The Montana Board of Education approved 19 charter school applications, including the CORE School from Great Falls Public Schools, on Jan. 19.
The board denied five charter school applications.
The approved districts now have 45 days to work on charters contracts with the board, that once approved will be effective July 1 for five-years.
Jane Hamman, board member, led the board’s charter school subcommittee and said during the meeting that the contracts would include baseline performance measures and the state would determine what funding would be available to each charter school.
Tim Tharp, board chair, said the legislators who crafted the legislation establishing public charter schools expected about five applications. The board received 26.
Tharp said the board was handed the charter school application process with a very tight timeline.
“This has been a learning process,” he said. “We did not do it perfectly.”
He said the board has received some criticism on the process, which they are planning to tweak and improve for the next application cycle.
Tharp said there are discrepancies in the law that they want to address. He said there’s areas in the statute that conflict with itself and they’ll be working with the governor’s office to resolve those conflicts.
GFPS’ CORE School application received a perfect score from the board.
GFPS appoints members to CORE School advisory committee; presents to state education board
In December, GFPS named Jennifer Martyn as the principal for the district’s new CORE School.
Morningside Elementary School was selected in November as the location for the new CORE School.
District officials have said they plan to start the teacher selection process for the CORE School in January.
They’ll go through an application process and be paired with student teachers from Western’s program or other university education programs.
Morningside Elementary selected as GFPS’ CORE School
GFPS teachers who aren’t selected for the CORE School will be able to move to another school under the existing process in their collective bargaining agreement, according to district administrators.
District officials said current teachers would not lose their jobs under the proposal.
In October, the school board voted to allow staff to submit an application to the Montana Board of Public Education to create a public charter school under a new state law.
GFPS officials presented the CORE School concept to the state board on Nov. 30.
GFPS approves plan for new public charter school
In early 2024, the district will hold informational sessions for families who live outside of the Morningside attendance area who are considering enrollment in the CORE School for the upcoming academic year.
Current students at the selected school will have the option to stay, but for those that want to leave, they could be moved to a nearby school or go through the district’s existing permissive transfer process.
The classrooms will be filled to state capacity and will use a lottery system to fill any available elementary student slots at the lab school, district officials said.
GFPS hosting info sessions on proposed magnet school
Even if the district wasn’t approved as a public charter school, district staff said they’d move forward with their plan to turn one existing elementary school to turn into CORE School in an effort to address teacher recruitment and retention.
CORE School will essentially be a learning laboratory and will be staffed by teachers with masters degrees who go through a separate selection process and will also be hired as adjunct staff for the University of Montana-Western’s education program.
The student teachers from university programs will be hired by the district as paraeducators or teacher aides, which have also been in short supply, while they’re completing their degree program in an immersive educational setting.
GFPS considering creating magnet public charter school
The CORE School will open in the fall of 2024 with the UM-Western students coming that spring, according to GFPS.
Staff presented their proposal to the GFPS board in October and has held two public informational sessions about the plan. Board members, district staff and the public have been able to asked questions and Heather Hoyer and Jackie Mainwaring said once those questions are answered, people have been generally supportive of the plan.
Mainwaring said there’s been some misconceptions about what a public charter school is. Under the new state law allowing the creation of public charter schools, public money stays with public schools with the advisory committee and school board retaining oversight.
“That’s one of the unique things in the law about public charter schools, that they’re still governed by elected officials,” Hoyer said.
GFPS gives summer school report to board
Hoyer said that there’s been some misconceptions about CORE School that go back to people’s thoughts on what charter schools are. She said the public charter school is not for certain students and will be designed to represent GFPS and the neighborhood its in demographically. There’s no grade point average or parent involvement criteria beyond any regular GFPS elementary school for the CORE School students, she said.
The CORE School will also be funded through the district’s existing budget and won’t affect the local schools tax levies, Hoyer and Mainwaring said.
If approved as a public charter school, it will get slightly more from the state than the standard base funding that’s determined by enrollment, which could free up some general fund dollars for other district needs, Mainwaring said.
UM-Western received a $400,000 grant through the Montana Office of the Commissioner of Higher Education for the CORE School to cover tuition for the college students in the program so when they graduate from their condensed three-year program, they’ll be debt free, Estee Aiken, an education professor at Western told the GFPS board during their Oct. 9 meeting.
The public charter schools also have some flexibility to accept private funding, which could offset some costs or allow for some enhancements, GFPS officials said.
