A Denver School Board member is brutally honest:
Charter schools have lured thousands of students from area public schools by offering incentives and recruiting intensively. "We know we won't have any kids if we don't do it," said Kay Frunzi, who runs Denver's Wyatt-Edison Charter School.Their success has cost district budgets thousands of dollars and forced some principals and school boards to consider how to compete....
School board members and principals are waking up to a market-driven climate, and trying to figure out how to compete. It's critical because in Denver, for example, each student is worth $6,500 in funding to a school. Charters have found niches in the marketplace and have responded to what parents want, said Theresa Pea, a Denver School Board member.
"We (DPS) haven't caught up with that," she said. "We will need to give our principals more training and capacity to handle this. Some of them have never been in the business environment where they have to compete."
Is it any wonder that the charter school movement has caught them off guard? I couldn't find too much on the Wyatt-Edison Charter School online, but they did donate to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.
Posted by kswygert at May 3, 2005 10:25 AM