Start up school woes: Charter schools working out kinks

KAYSVILLE — Joshua Bell is laughing.

It's Oquirrh Mountain Charter School's fourth week in business, and his students still don't have lockers, his in-box is overflowing with "helpful e-mails" from parents who want to revamp his carpool system, his office is an untamed wilderness of paperwork, and everything still smells like paint.

"What else is there to do, but laugh?" says the principal. "Things are crazy, but it is what you make of it."

Opening a charter school is no small endeavor — there are buildings to be built, teachers to train, papers to organize and schedules to iron out. But even though the going's been hectic for Oquirrh Mountain in Kaysville and the six other charter schools that opened in Utah this fall, the State Charter School Board says start-up pains are ebbing as officials streamline policy.

"Right now, I'm feeling pretty good about things — which is pretty scary," said charter board chairman Brian Allen. "That's not exactly the norm around here."

In past years, kicking off classes has been a bit arduous for charter schools, Allen said. Schools fumbled around with building construction until October, spending themselves into the red paying rent on two facilities. Textbooks didn't get ordered in time for school, and teachers had to start class without supplies. One school even forgot to make arrangements for students to eat lunch.

"A lot of schools just didn't have a contingency plan," Allen said. "When things went wrong, they turned their budgets upside down trying to get things in order."

State officials attribute the manageable nature of this year's start-up woes to learning from "The School of Hard Knocks," Allen said.

The schools that opened this fall were approved almost two years ago, giving board members plenty of time to work out policy kinks and construct facilities.

"We used to approve schools in April to open that same fall," Allen said. "But we decided that was pretty close to insanity."

This generation of charter schools was also the first to go through mandatory state-run training, he said. Charter schools are now required to approve a contingency plan with the state board.

"A lot of these people have experience running businesses, but the business world and the government world do things differently," Allen said. "The government moves more slowly than the rest of the world. That creates challenges for some of these schools."

This year, two schools postponed the first day of school to give teachers time to get settled into classrooms, Allen said. Only one school, Vista Charter School in St. George, wasn't able to start classes in their building.