In the News
From the JUNE 5, 2005 Issue of The Cape Cod Times
staff writer
When it opened 10 years ago, the Cape Cod Lighthouse Charter School was a pioneer in an obscure education policy experiment.
[PHOTO CAPTION: At the Cape Cod Lighthouse Charter School, walls are covered with student-painted murals. This one involves emergency floodlights on a jeep.]
''Most people thought it wasn't going to succeed,'' said Paula Miner, one of the founders. ''There was a lot of hostility toward it. People are always suspect of something new.''
As one of the first 15 charter schools to open in the state, the founders risked the future of their children by placing them in a homegrown school next to a Chinese restaurant in an Orleans strip mall.
Today, there are 56 charter schools in the state with three more scheduled to open, and Lighthouse remains one of the most stable, with high test scores, financial viability and a solid reputation almost from the start.
The dismay and skepticism that greeted the first founders in Orleans have been replaced with enthusiasm by parents who put their children's names on wait lists to get in. And even Nauset's superintendent, whose district has lost millions in state aid to the charter school in the last decade, describes himself as a ''somewhat reluctant convert to the notion that limited competition in the public sector is healthy.''
A look at the school's 10-year history shows that it has been a successful if not easy educational experiment.
The national charter movement was founded by those who wanted to offer a free alternative to traditional public schools. In 1993, Massachusetts became one of the first states in the nation to allow charter schools.
Lost state aid
Massachusetts charters are funded by state education dollars on a per-pupil basis. Each child who chooses charter school over his or her traditional school takes their individual per-pupil state aid out of the district and directs it to the charter school.
Students at the Lighthouse Charter School in Orleans take a scrapbooking seminar called "don't throw it out," a class that meets two days a week to learn about paper crafts and scrapbooking skills. (Times photos by Paul Blackmore)
For the Nauset district, that amounts to more than $1 million in lost state aid a year.
That is why charter schools have been extremely unpopular with most public school administrators and teachers. But there are other reasons.
When Lighthouse opened, virtually every child leaving the Nauset district scored in the top half on their class on nationally normed tests, according to Nauset Supt. Michael Gradone.
That event caused the establishment to sit up and pay attention.
''I think the challenge of having a charter school literally around the corner is one of the reasons that Nauset has improved as it has over the past 10 years,'' Gradone said.
''We had to face the prospect of losing our ablest middle school students to the charter school if we didn't improve our academic program,'' he added. ''It's the way charter schools are supposed to work. And in that sense, the experiment has been successful. It's only when bright kids and state aid leaves that it gets your attention.''
As a district, Nauset's MCAS scores have topped the Cape and the state. Both Nauset High School and the Orleans Elementary School have won state and federal awards for high state test scores.
''Nauset Middle School has improved dramatically in the past five years,'' agreed Sean O'Neil, executive director of the Lighthouse Charter School.
Nauset, in fact, now keeps more of its students out of the charter school.
Selecting students
Five years ago, 80 percent of the charter school's enrollment came from children living from Truro to Brewster, the Nauset region. This fall, only 53 percent will be from Nauset, while a full 21 percent will come from the Dennis-Yarmouth school district, O'Neil said.
The Nauset district isn't the only one to change in the past decade.
The Lighthouse school started as a place for gifted and talented middle schoolers. Founders openly discouraged applications from students without strong academic skills.
''I'm not sure if anyone was turned down in the first few classes,'' said Donald Bakker, a Nauset high teacher and founding Lighthouse Charter School board member.
But, he said, interviews were conducted with the first students to see whether they would be a good match.
After the first class graduated, the eighth grade, nearly half the honor students in Bakker's high school classes came from the Lighthouse Charter School, he said. ''That has not happened since,'' he said.
That hasn't happened since because the charter school board of trustees realized they couldn't select top students, O'Neil said. The charter law states that since they are public schools, they are open to everyone, and acceptance must be by a blind lottery, O'Neil said.
If that wasn't happening in the early days, it's because the state charter office was itself just starting out and lacked the ability to enforce the law, he said.
''You'd call the (state) charter office one week and talk to one person,'' Miner said. ''And next week you'd call and that person would be gone.''
''The state didn't have its act together, basically, so schools kind of invented themselves,'' O'Neil said.
That's not the case any longer. Charter schools undergo a rigorous review process now every five years, and the law must be followed in order to stay in business, he said.
To date, the state Board of Education has closed one charter, and two more are scheduled to be shut down, according to the Massachusetts Charter School Association.
The law states that a school can be as academically challenging as it dares, but it cannot kick out students based on academic performance alone. Schools must also be financially viable, and show academic success, or steady improvement.
Challenging kids
As popularity of the Lighthouse grew, so did the diversity of the applications. In 2000, 213 children applied for just 60 spots. When more than just top students arrived, the school had a ''legal and moral'' duty to figure out how to educate them, O'Neil said.
And so it evolved.
Amy Mesirow of Cotuit sends her son, Ben, to the Lighthouse Charter School.
She described Ben as ''a dreamer'' who called his former Cotuit/Marstons Mills Elementary School ''long and boring.''
Even though he always got good grades, he hated it, she said. But he enjoys the charter school.
''That's the kind of school for him,'' she said. ''They are wacky. They have six vans. They are constantly putting kids in the van and taking them to see things, touching things and they are constantly bringing members of the community in to talk to them.''
The controversy about a charter school has largely died down in Orleans, O'Neil said. But charter schools remain hotly contested. Their future remains uncertain. Bills have been proposed to cut their funding. Moratoriums on future charters have won some legislative support.
O'Neil said the teacher's unions provide much of the oppositional muscle. Charter school teachers are not unionized. There is much more flexibility in hiring and firing of staff. And that is a threat. Catherine Boudreau, head of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, disagreed that teachers are simply worried about their jobs.
''Our main concern about charter schools has always been that they take resources away from the public schools and that ultimately hurts the children left in those schools.''
The loss of five students can cost a district $50,000 in state aid, but because of class configurations a district often cannot just get rid of a teacher to save that money, she said.
Bakker, who served as a negotiator for the Nauset Teachers Association at the same time he was starting the Lighthouse Charter School, said he never felt conflicted as a union member.
''The primary objective was to challenge kids and those other issues have to be secondary,'' he said. ''Education isn't about teacher tenure, or finding jobs for teachers.''
K.C. Myers can be reached at kcmyers@capecodonline.com.
(Published: June 5, 2005)
Lighthouse Charter School: Experiment that succeeded
By K.C. MYERSstaff writer
When it opened 10 years ago, the Cape Cod Lighthouse Charter School was a pioneer in an obscure education policy experiment.
[PHOTO CAPTION: At the Cape Cod Lighthouse Charter School, walls are covered with student-painted murals. This one involves emergency floodlights on a jeep.]
''Most people thought it wasn't going to succeed,'' said Paula Miner, one of the founders. ''There was a lot of hostility toward it. People are always suspect of something new.''
As one of the first 15 charter schools to open in the state, the founders risked the future of their children by placing them in a homegrown school next to a Chinese restaurant in an Orleans strip mall.
Today, there are 56 charter schools in the state with three more scheduled to open, and Lighthouse remains one of the most stable, with high test scores, financial viability and a solid reputation almost from the start.
The dismay and skepticism that greeted the first founders in Orleans have been replaced with enthusiasm by parents who put their children's names on wait lists to get in. And even Nauset's superintendent, whose district has lost millions in state aid to the charter school in the last decade, describes himself as a ''somewhat reluctant convert to the notion that limited competition in the public sector is healthy.''
A look at the school's 10-year history shows that it has been a successful if not easy educational experiment.
The national charter movement was founded by those who wanted to offer a free alternative to traditional public schools. In 1993, Massachusetts became one of the first states in the nation to allow charter schools.
Lost state aid
Massachusetts charters are funded by state education dollars on a per-pupil basis. Each child who chooses charter school over his or her traditional school takes their individual per-pupil state aid out of the district and directs it to the charter school.
Students at the Lighthouse Charter School in Orleans take a scrapbooking seminar called "don't throw it out," a class that meets two days a week to learn about paper crafts and scrapbooking skills. (Times photos by Paul Blackmore)
For the Nauset district, that amounts to more than $1 million in lost state aid a year.
That is why charter schools have been extremely unpopular with most public school administrators and teachers. But there are other reasons.
When Lighthouse opened, virtually every child leaving the Nauset district scored in the top half on their class on nationally normed tests, according to Nauset Supt. Michael Gradone.
That event caused the establishment to sit up and pay attention.
''I think the challenge of having a charter school literally around the corner is one of the reasons that Nauset has improved as it has over the past 10 years,'' Gradone said.
''We had to face the prospect of losing our ablest middle school students to the charter school if we didn't improve our academic program,'' he added. ''It's the way charter schools are supposed to work. And in that sense, the experiment has been successful. It's only when bright kids and state aid leaves that it gets your attention.''
As a district, Nauset's MCAS scores have topped the Cape and the state. Both Nauset High School and the Orleans Elementary School have won state and federal awards for high state test scores.
''Nauset Middle School has improved dramatically in the past five years,'' agreed Sean O'Neil, executive director of the Lighthouse Charter School.
Nauset, in fact, now keeps more of its students out of the charter school.
Selecting students
Five years ago, 80 percent of the charter school's enrollment came from children living from Truro to Brewster, the Nauset region. This fall, only 53 percent will be from Nauset, while a full 21 percent will come from the Dennis-Yarmouth school district, O'Neil said.
The Nauset district isn't the only one to change in the past decade.
The Lighthouse school started as a place for gifted and talented middle schoolers. Founders openly discouraged applications from students without strong academic skills.
''I'm not sure if anyone was turned down in the first few classes,'' said Donald Bakker, a Nauset high teacher and founding Lighthouse Charter School board member.
But, he said, interviews were conducted with the first students to see whether they would be a good match.
After the first class graduated, the eighth grade, nearly half the honor students in Bakker's high school classes came from the Lighthouse Charter School, he said. ''That has not happened since,'' he said.
That hasn't happened since because the charter school board of trustees realized they couldn't select top students, O'Neil said. The charter law states that since they are public schools, they are open to everyone, and acceptance must be by a blind lottery, O'Neil said.
If that wasn't happening in the early days, it's because the state charter office was itself just starting out and lacked the ability to enforce the law, he said.
''You'd call the (state) charter office one week and talk to one person,'' Miner said. ''And next week you'd call and that person would be gone.''
''The state didn't have its act together, basically, so schools kind of invented themselves,'' O'Neil said.
That's not the case any longer. Charter schools undergo a rigorous review process now every five years, and the law must be followed in order to stay in business, he said.
To date, the state Board of Education has closed one charter, and two more are scheduled to be shut down, according to the Massachusetts Charter School Association.
The law states that a school can be as academically challenging as it dares, but it cannot kick out students based on academic performance alone. Schools must also be financially viable, and show academic success, or steady improvement.
Challenging kids
As popularity of the Lighthouse grew, so did the diversity of the applications. In 2000, 213 children applied for just 60 spots. When more than just top students arrived, the school had a ''legal and moral'' duty to figure out how to educate them, O'Neil said.
And so it evolved.
Amy Mesirow of Cotuit sends her son, Ben, to the Lighthouse Charter School.
She described Ben as ''a dreamer'' who called his former Cotuit/Marstons Mills Elementary School ''long and boring.''
Even though he always got good grades, he hated it, she said. But he enjoys the charter school.
''That's the kind of school for him,'' she said. ''They are wacky. They have six vans. They are constantly putting kids in the van and taking them to see things, touching things and they are constantly bringing members of the community in to talk to them.''
The controversy about a charter school has largely died down in Orleans, O'Neil said. But charter schools remain hotly contested. Their future remains uncertain. Bills have been proposed to cut their funding. Moratoriums on future charters have won some legislative support.
O'Neil said the teacher's unions provide much of the oppositional muscle. Charter school teachers are not unionized. There is much more flexibility in hiring and firing of staff. And that is a threat. Catherine Boudreau, head of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, disagreed that teachers are simply worried about their jobs.
''Our main concern about charter schools has always been that they take resources away from the public schools and that ultimately hurts the children left in those schools.''
The loss of five students can cost a district $50,000 in state aid, but because of class configurations a district often cannot just get rid of a teacher to save that money, she said.
Bakker, who served as a negotiator for the Nauset Teachers Association at the same time he was starting the Lighthouse Charter School, said he never felt conflicted as a union member.
''The primary objective was to challenge kids and those other issues have to be secondary,'' he said. ''Education isn't about teacher tenure, or finding jobs for teachers.''
K.C. Myers can be reached at kcmyers@capecodonline.com.
(Published: June 5, 2005)