Charter Schools

WEATHER Today's forecast calls for cloudy skies, patchy fog in the morning and a chance of showers and thunderstorms, with a high temperature near 80 degrees. Wednesday night is expected to be mostly cloudy, with a low temperature around 66 degrees. TRAFFIC Check our traffic updates for this morning's issues as you plan your commute. FROM LAST NIGHT... City schools pass 2013 budget; charters' per-pupil funding down : As the amount spent on students in traditional schools increases, the system's 33 charter schools will see their per-pupil expenditures drop by $257 from 2012, for a total of $9,007.

WEATHER Today's forecast calls for cloudy skies, patchy fog in the morning and a chance of showers and thunderstorms, with a high temperature near 80 degrees. Wednesday night is expected to be mostly cloudy, with a low temperature around 66 degrees. TRAFFIC Check our traffic updates for this morning's issues as you plan your commute. FROM LAST NIGHT... City schools pass 2013 budget; charters' per-pupil funding down : As the amount spent on students in traditional schools increases, the system's 33 charter schools will see their per-pupil expenditures drop by $257 from 2012, for a total of $9,007.

Once again, Dan Rodricks has voiced his hang-up with the Catholic Church with a cheap and inaccurate shot accusing the Archdiocese of Baltimore of "looking petty when it refuses to sell its vacant school buildings to city charter schools" ("Street food and soccer, war and Westboro," March 24). Note he wrote buildings, plural, not the single school building in the news recently. In fact, the Archdiocese announced on March 24 the sale of St. Rose of Lima Catholic School and convent in Brooklyn to The Children's Guild, an operator of two city charter schools.

The Baltimore City school board voted Tuesday to pass the district's proposed $1.31 billion budget, which includes a decrease in the per-pupil funding for charter schools. As the amount spent on students in traditional schools increases, the system's 33 charter schools will see their per-pupil expenditures drop by $257 from 2012, for a total of $9,007. The overall amount for charters, however, has steadily increased as their populations grow. The charters are funded differently than traditional schools.

Erica Green 's recent article, "Charters emerge as threat to Catholic schools" (March 16), describes the competition between Catholic and charter schools for students. This competition certainly exists. But it is not the entirety of the relationship, at least not in one section of the city. In Northeast Baltimore, not too far south of where the vacant St. Anthony's school building mentioned in the article sits, another Catholic school is one of three outstanding schools — one parochial, one traditional neighborhood public and one public charter school — participating in partnership with a local community development organization to enhance educational opportunities for all families in the neighborhood.

Former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. and the state Board of Education, holding separate and unrelated events Tuesday, discussed strikingly similar proposals aimed at encouraging the growth of charter schools in Maryland. Ehrlich, a Republican running to take back the office he lost four years ago to Democratic Gov. Martin O'Malley, traveled to Montgomery County to unveil a three-point plan for charter schools. "Charters are no longer these strange animals," he said. Making the state rules more friendly to them, he said, "should not be heavy lifting."

My service on the Maryland State Board of Education overlapped with Jim Campbell's service on the City School Board. I am writing to correct some important facts, but, first of all, I agree that CEO Andrés Alonso's forcefulness and sense of mission have been very positive for the city schools, and the schools are headed in the right direction, albeit far too slowly. In "City school system ready to take the next step" (Commentary, July 22), Jim Campbell points out the successful opening of charter schools in the city, but prior to Mr. Alonso's arrival, the city school board, including Mr. Campbell, right after the state charter law was passed in 2003, strenuously fought new charter school applications and, most importantly, their full funding as required by state law. They did so to the point of opposing the full funding in court all the way to Maryland's top court.

Baltimore schools CEO Andrés Alonso has presented the city board of school commissioners with a problem of both practical and philosophical import: How long should the city wait before deciding to close charter schools that clearly aren't up to the job they were intended to do? The issue came to light at a meeting of the city school board last week, when Mr. Alonso recommend revoking the charter of the independently run, publicly financed Dr. Rayner Browne Academy, an elementary/middle school in West Baltimore that is now in its third year of operation.

Mary Jefferson became the legal guardian of her granddaughter when the child was 2 years old to save her from a life of instability after her parents became addicted to drugs and ended up in jail. A decade later, Sonya Moss is excelling as a student at KIPP Ujima Village Academy, a public charter that is one of the highest-performing middle schools in Baltimore and the state. Jefferson credits the school's structure and support for helping the seventh-grader overcome her childhood obstacles and described KIPP "as a gift from God. " But the rare educational opportunities Sonya and other low-income students receive at the Northwest Baltimore school could come to an end this summer.

A new education advocacy group, formed late last year, has pledged to lobby for charter schools, funding for pre-kindergarten education and leave time for parents attending meetings with teachers. MarylandCAN, which is affiliated with a national coalition of school reformers called 50CAN, announced its agenda this week. Curtis Valentine, executive director of MarylandCAN, said he was "quite optimistic about passing" a bill that would give more students access to pre-kindergarten and legislation that would allow parents to take time off from work to attend teacher-parent meetings without being penalized by their employer.

A mathematics educator whose students have consistently scored among the highest in Baltimore and Maryland on state assessments was named the city's 2012 Teacher of the Year. Bradley Nornhold, a seventh- and eighth-grade math teacher at the high-performing charter school KIPP Ujima Village Academy, was surprised with the honor Wednesday by a visit to his classroom — which immediately erupted in cheers — from city schools CEO Andrés Alonso. Alonso called Nornhold a "tremendous educator," saying that he was told that to watch Nornhold teach is "like magic.

S. Dallas Dance is young. He will be just 31 when he takes the helm of Baltimore County's school system. And he has not stayed in any one place for long - a couple of years teaching, a couple as a principal, a couple each in administrative posts in Virginia and Texas. He had to get a waiver from the state because he lacks the minimum three years of teaching experience required to be a superintendent in Maryland. Moreover, he was selected through a completely closed process; the only inkling most Maryland parents had of his existence came when he appeared at a public meeting in Howard County, where he was also up for the top schools job. His hiring in Baltimore County was announced less than 12 hours later, and at that point, he was already on a flight back to Houston.

In a meeting with the editorial board of The Baltimore Sun , the next Baltimore County schools chief, S. Dallas Dance, said he supports the controversial decision to build a new school in Mays Chapel. The school, he said, is needed to relieve overcrowding.  He said he will never shy away from making unpopular decisions, but that no matter how difficult the decision "it does not give you the right not to listen to people. "   Dance will take over on July 1, but he plans to visit the county several times between now and then.

MarylandCAN, a new education advocacy group, has just released its first annual ranking of schools . A first reading of the rankings shows that lots of schools fall into the same category so there isn't much fine tuning of the data. Dozens of schools received the rating of number one.   The rankings are based on data that is readily available on the Maryland State Department of Education website, but it is organized in a way that allows for a more user friendly comparison between districts and schools.

A new education advocacy group, formed late last year, has pledged to lobby for charter schools, funding for pre-kindergarten education and leave time for parents attending meetings with teachers. MarylandCAN, which is affiliated with a national coalition of school reformers called 50CAN, announced its agenda this week. Curtis Valentine, executive director of MarylandCAN, said he was "quite optimistic about passing" a bill that would give more students access to pre-kindergarten and legislation that would allow parents to take time off from work to attend teacher-parent meetings without being penalized by their employer.

In its budget proposal for the next fiscal year, the Anne Arundel County school system has recommended allotting $3.5 million to fund the expansion of its two charter schools. That includes adding an 11th grade in August at Chesapeake Science Point Public Charter School in Hanover. Chesapeake Science Point officials say the grade will likely be composed solely of the school's 10th-grade class, which was added last fall. "We're not going to add a big 11th grade; as a matter of fact, we prefer not to bring in outside students.

Charter schools in Maryland received a financial boost from the Court of Special Appeals recently. But the ruling could give charters even more money than other public schools, posing practical and legal challenges that need to be resolved. Charter schools often take different approaches to learning, using themes such as social justice as educational focal points. They also tend to operate with fewer rules and mandates, attracting innovative teachers and helping students who don't do well in traditional settings.

The superintendent of Anne Arundel County's public schools has proposed a nearly $1 billion operating budget for the 2013 fiscal year, about $50 million more than the system was allotted this year. "We have been good fiscal stewards of the money allocated to us each year," said Superintendent Kevin Maxwell to members of the school board last week. "We have made difficult decisions, such as declining to add general fund positions to our workforce … despite the addition of more than 3,000 students over the last four years.

When it comes to public money for private schools and oversight of charter schools, the Harford County Board of Education and the administration of Harford County Public Schools have it right by being opposed. When it comes to public money for private schools and oversight of charter schools, the Harford County Board of Education and the administration of Harford County Public Schools have it right by being opposed. In the school system's recently-released 2012 legislative platform, Harford County Public Schools is against any public funding of private education and it's equally opposed to any new laws that would allow charter schools to operate without being required to comply with "state law and [Harford school]