By Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone

(The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries of The Somerville News belong solely to the authors of those commentaries and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville News, its staff or publishers.)

I think it’s fair to say that, as a group, Somerville’s elected officials were taken by surprise last August when a formal proposal surfaced to create a new “progressive” K-8 charter school here in Somerville.  Now, with a public hearing on this proposal scheduled for December 14th (4-6 p.m. at the Somerville High School Auditorium), it’s time for every Somerville official, school parent, and taxpayer to focus on the details – and to speak out.

The proposed school would, according to its application “be a democratic, K-8 public school that will inspire and enable children from diverse backgrounds to develop their full intellectual, social-emotional, and creative potential through in-depth, meaningful learning experiences that draw on their intrinsic curiosity and reflect their individual needs, interests, and learning strengths.  The school will offer a broad range of educational programming – including a special focus on science and languages – to serve an economically and culturally diverse community.”  Both as Mayor and as a Somerville Public Schools parent, my personal reaction to this proposal is that the school it describes sounds a lot like the schools – and the community – that we already have.  Why is a new charter school needed?

I also recognize that this proposal calls for the development of a school that would ultimately serve 425 students and that, under the current funding formula, such a school would cost the Somerville Public Schools nearly $5 million a year in funding – but without anything like a similar reduction in operating costs.  That’s ten percent of our annual schools budget.

Now, I’m certainly not opposed to the concept of charter schools: across the state, we’ve seen them bring fresh ideas and energy to under-performing school systems.  Here in Somerville, our city administration and the Somerville Public Schools have worked with the Prospect Hill Academy to support the role of an alternative educational experience paid for with public education dollars.

But, frankly, I don’t see the point of this latest proposal.  It’s true that the Somerville Public Schools need to improve their MCAS performance: our city works hard every day to deal with the challenges of a low commercial property tax base and a high percentage of low-income families and English Language Learners (ELL) in our schools.  Yet despite these challenges, we have been making progress throughout our K-12 curriculum in bringing new programs and resources to our students, both during the school day and in after-school enrichment programs.

And while there’s still plenty of room for improvement, we have made and are making progress by working together as a community to put our resources where they’ll do the most good.

That’s why I’m very concerned about the impact of a new charter school on our student population as a whole. Our School Committee and Schools Superintendent Tony Pierantozzi have analyzed that impact, and their findings are disturbing:  In addition to requiring the closing of one of our current schools, the budget hole created by a new charter school would result in reduced funding for arts, music, gym and libraries throughout the system – and, ironically, would also force cutbacks both in the multilingual SMILE early education program at the Capuano School, and in the Unidos bilingual K-8 initiative.

In fact, the way the state mandates spending for charter schools means that this proposal could hurt the entire city, not just the schools. If we want to preserve our educational investments, we’ll have to make cuts elsewhere – and $5 million a year is serious money. I think the burden of proof is on the proponents; they need to show our residents why tax dollars should be shifted to a new and exclusive charter school.

And so far, I haven’t heard from any of the proponents. It’s almost as if they didn’t want a vigorous and open discussion on the merits of their proposal.

That’s not the way we work in this city.  At its best, Somerville has always come together to solve problems as a community.  If parents believe we should improve the ways we provide English Language Learning, language instruction and science education, then let’s work together to improve those programs for all of our students and all of our schools.  Let’s not create an entirely new charter school that, at best, only serves a small subset of the Somerville student population while diverting significant resources from the Schools budget.

Every parent wants the best possible education for her or his children, but we also all benefit when we know that our public schools are providing the same high-quality education to our neighbors’ children, too.  I’m confident that my kids are getting a great education in Somerville’s Public Schools – and one of the big reasons for my confidence is that the system’s resources are fairly apportioned to provide the best possible program for every kid in every school.

But I’m not the one who gets to decide whether to divert city school money to create a new charter school: that will be made by the Commonwealth’s Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE).  They’ll be the ones making holding the hearing on the 14th.

No matter which side you take in this discussion, I urge you to join me in attending the hearing and in making your views known to the folks at DESE.  In the meantime, you can find out more about this proposal by visiting the websites sponsored by supporters of a new charter school (http://www.thespcs.org) and a parent group called Progress Together for Somerville that has formed in opposition (https://sites.google.com/site/ProgressTogetherforSomerville).

Please mark your calendar, come to the hearing and make your voice heard.