School groups take aim at McDonnell's charter plan

With the governor's charter school proposal now on the table, public school groups lined up Thursday morning to take swings at it.

In a joint news conference Thursday, the Virginia Education Association, the Virginia School Board Association, and the Virginia Association of School Superintendents all said they weren't necessarily opposed to the idea of charter schools.

But they didn't like a couple of things about Gov. Bob McDonnell's proposal.

First, they said, it comes at the wrong time. School divisions are already cash-strapped, they said, and don't need startups taking money away from public schools to serve a small percentage of the population.

Next, they don't think an appeals process is necessary for charter school applicants turned down by school boards. Even though Virginia has just three charter schools, with a fourth on the way, school boards have approved 10 of the 16 applications submitted over the past 12 years, they said. Some ideas for charters have been incorporated into existing school programs; other charters have started and closed down. Local school boards are the ones best positioned to decide what their communities need, they said.

Finally, they disputed the characterization of Virginia's charter school law by charter advocacy groups as one of the weakest in the nation. It's actually one of the strongest, they said - it protects communities from weak or poorly thought-out school proposals.

The public school groups said they'll support the governor's idea for an early vetting of charter proposals by the state Board of Education. But they plan to fight the option to appeal a rejected application back to the board.