Education

1. Is your charter an open one? Yes
2. Can any child go there? Yes - except those expelled from another public school (in accordance with state law, they're kept out of all public schools for 1 year)
3. Is is neighborhood based? I'm not sure of the intent of the question - it's open enrollment and we have students from 4 counties who attend.
4. Does it ever expel students? Yes, when they do something that requires expulsion under state law. (We had a stabbing at a school dance, for instance, and that student was expelled, as they would have been from any public school.)
5. For what reasons? see above
6. Does the school operate on the same per pupil expense of the others schools in the district? No, we get less funding per pupil than other public schools in the county because we can't use local millages to raise extra funds
7. Are teachers required to do all the same things and meet the same test standards as the other schools in the district? Yes, we're subject to the same qualified/highly qualified/certification requirements as other public schools in our county, and our test scores and AYP stuff is right there with the other public schools in our county.
8. Does the school maintain the same class-size as the other schools in the district. I don't know what the average class size is in our county. I'm using county because we're our own separate "district" and we are chartered by the county intermediate school district.
9. Does the school receive funds from sources not available to the other schools in the district? No, see above - we receive less funds because we aren't eligible for all the funds that other schools in the county are eligible to receive.
10. Are the teachers required to follow the same curriculum as the other schools in the district? Yes - we follow the Michigan Merit Curriculum.

I'll also add that we are a title one school, I'm not sure that the traditional district we coexist with is title one - I believe their average income is higher than our student population, but I'm not sure how much higher. And although you didn't ask this, I'll also add that we have a higher special ed population than the surrounding non-charter public schools.


We have open enrollment for anywhere in our state. Ironically, my daughter was excluded from traditional public schooling for a time. I was a single mom, and got a temporary job 50 miles from my house. With the commute I had, I was not able to place her in a public school in my neighborhood because the latchkey program didn't open early enough for me to drop her off before my commute, and didn't remain open long enough for me to pick her up at the end of the day. She was forbidden to attend a school in the neighborhood where I worked, even though that was supposedly public.

I ended up having to pay for a private school (the Montessori one I referenced in another post in the forum today). It sucked, I was on a single income, no health insurance, in a low end job paying a ton for transportation. I couldn't risk moving expenses for a job that was temporary. If there had been charter schools back then, I would have had access to a free education for my kid. Or if so-called public schools gave children equal access instead of excluding ones from the "wrong" neighborhoods, we would have had access to free education - and I would have been thrilled for that option. Once we moved and she was allowed to attend a traditional public school, we placed her there up until high school.

In the current system, the working poor sometimes don't have legal access to any schools - forget good or bad, they just can't attend public school at all. That's where I found myself - a veteran, working full time for the army, and recalled into weekend reserve duty against my will, and I wasn't allowed to send my child to a public school.