the International Baccalaureate curriculum framework.
WW-P officials are worried because while a charter school is not considered part of the district, it does use public funds, and the district would have to pay for all of the students from WW-P who attend the school.
“The problem is that we’re slated to have 75 students go to the charter school,” said Victoria Kniewel, WW-P superintendent. “We have to send that money whether 75 students go there or not.”
The amount of money is determined by the district’s per pupil costs, which were averaging $11,609 in 2007-’08. The formula requires the district to pay 90 percent of the per pupil cost of each of the 75 students, regardless of whether 75 WW-P students attend. The result will cost the district between $900,000 and $1 million during a time it is already trying to close a budget gap.
On the surface, it may seem like a fair trade: if 75 students head to the charter school, the district is sending the money to the charter school that it would have spent on them in-district.
Kniewel said, however, that the money is being sent to the charter school, but the district would still have to fund the same number of teachers and other staff because the students would come from scattered classes. If all the students came from one grade level in one school, it may be easier to cut a teacher.
But, if a few students are taken from the first grade in Town Center and a few are taken from the second grade in Maurice Hawk, the same number of teachers are still required to teach the remaining students in those grades at those schools.
In addition, she said, the district has had prior experience with a charter school that did not end well. When the Mercer Arts Charter High School opened, the district was required to send money, but the district lost money when the school was forced by the state to close in early 2008.
“We’re just worried about sending money before we actually know how many students are going,” Kniewel said. And second, the students “won’t be from three even grade levels. It won’t be that we can cut specific teachers. We also have to pay for transportation for them.”
Kniewel said that WW-P officials are even more frustrated because the state has been forcing school districts to move toward consolidation, but the opening of the charter school does not fit with that theme.
“Charter schools have their place when schools are not high-performing,” Kniewel said. “I do believe that our school district offers a comprehensive program. We offer outstanding programs for all students.”
Kniewel said that the district starts offering Chinese courses in fourth grade and already offers not only a “great academic program,” but music, art, and co-curricular programs that cater to the district’s diversity. The charter school is “a duplication of certain services.”
But PIACS officials are citing the need for the charter school, specifically because “the generation of first and second graders will be graduating college into a world in which very different skillsets will be required.”
According to Parker Block, PIACS spokesman, “the ability to engage comfortably and effectively in and with vastly different cultures is increasingly important.” Programs like PIACS will increase the population of young people who are fluent in strategically important languages, he said.
“Mandarin is significantly harder for non-native speakers to learn and consequently requires more time,” he said. “That is why immersion is a more effective path to fluency.”
The charter school was approved by the DOE under the fast track application process, which allowed the founders to apply under an expedited timeline for approval. The process allowed for a full period of review by the three districts it would serve, and Kniewel acknowledged the WW-P district did submit its concerns.
The DOE noted in a letter to Bing Bonnie Liao, the lead founder of PIACS, that a strength in the school’s application was its financial plan and its implementation plan, in which the school presented goals and objectives that were “clear, concise, and measurable, and also correlated to the mission of immersing students in Mandarin Chinese.” The application also presented a “strong, research-based case for a language immersion charter school in the districts identified.”
“The charter schools initiative in New Jersey represents an exciting opportunity for parents, teachers, and others to use their collective creativity in designing new and innovative ways of helping children to reach high levels of academic achievement,” Lucille Davis, the DOE commissioner, wrote in her letter.
Plainsboro resident Stuart Chen-Hayes and South Brunswick resident Melissa Edwards are co-founders of the school. The initial recruitment and application period will end on Saturday, February 6, at which points students who have applied will be admitted through a lottery system. For the 2010-2011 academic year, PIACS will offer kindergarten through second grade classes with a new grade added annually in the following years.
