A resubmitted application to turn Wahtonka Community School into a charter school was declined a second time last Wednesday, but the changes needed were so minor they were done the next day.
The North Wasco County School District 21 board was obligated to reject the application as incomplete, based on a determination by the Oregon School Boards Association, which reviewed it.
But Brian Goodwin, principal of WCS, said the changes were made and submitted by Thursday.
School board member Aaron Bowman is also a board member of the proposed charter school. He said the charter board has had 10 meetings so far and is well established.
Bowman said, “This isn’t chunky stuff, this is more like, ‘You mis-numbered the page.’”
Anderson said it usually takes OSBA a week to review an application for completeness.
Bowman said the matter is complex because the application is not only setting up a school, but is setting up a corporation, and both elements have to be complete. The directions for setting up a charter aren’t always specific enough, and it is not uncommon for an application to be rejected a time or two.
Indeed, Goodwin said earlier that a $100,000 state grant he got to help prepare the application wasn’t even available to him until he’d already applied once.
If the charter school is accepted, or sponsored, by the school district, the employees of the charter school would be terminated by the school district and immediately hired by the charter school.
More common is for employees to take a one-year leave from the school district and test the waters of the charter school before deciding to sever district employment and lose seniority.
Goodwin said earlier he wanted to seek charter school status to protect the school’s funding. Districts can cut funding for alternative schools in tight budget times, and he wanted to avoid that.
Charter high schools get 95 percent of the funding that regular high schools get.
While most charter schools have a typical summer-off schedule, because the community school operates year-round, there is no summer break in which to carefully plan the handover of employees, said district Chief Financial Officer Randy Anderson.
That means it has to be carefully planned for an instant switchover.
While the charter school would be sponsored by the school district, it would be a separate entity from the district, said District Superintendent Candy Armstrong.
Bowman said school employees know what they will be getting from the charter. “Candy’s right, we really want them to look at the whole thing: ‘Do you want to lose seniority?’”
All employees who sign with the charter would have the same level of seniority.
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