The New Mexico Legislative Study Committee met in Alamogordo and discussed Charter School issues.
Patty Gipson, Chair of New Mexico’s Public Education Commission says Charter Schools are providing valuable Education Services in New Mexico.
“We’ve got almost 70 percent of our charter schools are scoring in the state school report card either an A, B, or C,” Gipson said. “We’ve got almost a third of our charters scoring as an A or a B. So, I’m very much in support of those schools. They have unique missions. They are fulfilling these unique missions. They provide services to at-risk students and populations an opportunity for credit recovery, so that they are offering opportunities that a traditional public school does not offer.”
Some have been critical of the oversight at New Mexico’s Charter Schools. State Senator Bill Soules says they need to make sure that institutions have the public oversight people expect when spending public dollars.
“The Legislative education study committee is continuing to look at that,” Soules said. “And how we fund charter schools, whether we’re doing it appropriately, whether it is enhancing education at public schools, or actually taking away from the more traditional public schools.”
Representative Dennis Roch says the legislature is working on the oversight of charter schools.
“We’re engaging with charter leaders, with school districts, with the public education department,” Roch said. “And we’re bringing in outside experts as well to look at charter funding, how it looks in other states, how it looks here. There are questions about whether charters are getting more then their share, less than their share, whether they are getting accurate facility funding, or is it just instructional funding. So all of those questions are being wrestled with, we want to make sure it’s done right.”
Senator Soules says different charter school issues will be handled by the legislature for years to come.
“The charter schools have grown rapidly,” Soules said. “And our laws and ways of looking after those, regulating those are way behind, and over the last several years we’ve continued to look at the funding. We’ve looked at school busing for charter schools; we’ve looked at whether they’re housed in public buildings or private buildings. There’s just a whole lot of areas where our laws haven’t kept up with the explosion of charter schools.”
