Baltimore Watchdog Staff Writer
The Watershed Public Charter School plans to open its doors in September as the second approved independently operated public school in Baltimore County but the only one functioning.
The Baltimore County Board of Education solidified those plans when a budget for the charter school was approved on Jan. 19, delighting founders Jessie Lehson and Casey McDonough.
“Baltimore City already has many charters, several of whom have a similar educational philosophy,” said Watershed co-founder Jessie Lehson, explaining the reason for opening in the county, “so we didn’t feel like the need was there.
“In Baltimore County, there was a groundswell of support for this type of model and an opportunity,” Lehson said.
Maryland has 47 charter schools, including 34 operating in Baltimore City. The other 13 charter schools are scattered across the state, statistics showed.
Baltimore County Public Schools have received few applications for school charters since Maryland legalized these publicly funded independent schools that operate separately from local school districts in 2003, research showed. Charter schools typically are established by teachers, parents or community groups. One reason for Baltimore County’s low number of applicants could be the process itself.
Lehson is a former professor at the Maryland Institute College of Art and a nonprofit administrator. McDonough is a mother of two children. In May 2017, Lehson and McDonough set out to start a charter designed to incorporate nature into the classroom instructions for kindergarten through eighth grade students. Lehson signed up to head the school board with McDonough serving as the vice president.
Their first attempt failed.
“I read their application, which was a very robust application,” said Tom DeHart, executive director of the Council of Administrative and Supervisory Employees. “They seemed to have all their ducks in a row.”
The council oversees hiring all administrative employees in Baltimore County.
In comparison with charter schools in other states, officials said Maryland has some of the sturdiest accountability legislation for charter schools in the country. These laws protect the state from cases of fraud that Louisiana, Minnesota and other states have fallen victim to, officials said. In 2016, reports found that the Ramsey Charter School in Crystal, Minnesota had $122,000 stolen. The drawback, however, is that the tougher law limits the ability of charter schools to do what they want to do as an experimental platform for education.
All staff at Baltimore County charter schools are teachers and principals who are members of the Baltimore County Teachers Union and effectively are Baltimore County Public School teachers. This means the county will do much of the decision making during the hiring process, officials explained.
“It was pretty crushing at first,” Lehson said of the initial failure. “We had spent two years working on the application and months meeting with BCPS and had collectively invested more hours than I can count.”
Lehson said she learned that having a plan for a charter was not enough. The application for Watershed Public Charter School originally was denied by the Baltimore County Board of Education in May 2018 on the grounds of not securing a suitable building.
“It’s different from just saying, ‘hey we have this building,’” said Dehart. “There are certain state standards that facilities have to meet.”
Officials explained that to secure a suitable building for a charter school, the founders or school leaders need funding from the county school board. Money is needed not only for a building but also for renovations on plumbing, electricity, and other failing parts of a building to bring it up to the state’s standards. Those funds, as well as all other expenses for the school, are granted by the charter. But, to receive the charter, the founders need a building. Lehson described their plight as a “catch 22” situation.
“We also knew that precedent had been set,” said Lehson pointing to the so-called Chesapeake case “that a district shouldn’t deny a charter because there wasn’t a facility in place before the charter was granted.”
The Watershed founders appealed to the Maryland Board of Education the decision denying them a charter. The action resulted in the women being granted a charter on Sept. 25, 2018, based on the precedent set by the Chesapeake Public Charter School vs. St Mary’s County case in 2005.
Lehson and McDonough have secured a temporary building for their school in the old John Paul Regional Catholic School in Woodlawn, close to what they expect to be their permanent location. Officials already have started enrolling students.
A future challenge could be their success in educating the enrolled students. When charters come up for review their test scores are looked at and compared to the public schools in that county. In the case of Baltimore County, test scores are well above average and make it challenging for charter schools to keep up, especially newly established schools.
On Sept. 9, when the Watershed Public Charter School starts, the founders said one goal is to improve on the standard model of schooling by getting students to learn and play outside. The idea comes from concerns that today’s children do not spend enough time outside and spend too much time using technology. Their efforts to remedy that will take place on a 10-acre property filled with trees and a stream.