“WHATEVER IT IS, I’m against it,” Groucho Marx warbled in the song of the same name in the 1932 movie classic “Horse Feathers,” in which he plays the newly appointed president of fictitious Huxley College. The real-life Massachusetts Education Secretary Patrick Tutwiler was of a similar naysaying mind on Tuesday when, in one vote after another, he turned thumbs down on recommendations from the state’s acting education commissioner to allow expansion of five Massachusetts charter schools and to modify the area served by a sixth one.
It was a stunning display of seeming antipathy to charter schools by Gov. Maura Healey’s top education official, and it raised questions about whether the administration is turning a cold shoulder more broadly to charters, which are publicly funded but operate independent of local school districts.
It also marked an unusual break between the state’s education secretary and K-12 education commissioner.
The state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education voted to approve three of the expansion proposals and rejected two, but Tutwiler voted against all five.
Charter schools have been the flashpoint of heated debate ever since they were introduced as part of the state’s 1993 Education Reform Act. Advocates have hailed the freedom they give innovators to come up with new ideas for schools and the choice they offer families, especially those who can’t afford to move to wealthier communities with more highly regarded schools. Critics, led by teachers unions and municipal officials, have said charters divert critical funding from district school systems, since public funding dollars “follow” students when they enroll in charters.
The education board, where Tutwiler is one of 10 voting members, was considering recommendations put forward by the state’s acting education commissioner, Russell Johnston, to allow five charter schools to add anywhere from 34 to 450 additional seats. Johnston said all five met the state’s rigorous criteria for expansion.
Families are asking “for more public school options for their children,” Johnston said prior to the board votes, citing the waiting lists to get into the charters seeking to expand. “We need to listen to our families.”
Tim Nicolette, executive director of the Massachusetts Charter Public School Association, called the board votes rejecting two of the proposals “appalling,” considering the in-depth review of the applications he said was conducted by Johnston and state education department staff. “Some members of the board were placing politics and the needs of adults above the needs of children and families,” he said.
“We are particularly disappointed with the Healey-Driscoll administration and their designated appointee on the board, Education Secretary Tutwiler,” said Nicolette.
The board rejected, in a 6-4 vote, a proposal by KIPP Academy Lynn Charter School to add 450 seats, and it turned down, in a 5-5 vote, a proposal from Advanced Math and Science Academy Charter School in Marlborough to add 34 seats.
It approved, in a 6-4 vote, a proposal from Pioneer Valley Chinese Immersion Charter School in Hadley to add 100 seats, and signed off, also in a 6-4 vote, on a plan by South Shore Charter Public School in Norwell to add 225 seats.
Tutwiler’s office said he was not available for an interview on Tuesday but sent a statement from him about his votes.
“I voted no today as I believe this is not the right moment for charter school expansion, as schools and students are still recovering from the pandemic, and we are all navigating a changing federal landscape,” Tutwiler said.
He cast the lone vote against a proposal to add 352 seats to the Edward M. Kennedy Academy for Health Careers in Boston. Unlike most charter schools, which operate apart from districts, often with non-unionized teachers, the Kennedy Academy is among a smaller group of in-district charter schools. It’s part of the Boston Public Schools, and the expansion plan had the support of Boston’s district superintendent and the Boston Teachers Union.
Tutwiler also voted against a sixth proposal brought before the board – to allow the Pioneer Valley Performing Arts Charter School in South Hadley to reduce the number of districts it serves from 34 to 18 so that it could afford to fund transportation for all students. The plan to reduce the school’s catchment area passed 8-2, with Tutwiler and the labor union representative on the board, Dalida Rocha, casting the two dissenting votes.
The expansion proposal from KIPP Academy in Lynn had drawn the most controversy of those that came before the board. City leaders in Lynn, led by the mayor and school superintendent, mounted a vocal campaign against the proposal to add seats to the K-12 school, which currently enrolls 1,500 students.
KIPP had to meet a higher standard for expansion because Lynn was already at the state limit of no more than 9 percent of a district’s school spending going to charters. A 2010 law allowed that spending limit to double to 18 percent in districts that were in the bottom performing 10 percent of all districts on MCAS tests.
Lynn officials argued that KIPP did not meet the stricter standards of being a “proven provider,” which include having English and math scores comparable to statewide averages. But the state regulations are not as clear-cut as the local officials maintained, and state officials said KIPP showed comparable results in several grades across several years and clearly met the proven provider threshold.
The regulations also say a school must show results comparable to state averages for at least one “targeted subgroup,” and Johnston said KIPP had extraordinary results among low-income students, who make up 65 percent of its student population, compared with that population statewide.
Local officials spent most of their time, however, warning about the devastating impact they said the proposed expansion would have on the district school budget. They said the expansion would mean a loss to Lynn’s district schools of $8 million a year. Tutwiler, who formerly served as superintendent in Lynn and called KIPP’s executive director, Nikki Barnes, a friend and colleague, also cited the impact expansion would have on the district before casting his no vote.
Prior to the vote on the KIPP proposal, Tutwiler repeated a perspective on the charter school-district school divide that he has shared previously. I am “sector agnostic,” he said, suggesting what matters is how schools perform, not their governance structure. “I like good schools.”
But his across-the-board no votes represented a clear stiff-arming of the charter sector.
Because of school funding issues raised by the introduction of charters, district school leaders are almost always opposed to new charter schools or expansion of existing ones, something that was anticipated in crafting the state charter school law.
Johnston emphasized that decisions about charter schools are supposed to be made solely on the merits of proposals, not on how they might affect district systems. “The impact on the sending districts is not a consideration in law or regulations,” he said.
Tension during Tuesday’s meeting grew as board vice chair Matt Hills voiced exasperation with members he said were ignoring those guidelines and basing their votes on other factors being raised by opponents of the proposals, such as the impact on local districts.
At two different points he seemed to suggest that doing so was a version of the extralegal convulsions being set in motion by the new Trump administration. “The law needs to be followed, not freelanced,” he said. “That does not feel good when it comes from Washington, and it does not feel good when it comes from the state.”
Tutwiler acknowledged that the education commissioner may be obligated to hew to the letter of the law and regulations in deciding about charter proposals. “I’ve not read anything that said the board must also, or cannot expand its lens, its perspective in thinking about and weighing the recommendations of the commissioner,” he said.
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