A New Lesson Plan?

More than two years after its reinvention under a charter of independence, Santiago Middle School remains the first and only school of its kind in Orange County--funded by tax dollars but free from school district regulations.

There are fewer students per teacher than on surrounding campuses. All parents must log at least 12 volunteer hours a year--chaperoning field trips, making pizza in the cafeteria, planting trees or even substitute teaching. Administrators have put students in uniforms, sought competitive bids for contracts and stiffened grade-to-grade promotion standards--all without waiting for approval from Sacramento or the local school board.

It is the sort of experience that has gained the charter school movement notice nationwide. And if a Silicon Valley businessman has his way, such experiments in public education will soon proliferate across California.

Reed Hastings, a teacher turned software millionaire turned education graduate student, is promoting a fall voter initiative designed to spawn hundreds more charter schools--the latest in a series of proposals to overhaul public schools through the ballot box.

Hewing to limits set by a 1992 law, California has granted only 134 charters--in a state with 8,000 public schools.

“There’s a demand for many times that,” Hastings said. “What we want to do is put as much control in the principals’ hands, and the teachers’, as possible. Everybody agrees that local is better.”

Though Hastings does not formally kick off his campaign until a news conference Thursday in San Carlos, his initiative fell under the spotlight when it was endorsed this month by Republican gubernatorial candidate Dan Lungren. And many education groups are taking Hastings seriously, in part because he is talking about having a $15-million campaign chest.

First, he has to collect 693,230 valid voter signatures by May 1 to put the measure--proposed as a constitutional amendment--on the November ballot.

Charter schools have bipartisan political appeal. President Clinton and a number of Republican lawmakers champion them as an answer to parent demands for “school choice.” Nationwide, more than 780 have been established since Minnesota passed the first charter school law in 1991.

In California, charters have been granted in 31 of 58 counties, including 21 in Los Angeles County and 20 in San Diego County.

The freedom given these schools does not guarantee success. Some charters have been withdrawn or revoked. Edutrain Charter School in Los Angeles was shut down in 1995 after piling up large debts.

There also are plenty of skeptics. Some say charter schools lack fiscal and academic controls. Others fear they could feed the movement to privatize schools through vouchers. And in a state where standardized testing has been in flux for years, there are few reliable yardsticks to compare charters with traditional schools.

When the nonpartisan state legislative analyst’s office received a report on charter schools in December from a research group based in Menlo Park, SRI International, the authors were unable to draw “definitive conclusions” about their performance, saying “the available data are insufficient.”

Without such proof, some education groups argue, the state should proceed cautiously.

“The truth is, we don’t oppose charter schools per se,” said Tommye Hutto, communications manager for the 280,000-member California Teachers Assn. “But we want to be sure that the students, teachers and taxpayers will be protected.”

Hastings expects the union, a major player in education politics, to oppose the ballot initiative. It is worried in part about language that would remove teachers from the charter-approval process.

The initiative is co-sponsored by Don Shalvey, superintendent of the San Carlos Elementary School District in the Bay Area, site of the state’s first charter school. Among its key provisions:

* Removal of limits on the number of charter schools allowed statewide and within a given district. The law now allows the state to exceed 100 charter schools only with approval from the State Board of Education, and it limits most districts to 10 such schools each.

* Removal of a requirement that half the teachers in a school, or 10% of the teachers in a school district, sign petitions in support of a charter school.

* A proposal to spur the creation of charter schools in areas served by public schools ranked in the state’s academic cellar, the bottom 10%, under standards to be established by the state board.

The initiative also would allow charter schools to incorporate as nonprofit institutions, beef up teacher standards, prohibit the promotion of religion, require gains in student achievement and limit the use of charters by home schoolers.

Hastings, 37, of Santa Cruz, said the initiative is the fruit of five years of thinking prompted by a failed 1993 initiative that would have allowed publicly funded vouchers, which students could have used to attend private schools. He opposed Proposition 174, he said, but wondered what else could be done to improve schools.

Hastings headed a company that produced tools for software engineers, then was taken over by a rival in a recent deal--reportedly valued at about $750 million.

*

Hastings now is undoubtedly the wealthiest graduate student in education at Stanford University. But that’s not his first exposure to classroom issues--he taught high school math during a stint in the Peace Corps at a British school in Africa before his software career. He ambition now, he said, is “to fix the public school finance system.”

He may face some wariness, though, toward rich men who want to tinker with K-12 classrooms. Another Silicon Valley software millionaire, Ron K. Unz, is bankrolling the high-profile initiative seeking to dismantle bilingual education.

Mary Ann Owsley, principal of Santiago Middle School before and after it won state charter No. 66, said some of Hastings’ ideas make little sense to her. In particular, Owsley said, schools that reorganize under charters ought to have faculty approval. Thirty-two out of 34 teachers backed Santiago’s petition in 1994. The school opened under its charter in September 1995.

“You could no more have had success for this charter without the support of these teachers than you could flying,” Owsley said.

The principal acknowledged that there is little in the way of test scores to show that her 1,025 students are better off. But she insisted that the school has used its money wisely. A 13-member governing board of parents, educators and community members oversees a $4-million annual budget. Class size is 28 students per teacher, lower than the Orange Unified School District average. Parent surveys indicate strong support.

“There is a tremendous change in people’s thought process when you have local control,” Owsley said. “You start to understand that you’re making decisions for yourself. You get to take the credit if it’s a good idea and take responsibility if it’s a bad one. People are very concerned that what we do is wise and has the best bang for the buck--and that we’re doing the best job for kids that we can.”

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Charter Schools

Under a 1992 California law, charter schools are publicly funded but operate independently of most state regulations. School districts may revoke a charter for mismanagement.

No. of Charters Issued, by Selected Counties

Los Angeles: 21

San Diego: 20

San Bernardino: 11

Riverside: 5

Orange: 1

Snapshot of a Charter School

Name: Santiago Middle School

Location: Orange

Grades: 7 and 8

Enrollment: 1,025

Annual budget: $4 million

Charter granted: July 1994 by Orange Unified School District; took effect September 1995

Length of charter: 5 years

Governing board: 13 members--the principal, four parents, three teachers, a curriculum manager, a business manager, a high school principal, a district official and a community representative

Sources: State Department of Education, Santiago Middle School