Illinois charter school officials push for longer contracts

(Kevin Bessler | The Center Square) – Charter school officials are not happy with the current contract renewal process for the public school option.

Several Illinois charter schools received contract renewals, but for only two to five years. Andrew Broy, president of the Illinois Network of Charter Schools, said high-performing schools should get a 10-year contract because the renewable process is tedious.

“It really limits their ability to focus on academic improvement, on forward progress and making the process go smoothly and focus on students,” Broy said. “Instead they get caught in this perpetual renewal treadmill.”

Broy said if there are any performance concerns of a school, a shorter term of three years should be awarded.

Before granting the charter school contracts at a recent meeting, Chicago School Board members discussed increasing transparency of the renewal process so school operators and families would not be surprised about the district’s recommendations.

Broy said charter schools in Illinois handled the COVID-19 pandemic as well as anyone.

“Many of our member schools during the first full year of the pandemic wound up opening up in a hybrid fashion to make sure students had the benefits of in-person learning while making sure they were safe at the same time,” he said.

The school choice movement has picked up steam in recent years and ramped up even more when the pandemic hit. Illinois public schools shut down for months during the pandemic, forcing students to learn remotely with no option of in-class instruction. As remote learning dragged on, more and more parents pulled their kids out of public schools in favor of alternative options like charter and private schools.

There are 141 charter school campuses in Illinois, with 128 of them in the city of Chicago.