ORANGE — More than two years after its reinvention under a charter of independence, Santiago Middle School remains the first and only school of its kind in Orange County--funded by tax dollars but free from school district regulations.
Here, there are fewer students per teacher than on surrounding campuses. All parents must log at least 12 volunteer hours each year--chaperoning field trips, making pizza in the cafeteria, planting trees or, sometimes, substitute-teaching in classrooms.
Here, too, reform proposals quickly become reality without waiting for approval from Sacramento or the school board. Educators have put students in uniforms, sought competitive bids for contracts and stiffened grade-to-grade promotion standards. Both the principal and a top official of the district that ceded control of the school say the school is "doing great."
If a Silicon Valley businessman has his way, such experiments in public education will soon proliferate across California.
Reed Hastings, a software millionaire turned education graduate student, is promoting a voter initiative for the fall election that he believes would spawn hundreds more so-called charter schools.
Hewing to limits set by a 1992 law, California has granted just 134 charters so far. That's a tiny number in a state with about 8,000 public schools.
"There's a demand for many times that," Hastings contends. "What we want to do is put as much control in the principals' hands, and the teachers', as possible. Everybody agrees that local is better."
This month, the charter-school initiative, proposed as a constitutional amendment, gained wide public notice after Republican gubernatorial candidate Dan Lungren endorsed it. Many groups are taking Hastings seriously, in large part because he is wealthy and is talking about a $15-million campaign chest. He aims to collect 1.1 million voter signatures by May 1 to put the measure on the November ballot.
Charter schools have bipartisan political appeal. President Clinton and a number of Republican lawmakers champion them as an answer to parent demands for "school choice." Nationwide, more than 780 have been established since Minnesota passed the first charter-school law in 1991, according to the Center for Education Reform, a conservative policy group based in Washington, D.C.
In California, charters have been granted in 31 of 58 counties, including 21 in Los Angeles County and 20 in San Diego County.
