[Vision2020] Charter School in Deary?

[Saundra Lund]

Ms. Rose Huskey wrote:
"Does anyone know anything (web links? brochures?) about the proposed
charter school in Deary?  I have heard that it will be similar to the Idaho
Virtual Academy.  I believe that Greg Vance, is proposing this charter and I
suppose he will be running the school.  Any info would be appreciated."

Below my signature, I'll include an article from today's Daily News.

My understanding is that I-DEA (Idaho Distance Education Academy, a
501(c)(3) non-profit) denies any connection with Gregg Vance (which
pleasantly surprised me given Vance's . . . devotion to charter schools),
but I didn't think to ask if they are associated with right-winger William
J. Bennett (IDVA -- Idaho Virtual Academy, that financially troubled virtual
charter school which, I believe, required a $1.6 million taxpayer bail-out
in March, is partnered with Bennett's K12).

Now, I'll readily confess to *not* being up on charter school issues, but it
strikes me as . . . odd (read: conflict of interest) to have a public school
district run a virtual charter school.  I'm interested in others' thoughts
on that aspect.

I'm also interested from hearing from any who were able to attend the
presentations yesterday, which I was unable to really attend, although the
folks doing the presenting were very gracious of my late arrival.

One thing I was curious about:  parents receive an allotment for each child,
and I believe receipts are required to be reimbursed for expenditures.  For
9-12 grades, I believe the allotment is $1600.  If there is any money left
over, what happens to that?  Can it be carried over to the next year, or is
it a "use it or lose it" kind of thing.  If it's the latter, does the
charter school keep the money, or does it go back to the state?

I'll also add that out of the curriculum catalogs displayed, there seemed to
be a heavy emphasis on faith-based materials.  There was one catalog I
looked at -- I think it was a small Prentis-Hall catalogue geared to foreign
language for middle/high school-aged kids, and Calvert School, but that only
goes through 8th grade, I think -- but the rest seemed to be faith-based
(including a catalog for Marlin Detweiler's Veritas Press).  *Definitely*
not very welcoming for those of us who aren't interested in that kind of
thing(!), but when asked, one of the women willingly gave me the names of
some other curriculums that aren't faith-based.  I've not had a chance to
check them out yet.  Obviously, they can't bring everything, but I think it
says a lot about the intentions to only bring faith-based catalogues  :-(

For those interested in learning more, we were given the following Web
address:
www.ideafamilies.org
That's for the Alaska program, but it will give you some ideas of what I-DEA
will look like, I think.


Saundra Lund
Moscow, ID

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do
nothing.
-Edmund Burke


_Moscow-Pullman Daily News_; 5/22-23/2004; p 2A

Whitepine to launch state's second virtual academy

Alexis Bacharach

Interior Distance Education of Alaska opened in 1996 with 39 students.
Enrollment grew well beyond 1,000 students in the second month of
operations.

Within two years, there were more than 3,000 students enrolled in the
virtual education program for home-school families.

Whitepine Superintendent Daryl Bertelsen hopes the same trend will take off
in Idaho, when his district opens the state's second virtual charter school,
modeled after Alaska's distance education program.

"We have been talking about this off and on," Bertelsen said of discussions
between himself and school board members. "I guess I would say you could see
the writing on the wall with the way technology has come along. The state
really got to work on the virtual charter school two years ago. I've been
watching as the laws evolved. This spring I said to our board, 'here is
something we need to take a look at.' "

The board approved a five-year charter and district officials took their
vision public.

Bertelsen and some board members began a statewide series of meetings
Thursday to meet with interested families. By Friday afternoon, the
Whitepine School District had more than 100 applications from students
around the state.

"My original vision was to try this out in the district, but we were told it
wouldn't take much more to do it for the whole state, and actually it does
take a lot more," he said with a grin. "Our district depends on timber
sales, and those have not been doing very well in the last couple of years.
We're losing students and tax support. There are a lot of home-school
students in the district and we wanted to provide them this opportunity. We
can afford fewer and fewer specialists. With this charter school we can
share those resources."

Whitpine's Idaho Distance Education Academy would provide home-school
students' families access to materials, education professionals, and other
participating families.

Bertelsen would be the superintendent of the Whitepine and IDEA charter
school district. He said he managed OK when he was the superintendent at
Whitepine and Troy School District.

"We will need to get the school a director and some field people. I figure
we'll start out with about five people," he said. "We're not going to do
anything, though, until we've got 450-500 students. We've been talking about
this for two days and we already have more than 100 applications."

The state currently has no requirement that home-school families be
accountable to the state. Students in home-school classrooms are not
required to learn any specific curriculum, nor are they required to
demonstrate proficiency through standardized test scores.

Alaska resident and IDEA representative Sally Javier said that's what
separates the distance education academy and traditional home schools. These
families are accountable to the state, but free to teach their own lesson
plans, curriculums and values.

Javier home schooled her children for nine years, because she said she lost
trust in the public school system. She said at that time it wasn't very
popular to home school children.

"We all had our own mantras and chants that we recited when people called us
up and asked why our children weren't in school," she said. "I got a call
from a girlfriend about this school district that was getting started, and I
wasn't really sure about it. I asked three questions -- I use faith-based
materials, will I still be able to use those? Are you going to come into my
home and tell me how I should teach my kids? Are you going to supervise me
to make sure I'm teaching my kids good social skills? They said, 'no, that's
not what we are about.'"

Jim Foster, chairman of the nonprofit organization that founded Alaska's
distance education program, worked in the public schools for a number of
years before he retired from a school district in Montana. He and his wife
moved to Alaska, where they eventually wound up in the small American Indian
village of Galena.

Foster and a longtime friend, who also lived in Galena, were trying to
establish Internet access for the local school children. Once that was
accomplished, the Galena magistrate asked if Foster would be able to set up
an Internet academy for the local home-school students.

"I said 'sure, but I will need more than eight kids,'" he said. "That's how
this all got started."

Interior Distance Education of Alaska is an accredited program. More than 98
percent of the students participate in standardized testing sessions as
required by the No Child Left Behind Act. IDEA requires families to submit
samples of students' completed assignments, attendance reports,
individualized lesson plans and two to four student progress reports a year.
Information about faith-based curriculums is provided to families but not
funded through IDEA.

Bertelsen said the new charter school will be funded, based on enrollment,
attendance and student work completed, like any other charter school.

Families will have a budgeted amount of money through IDEA each year to
purchase supplies and equipment.

"It's really exciting to be on the ground floor with this," Bertelsen said.
"I think it will be easy to grow like they did in Alaska once we get the
right people on board."

 
Alexis Bacharach can be reached at (208) 882-5561, ext. 234, or by e-mail at
abacharach@dnews.com.