The East Aurora School Board this week questioned a resident’s plan to open a charter high school in District 131, saying the proposal is too expensive, lacks adequate community support and offers lower-than-average teacher salaries.
At the district’s Curriculum and Technology Committee meeting Monday, committee members and an attorney for the district voiced concerns on several items in the proposal, including the appropriateness of the Internet-based computer instruction program, the possible high cost to the district, the lack of a feasible site for the school and insufficient description of the school’s governance.
Members will recommend either approving or denying the charter school at Monday’s school board meeting, and the board will then vote on the proposal.
Frank Hill, the resident who submitted the proposal, said Tuesday that if the board rejects the plan, he will appeal the decision to the State Board of Education. Hill said he was not discouraged by the questions.
“I’m glad to give them the information they need,” he said.
Paul Seibert, of Charter Consultants of Belleville, said the committee’s reaction to the proposal for the Aurora Academic-Technology Charter School was not uncommon. “Very little was said that was supportive of the school,” Seibert said.
“Most were comments about deficiencies. But there was no overt hostility or animosity about the proposal; simply an exchange of opinion and fact.”
Seibert said a number of the questions the committee asked are answered in the lengthy proposal. “It’s a large document, and most of the board members said things like, `I haven’t read the whole thing’ or others said, `I don’t understand the whole thing.’ That’s not unusual.”
Assistant Supt. Jim Vaughan told the committee the charter school could cost the district anywhere between $21,000 and $699,000 the first year, depending on how the school’s funding comes together. In a worst-case scenario, Vaughan said, the charter school could cost the district $1.4 million annually by its fourth year.
“The added cost to the district would place both the district schools and the charter school in jeopardy,” Vaughan said. Attorney Dawn Hinkle questioned whether organizers of the charter school would be able to hire qualified high school teachers at the proposed $27,000 annual salary.
She also said that Hill’s group did not provide evidence through its petition that there is enough community support to fill the minimum number of seats in the school, which would be 50 the first year.
Hinkle said of the 95 entries on the petition, at least 35 percent of the signers lived outside of the East Aurora district.
“I don’t know upon what they base their assessment,” Seibert said. “[The charter school group] is going back over those petitions to document to the district that the majority, or maybe all, live in the district and that they do have school-age children.”
If the school board members vote to deny the charter school, they have to deny it for specific reasons, Hill and Seibert said.
An appeal would ask the Illinois State Board of Education to look at the proposal and why the district denied it, Hill said. “It has to be a legal reason why. It can’t be how they feel personally.”
