Fifteen new charter schools are opening their doors this fall, bringing the state's total of charter students up to around 15,000 — more than double what it was two years ago.

Charter schools are free public schools that most often focus on a particular emphasis, such as arts or sciences, and are often run by parents.

They must abide by state requirements and follow the state core curriculum, but they have some freedom for teaching innovations. And they can be found in 19 of Utah's 40 school districts.

Some of the new charters this year include a school for students with high-functioning autism, a performing arts school, a dual-language school and an early college high school.

The numbers have grown exponentially since charter schools first appeared in Utah in 1999. This fall marks the highest-ever number of charters opening. But some say the growth could be substantially slower if lawmakers choose to continue limiting the number of schools chartered as they did this year.

For fall 2007-08 school year the State Charter Board was only allowed to approve five schools. Meanwhile state leaders are conducting a study to look at charter schools — funding, governance and finance — to see what is working and what needs to be tweaked.

But what happens after that is up in the air.

Steve Winitzky, director of the Technical Assistance Project for Utah charter schools, said a long-term cap may not be a bad idea.

In the past three years around a dozen schools have been approved each year and the proliferation is getting a bit out of control, he said.

But now state charter leaders are taking a wait-and-see approach. Charter Board Chairman Scott Smith said it is tough to know how to approach charter applications for the 2008-09 year when the board doesn't know how many they will be allowed to let through.

After the board was able only to approve five schools out of more than a dozen decent applications this year, a number of charter hopefuls from this year will be reapplying. And Brian Allen, charter board member who helped craft charter legislation in 1998, said there will probably only be more to come.

"(Charters) have grown gone more aggressively than I ever thought they would," said Allen. "But to a large degree it doesn't surprise me — I think there is a lot of frustration with parents in getting access to answers in traditional system.

"There is still a pent-up demand and as long as we have charter schools with waiting lists that are as large as the schools themselves, the demand for charter schools will remain high," he said.

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