The Senate has voted 23-10 in favor of HB 566aaS, the charter school administrator bill, which would allow charter schools to pay top state school administrator salaries to people who lack the certification normally required for the job.

“Charter schools are judged differently than traditional schools,” Sen. Lori DenHartog, R-Meridian, told the House. “I don’t believe this is going to be detrimental to the education that our students receive in a charter school. Charter schools are unique in their organizational structure.”

Sen. Janie Ward-Engelking, D-Boise, a longtime teacher, spoke out against the bill, asking, “Senators, in what other profession do we continue to say the training they have worked so hard to receive is not necessary?” Educators seeking school administrator certification, she said, go through “an eight-year journey of internship and course work. … You don’t learn these things in a summer.”

Den Hartog said the bill is permissive, so some charters schools will still choose to hire certificated administrators. “This is not a knock on the traditional administrator certificate,” she said. “I think this is just an option for some of our schools.”

The Senate-amended bill now must return to the House for possible concurrence in the Senate amendments. The Senate amendments add requirements for either five years of teaching experience, or five years experience running a public charter school, or completion of a “nationally recognized charter school leaders fellowship” in addition to a bachelor’s degree, where the original bill required only a bachelor’s degree plus three semester credits of training in teacher evaluation and a criminal background check to qualify for a new charter school administrator certificate.