This proposed charter school promised free college credits. Why did they drop their plans?
Published Feb.13, 2022
NEW BEDFORD — Opponents of the proposed Innovators Charter School are declaring victory after the group behind the new school announced they would withdraw their application for state approval, following months of organizing and debate over the school's merits.
“At the risk of being triumphalist, it really feels like we made history,” said Colin Green, an organizer with the New Bedford Coalition to Save Our Schools. “It really does feel like a big win.”
Last year, the group behind Innovators Charter School announced it was seeking to open a 6th through 12th grade school in either New Bedford or Fall River, but most likely New Bedford, which would focus on STEM education and early college classes. Students would have had to chance to graduate from high school with an associate degree. If they received state approval, the school planned to open this coming September.
What was planned:Up to two years of free college credits? How this proposed charter school aims to do it
Members of the proposed charter school’s founding group included former Fall River Superintendent of Schools Meg Mayo Brown, former Fall River Public Schools principal and current executive director of New Heights Charter School in Brockton Omari Walker and former president of Bristol Community College Jack Sbrega, among others.
This Tuesday, Feb. 15, the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education was set to make a decision on whether to grant the group a charter. But last week, Mayo Brown said in a letter to Massachusetts Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education Jeffrey Riley that the group would withdraw its application and not proceed with plans to open the new school.
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The letter did not go into detail, but subtext seemed to suggest that local opposition to the plan may have played a part in the group’s decision.
“Over the past months and weeks, it has become increasingly clear that political complexities on the ground will make it very difficult for us to successfully launch our early college charter public school on the south coast at this time. As a result, we need additional time to continue to share the vision for our proposed educational model in the community,” Mayo Brown wrote.
In an email to the Herald News, Mayo Brown said members of the founding group would not offer further comment on their decision, for now.
“Our group will have more to say about this at a future date,” she said.
Outspoken local opposition
Opponents of the plan said the school would drain needed resources from existing public schools in New Bedford and Fall River and duplicate existing early college programs. Many pointed to the charter school, and charter schools in general, as undemocratic attempts to privatize public education, while some painted Innovators Charter School as a group of outsiders trying to implement a plan against the wishes of local community members.
Cynthia Roy, a member of the New Bedford Coalition to Save Our Schools, pointed out that many of the proposed board members were not residents of either Fall River or New Bedford, and some even live out of state, in Rhode Island. And while the charter would have received public funding, the board would not have been elected by the public.
“School committee members need to be accessible,” she said.
New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell was one of many local officials, including Fall River Mayor Paul Coogan, both cities’ school superintendents and members of both school committees, to speak out strongly in public testimony against the proposed charter.
Mitchell said the group’s withdrawal came as no surprise, given the level of local opposition to the plan. He said locals were blindsided by the proposal when it was submitted to the state. He learned of it from Nick Christ, president and CEO of BayCoast Bank who at the time was a member of the school’s proposed board, only a few days before the application was submitted. The group could have done much more to explain to community members and local leaders why they thought the school was necessary, he said.
“There was a presumptuousness that people recognized and objected to,” he said. “This group just went about it in a way that inevitably would lead to division. I don’t take any delight in declaring political victory, quite the contrary.”
Charter school opponents put pressure on local businesses
Six of the 13 proposed members of the Innovators Charter School board had ties to BayCoast Bank, including Christ, two Vice Presidents and three corporators — Mayo Brown, Walker and Sbrega. In late January, Christ announced in an op-ed to the New Bedford Standard-Times and the Herald News that all employees of the bank would step back from the project.
The move came after the Coalition to Save Our Schools focused a public pressure campaign on the bank and other local groups and businesses that had expressed support for the new charter school.
Weeks earlier, members of the coalition had walked into one of the bank locations to hand deliver a letter to Christ expressing their opposition to the bank’s involvement with the proposed school. While they did that, Roy said, other members stood outside. Photos and videos posted on the group’s social media show 10 people, some of them in Christmas gear, holding signs with slogans like “public funds for public schools” and playing Christmas music. In mid-January, some members of the group returned to the bank and handed flyers to passersby, sticking to public sidewalks, Roy said.
The group also publicly called out local businesses that had signed on to letters of support for the school, encouraging people to call them, and visited businesses in person to persuade owners to change their minds. They got at least six businesses to rescind their support, she said.
Roy described their engagement with local businesses as a form of “political education” and said some local business owners they talked to had signed letters as a personal favor to a friend and weren’t fully informed about the potential drawbacks to the school.
She described the coalition as a grassroots collection of local residents, parents and workers, including but not limited to members of local teachers unions. The group predates the Innovators Charter School proposal and has campaigned around issues like ending high stakes testing and improving access to healthy food in schools. Roy said the group has canvassed neighborhoods to win support for the campaign against Innovators Charter School.
“We’ve been having meetings over pizza and coloring books,” she said. “It’s community organizing.”
And as for the action outside the bank branch, Roy described it as “friendly.”
“Organizing has to go public,” she said. “Sometimes you have to raise the public awareness in order to get movement.”
New Bedford controversy:Mitchell said he couldn’t speak to specific tactics used by local organizers, but said he was glad community members made their opinions known.
“I would never condone any inappropriate tactics,” he said. “I think people also have to understand that this applicant group sought to impose this school without deigning to ask anybody’s opinion about it in the public or public officials. So it’s not surprising that people got worked up about it.”
2016
Election Date: November 8, 2016
Total Votes Cast: 3,378,801
Question | Adopted | Description | Type | Yes | No | Blanks | % of Voters Voting on Question |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Expanding Slot-Machine Gaming | Initiative Petition for a Law | 1,240,877 37% | 1,919,893 57% | 218,031 6% | 94% | |
2 | Charter School Expansion | Initiative Petition for a Law | 1,243,665 37% | 2,025,840 60% | 109,296 3% | 97% | |
| 3 | ✔ | Conditions for Farm Animals | Initiative Petition for a Law | 2,530,143 75% | 728,654 22% | 120,004 3% | 96% |
4 | ✔ | Legalization, Regulation, and Taxation of Marijuana | Initiative Petition for a Law | 1,769,328 52% | 1,528,219 45% | 81,254 3% | 98% |
The issue was well funded by out-of-state promoters.
NO VOTES
