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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

School Debate Gets Down To Business Proponents Count On Free Market, But Local School Chief Says Students Aren’t Raw Materials

A ballot initiative to create charter schools will make the state’s school system accountable like businesses in the marketplace, sponsor Fawn Spady said Thursday.

“Money follows students to the school the parent chooses,” Spady said in a debate before the Spokane Downtown Rotary Club. On such free-market principles the nation is based, she added.

“I’m not in business,” countered Spokane District 81 Superintendent Gary Livingston.

Businesses get to reject raw materials that come in damaged, he said. Schools take all students.

Businesses can turn out thousands of carbon copies of the same item, he said, while schools teach individuals who each do something different.

“There has to be equal opportunity for education,” Livingston said. “This country has said we are going to educate all children” even if they have mental or physical handicaps, learning disabilities or bad family situations.

Initiative 177, which will be on the Nov. 5 ballot, would allow voters to set up independent or charter schools in their school districts. The schools could be run by parents, teachers or foundations and would receive the same amount of state funding the public schools receive for each student - currently about $5,000.

The proposal is separate from Initiative 173, which would give parents a voucher for each student, which could be given to the public school their child attends or used toward tuition at a private school.

Charter schools would be public schools, said Spady, a Seattle resident who drafted Initiative 177 with her husband, Jim. No one would be forced to attend, and the schools could not charge parents extra tuition. But they would be able to opt out of the voluminous regulations in the state’s 1,500-page Common School Code and use the less restrictive regulations for private schools.

Schools that innovate and improve would thrive, while parents would pull their students out of bad schools, she said.

“This does nothing about reducing equality,” she argued before a packed luncheon crowd at the Ridpath Hotel. “The same amount of money follows each student. That’s equality.”

Livingston argued that public schools would be in better shape if all parents cared as much about their child’s education as Spady did about hers. He worries that the children of parents who don’t become involved would be left in traditional public schools with shrinking budgets.

“The answer is not to run away from public schools,” he said. “We have to collectively agree on how we improve schools for all children.”

He would like to do away with many of the regulations in the state code. But those codes come from the government and “we are all the government.”

Charter schools might also strain the state’s budget for basic education by attracting students that currently attend private schools, he argued. Instead of parents paying private tuition, the charter school would get public funds for that student.

That hasn’t happened in large numbers in other states that allow charter schools, Spady countered. But even if it did, it should be considered a sign of success because parents would be bringing their children back to public schools, she said.

Spokane School District 81 already is trying innovations which involve parents, such as its Apple program that requires parental involvement, and Montessori classes, Livingston said. It even has a waiting list of parents that want their students in the Montessori program.

“Why do you have a waiting list?” asked Spady.

“We can’t get more (Montessori) certified teachers,” he replied.

, DataTimes