Guide charter schools sensibly
Unlike a traditional public school, charters are commuter schools. All 675 students expected to attend the Mountainville Academy will arrive by private vehicles. This means a huge amount of traffic to my neighborhood. My child could live next door to the charter school and be unable to attend because of the lottery system. And charter schools are not typically used for voting, community meetings, soccer games, etc., even though they are funded by our tax dollars. Many charter schools are built on properties too small to even have a field.
No one has jurisdiction over the site selection or building process of charter schools. Thanks to Rep. James Ferrin, who sponsored HB172, no one has jurisdiction over where charter schools are built. The decision is, for the most part, in the hands of charter development companies. (Rep. Ferrin is a partner in a charter development company. And his company stands to make a lot of money building these schools. He is passing legislation that benefits him and hurts communities.)
The quality of the buildings is often poor. Rep. Ferrin told my neighborhood the Mountainville Academy would be cinderblock unless we wanted to cough up the money for upgrades. Because no one is in charge of site selection, some charter schools are being built way too close together. Eventually some of those schools will fail, wasting taxpayer dollars.
Charters are often paying exorbitant lease rates of 12 percent or more to charter development companies. Because there is so much chaos when a charter opens, some parents move their children back to their traditional public school. But the money doesn't follow the children.
Labeling Alpine residents elitist is a smoke screen that hides the real issues. Mountainville Academy has moved from inappropriate site to inappropriate site, leaving a trail of angry residents in its wake. The Alpine City Council is listening to the many concerned residents and is addressing the few ordinances it can control.
Should we sit by and let this school make hasty, irreparable decisions that negatively impact our community? Mountainville Academy School Board and Rep. Ferrin's development company need to take responsibility for creating much of the rancor in our community. They have an arrogant attitude that the law is on their side. And they have repeatedly shown they don't care about the impact or the legitimate concerns of residents.
Should stop funding charter schools? No. Charter schools are about providing choice to Utah's schoolchildren. That's a good thing. But if charter schools are not implemented wisely, they will ultimately waste our tax dollars and continue to divide our communities.
Calli Taylor is a resident of Alpine and a mother of three.
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