Charter school slotting

After waiting three years, Ezie, 8, finally walked up the sidewalk and entered the doors of John Hancock Charter School in Pleasant Grove.

"We've been waiting and waiting," said her mother, Tina Shelley, of Cedar Hills.

Some charter schools have numerous vacancies, while at others hundreds of students are waiting to be chosen in lottery-style drawings.

The Shelley family's patience was tried when Ezie's younger brother, Caleb, 7, made it into the charter school while she didn't, splitting the siblings for three years.

The State Charter School Board is proposing a policy that would require charter schools to relinquish their vacant student slots after three years. The slots could then be used by charter schools that hadn't been authorized yet to accommodate more students but had the physical capacity and prospective students waiting to fill the seats.

"We have schools that have unused capacity. The numbers would just become part of the pool again," said Brian Allen, State Charter School Board president.

The proposal could be addressed by the State Board of Education's Law and Policy Committee in September.

The committee quashed a proposal earlier this month that would allow charter schools to simply give away their unused slots. The committee agreed the proposal would violate a school's charter agreement.

"A charter is a legal agreement or a contract," said committee member Carol Murphy. She is an attorney by trade.

Committee member Denis Morrill suggested the unused slots simply expire rather than be distributed to other charter schools.

The committee suggested a slot "use or lose" rule be made for schools when they first form their charters. The first this could be implemented would be for the 2013-14 school year, said Marlies Burns, state charter school director.

Some principals and directors of charter schools are wondering what the big deal is when it comes to "trading" student slots.

Noah Webster Academy in Orem is not going to use the 75 to 100 slots allotted for its seventh and eighth grades. With the economic downturn, the school simply can't afford to expand its physical building to make room for those grades, said Noah Webster director Rick Kempton.