Chapter 4

PUSH­BACK PART 1: AN OVER­VIEW

As pres­ident and CEO of The Charter School of San Diego, Mary Searcy Bixby is a member of Vistage.

VISTAGE IS A global net­working group com­prising CEOs, exec­ut­ives, and busi­ness owners. Being part of Vistage means I’m for­tu­nate to be sur­rounded by smart, suc­cessful, and highly motiv­ated people. During our monthly meet­ings, we share sound busi­ness prac­tices and sup­port one another. We also take turns presenting an issue within our respective organ­iz­a­tions, relying on our peak-per­forming col­leagues to provide input regarding how to solve a par­tic­ular problem.

When it was my turn to put for­ward an issue I was seeing within my industry, I sought my col­leagues’ insight regarding the tip­ping point, which describes an evol­u­tionary marker at which a system reaches a sig­ni­ficant and irre­vers­ible devel­op­ment. The concept was made pop­ular by Mal­colm Glad­well, who wrote a best seller of the same name, and it is often asso­ci­ated with the epi­demi­olo­gical phe­nomenon of an infec­tious dis­ease reaching a point where it spreads uncon­trol­lably. Seeking input from my col­leagues, I asked them, “What per­centage of market-share loss signaled a tip­ping point in your organ­iz­a­tion?”

Through the invest­ig­a­tion Tom and I had con­ducted of schools across the country, we had encountered major school dis­tricts exper­i­en­cing sub­stan­tial losses in stu­dent attend­ance as a result of the growth of chartered schools. This could spell fiscal dis­aster for tra­di­tional public schools. We believed having a frame of ref­er­ence out­side public edu­ca­tion would help us answer this ques­tion, which is why I sought my Vistage group’s input as to what per­centage of losses signaled a tip­ping point for their com­panies.

Pre­vi­ously, you read that stu­dents enrolled in chartered schools have reached 92 per­cent in New Orleans, 53 per­cent in Detroit, and 45 per­cent in Wash­ington, DC. These examples are far from excep­tional. Big school dis­tricts throughout the country are losing sig­ni­ficant market share to chartered schools.

We knew the risks dis­tricts faced when they lost high num­bers of stu­dents. The greatest of these was a sharp decrease in rev­enue because a dis­trict’s primary source of income is based on stu­dent attend­ance. What we did not know was the spe­cific per­centage point at which the effects of decreased school enroll­ment would be irre­vers­ible to a school dis­trict’s long-term viab­ility. In other words, what was the attend­ance-attri­tion tip­ping point for schools throughout the nation?

Prior to receiving my col­leagues’ responses, Tom and I came up with our own tip­ping point pro­jec­tions for the busi­nesses my Vistage col­leagues rep­res­ented. Con­sid­ering we saw losses as high as 84 per­cent in the public school sector, we guessed 20–30 per­cent would be a con­ser­vative estimate for com­panies.

When I presented the 20–30 per­cent range to my col­leagues, the eyes of every single one of them grew large. Sev­eral turned to each other to see if the person sit­ting next to them was equally as shocked by what I had just said. I imme­di­ately knew Tom and I had missed the mark with our estimate.

“Mary, you might be a little off on your data,” Mark said dip­lo­mat­ic­ally, breaking the group’s silent dis­be­lief.

Mark is Vistage’s chair­person, as well as my exec­utive coach. He had built his suc­cessful career as an entre­preneur in the fin­an­cial ser­vices industry.

“Well, if it’s not 20–30 per­cent, what is it?” I asked.

“If a com­pany reaches a 3–4 per­cent loss, it has ser­ious con­cerns on its hands,” Mark said.

The other busi­ness leaders con­curred with his obser­va­tion.

Mark explained that main­taining prof­it­ab­ility was a com­pany’s biggest respons­ib­ility—run­ning in the black was expected and red was unac­cept­able. Thus, if a com­pany’s market share dropped by as little as 3 or 4 per­cent, it would signal a pos­sible crisis, and crisis mode would require imme­diate action. A busi­ness leader would take a deep look inside the organ­iz­a­tion to identify where the com­pany had gone wrong and how to reverse the market-share loss. He or she would restruc­ture the com­pany’s stra­tegic plan and mar­shal its fiscal and human resources to change course. The busi­ness leader would scru­tinize the com­pany’s labor force, how it delivered its product or ser­vice, and the overall reasons that cli­ents were jumping ship and buying from com­pet­itors.

When I told my Vistage col­leagues about the double-digit market-share losses Tom and I wit­nessed in many of the nation’s most important and high-pro­file school dis­tricts, they were incred­u­lous—they were prob­ably as shocked as I was to hear their 3–4 per­cent figure. The bottom line is the market-share losses we saw in dis­tricts across the country would spell dis­aster for any of the com­panies my Vistage friends ran. They would prob­ably be forced to declare bank­ruptcy, lay off all employees, and per­haps even close down for good.

Most school dis­tricts exper­i­en­cing sub­stan­tial decreases in market share due to chartered school enroll­ment have not reacted with a response that comes even close to what profit-seeking busi­nesses do. If par­ents are exiting the system, then this is a sure indic­a­tion of crisis. But for years, it seems as if school dis­tricts have largely con­ducted busi­ness as usual, seem­ingly obli­vious to dev­ast­ating losses within their organ­iz­a­tions. But, as you will read in this chapter, com­pla­cency on the part of those within the edu­ca­tional estab­lish­ment has turned into push­back, a result of the undeni­able con­sequences the tip­ping point has had on tra­di­tional public edu­ca­tion.

A Tip­ping Point Guide for Tra­di­tional Public Edu­ca­tion

The tip­ping point is a phe­nomenon that appears in bio­lo­gical and human-made realms. In the con­text of public edu­ca­tion, the tip­ping point is the loss or threat of loss of market share that will result in per­manent or long-term dis­rup­tion to a school dis­trict’s status quo, which you learned about in chapter 1 and is a concept we will explore in greater detail in this chapter. The fol­lowing is a visual guide demon­strating how the tip­ping point applies to tra­di­tional public edu­ca­tion.

The chart we developed relies on obser­va­tions of schools and school dis­tricts, research, and inter­views. Rather than based on stat­ist­ical ana­lysis, the chart reflects our eval­u­ation of tra­di­tional edu­ca­tion.

We wel­come those inter­ested in public edu­ca­tion to con­tinue to ana­lyze the effects of the tip­ping point on school dis­tricts and their cam­puses. The con­clu­sions, we believe, will be the same as ours or at least sim­ilar.

Six Vari­ables That Influ­ence a Dis­trict’s Tip­ping Point

There are mul­tiple reasons dif­ferent school dis­tricts will exper­i­ence total dis­rup­tion at various per­centage levels. This is because school dis­tricts are com­plex organ­iz­a­tions that are highly reg­u­lated by state and fed­eral law. Thus, the tip­ping point for one dis­trict will be dif­ferent from that of another. In other words, based on our obser­va­tions, no spe­cific per­centage of stu­dent market-share loss sig­nals a tip­ping point that will apply to all school dis­tricts.

At the same time, in the most extreme cases and based on our obser­va­tions, a 40 per­cent market-share loss due to the pres­ence of chartered schools will have a dra­matic effect on a school dis­trict’s mode of delivery and oper­a­tions. With such a loss of market share, even if school dis­tricts absorbed all chartered schools or states drastic­ally changed their charter laws about gov­ernance and funding, dis­tricts would most likely never be able to return to busi­ness as usual.

The fol­lowing are diverse and com­plic­ated vari­ables that influ­ence a school dis­trict’s tip­ping point (we will explore each):

Lead­er­ship

In the con­text of tra­di­tional public schools, lead­er­ship comes from state legis­lators, city mayors, com­munity leaders, school boards, super­in­tend­ents, media rep­res­ent­at­ives, par­ents, school-site staff, and other indi­viduals and organ­iz­a­tions. But out of all these indi­viduals, on a day-to-day basis, the super­in­tendent has the biggest impact on a school dis­trict. In par­tic­ular, a school dis­trict’s suc­cess or failure often depends on the quality of the super­in­tendent’s lead­er­ship. Thus, lead­er­ship plays a sig­ni­ficant role in determ­ining whether the dis­trict is heading toward its tip­ping point and, if so, how quickly it will reach it.

Mul­tiple lead­er­ship char­ac­ter­istics of a super­in­tendent influ­ence the decisions he or she makes. Three, how­ever, have an espe­cially strong impact on a school dis­trict’s suc­cess. Whether they are super­in­tend­ents, small busi­ness owners, or CEOs of For­tune 500 com­panies, all effective leaders demon­strate open­ness, the ability to work with others, and a clear vision of their role.

First, open­ness is essen­tial when it comes to skill­fully adjusting to change, which is inev­it­able in any organ­iz­a­tion. A super­in­tendent’s ability to main­tain an open mind allows him or her to identify change and embrace it when appro­priate. With this receptive atti­tude, the super­in­tendent is able to eval­uate the con­sequences and bene­fits asso­ci­ated with a par­tic­ular change and how to best adapt to it in a timely fashion. In addi­tion, open­ness com­prises the fol­lowing qual­ities: hon­esty, trust­wor­thi­ness, approach­ab­ility by others, receptivity to cri­ti­cism, and will­ing­ness to con­sider altern­at­ives.

In con­trast, a super­in­tendent with a closed-minded per­spective is unable or refuses to see the signs of change and adapt as needed. This will cause the dis­trict to fall behind broader trends in public edu­ca­tion. Over time, he or she will be increas­ingly unable to exert effective con­trol and, through con­tinued res­ist­ance, will threaten the dis­trict’s long-term interests.

Unfor­tu­nately, clinging to past prac­tices (even if they are effective) or main­taining a tight grip on a narrow defin­i­tion of public edu­ca­tion bene­fits no one—not even the super­in­tendent that advoc­ates such lim­ited views. His or her gen­eral refusal to identify and embrace change increases the like­li­hood the dis­trict will move toward the tip­ping point.

The second char­ac­ter­istic of effective leaders is the ability to work with others. This means dir­ecting, com­prom­ising, and knowing when to do each.

Often, dir­ecting is seen as strength, and com­prom­ising is viewed as weak­ness. But this is not always the case. Effective leaders have developed the lead­er­ship skills neces­sary to determine when to direct, when to com­promise, and when to do both. Whichever approach they take, effective leaders demon­strate their power by always main­taining respect for all stake­holders.

An ability to work well with others also means a super­in­tendent values col­lab­or­a­tion. He or she listens to other view­points, fairly con­siders altern­at­ives presented, and recog­nizes others are working toward the same end. He or she knows a key part of eval­u­ating a solu­tion’s suc­cess is that all stake­holders believe their per­spect­ives are valued, respected, and acknow­ledged. A super­in­tendent accom­plishes this through estab­lishing a respectful working rela­tion­ship with everyone involved.

From inter­acting with K–12 stu­dents to legis­lators, a super­in­tendent’s ability to work with others is con­tinu­ally tested. His or her daily inter­ac­tions define the super­in­tendent’s overall style and will affect his or her ability to achieve greater goals.

Fur­ther­more, an ability to work with others includes the capa­city to motivate a work­force in a pos­itive manner. This requires bal­an­cing between insisting the work­force take a spe­cific path and giving them the power to take altern­ative action when they can demon­strate its benefit.

Leaders that lack an ability to work well with others fre­quently refuse to cooperate with those who have dif­ferent views—in par­tic­ular advoc­ates of change. They see lead­er­ship as a power play and win­ning as a primary objective. Under this paradigm, win­ning means imple­menting their agendas, even if they are not in stu­dents’ best interests. Cooper­a­tion and com­promise are often viewed as signs of weak­ness, espe­cially when they require acknow­ledging per­spect­ives that chal­lenge theirs. Leaders’ focus on per­sonal power at the expense of ignoring or rejecting others’ con­tri­bu­tions only moves the school dis­trict toward the tip­ping point, as they fail to con­sider ideas that can reverse course.

The third char­ac­ter­istic all effective leaders have is a clear vision of their role. When a super­in­tendent looks to the future, he or she con­siders solu­tions that may be out­side the dis­trict’s long-standing tra­di­tions. At the core of this per­spective is a focus on cham­pi­oning the mis­sion and values of the organ­iz­a­tion. A super­in­tendent who has a clear vision of his or her role always puts stu­dents’ needs above dis­plays of power.

An inef­fective super­in­tendent has a myopic and paro­chial view of public edu­ca­tion. This narrow per­spective often comes from a strong desire to pre­serve his or her power at all costs. Main­taining this lead­er­ship style fre­quently puts the stu­dents’ best interests at risk. And a super­in­tendent’s failure to keep stu­dents’ edu­ca­tional con­cerns at the fore­front will increase the like­li­hood the school dis­trict will move toward its tip­ping point.

In sum­mary, highly effective super­in­tend­ents are exper­i­enced and cap­able leaders. Their open­ness, ability to work with others, and clear vision of their role sep­arate them from their inef­fective coun­ter­parts and improve the lives of the K–12 stu­dents they serve. Leaders with these qual­ities are the best equipped to adapt to a chan­ging public edu­ca­tion envir­on­ment.

Fin­ances

While the national spot­light focuses on the country’s biggest school dis­tricts, such as New York City Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion, Los Angeles Uni­fied School Dis­trict, and Chicago Public Schools, the majority of dis­tricts have fewer than five hun­dred stu­dents. This means most school dis­tricts are small enter­prises. For them, stu­dent losses have a pro­por­tion­ately larger impact than they do for larger dis­tricts. While five, ten, or twenty stu­dents leaving a large school dis­trict would not sig­ni­fic­antly harm its bottom line, such an enroll­ment decrease could irre­par­ably damage a small school dis­trict’s oper­a­tions.

Whether large or small, all school dis­tricts must have adequate fiscal resources and reserves to ensure their long-term fin­an­cial health. The quality and accuracy of a school dis­trict’s budgeting pro­cess varies widely from dis­trict to dis­trict. A budget’s quality and accuracy is also a direct reflec­tion of a super­in­tendent’s lead­er­ship because he or she is respons­ible for its over­sight.

School dis­tricts with a weak budgeting pro­cess are con­sist­ently unreal­istic about their pro­jec­tions regarding the next school year. They may lack accurate and timely data. Their pro­jec­tions may be overly optim­istic for the sake of bal­an­cing budgets or imple­menting improve­ments they actu­ally cannot afford. Overall, poorly executed budgets make a school dis­trict unable to effect­ively address unanti­cip­ated events, such as the chal­lenge chartered schools bring to public edu­ca­tion’s exclusive fran­chise.

School dis­tricts must follow state and fed­eral guidelines, and these provide key insight into the fiscal chal­lenges school dis­tricts face. By law, dis­tricts must main­tain an accurate and timely budget. Dis­tricts present their budgets to their county offices of edu­ca­tion. If they are out of com­pli­ance, they must resubmit a cor­rected budget.

Reg­u­la­tions also dic­tate how school dis­tricts spend the vast majority of the annual funding they receive. Laws usu­ally restrict a school dis­trict’s ability to build large fin­an­cial reserves. Many laws also limit how dis­tricts can spend reserve monies. For example, reserve funds may have to be used only for state-approved expenses, such as facil­ities main­ten­ance, expan­sion, eco­nomic down­turns, and repairs asso­ci­ated with nat­ural dis­asters.

For dis­tricts that exper­i­ence budget short­falls, admin­is­trators and staff are often under tre­mendous pres­sure to meet their stu­dents’ needs with lim­ited resources. Main­taining oper­a­tions under adverse eco­nomic cir­cum­stances, such as from market-share losses asso­ci­ated with chartered schools, may leave a school dis­trict with little to no human cap­ital. In the end, long-term stu­dent enroll­ment losses can gravely damage a school dis­trict.

Overall, school fin­ance is a com­plic­ated busi­ness. Dis­tricts are expected to adhere to strict state and fed­eral guidelines. Unfor­tu­nately, the reg­u­latory mech­an­isms designed to increase account­ab­ility can also keep a dis­trict from main­taining its long-term fiscal health. Given the work required to comply with the law and meet everyday oper­a­tional needs, many dis­tricts are ill pre­pared to absorb a loss of stu­dents. In these cases, even a minor enroll­ment decrease could have ser­i­ously dam­aging effects on a dis­trict’s fiscal health, thereby pushing it toward a tip­ping point.

Work­force Cli­mate

School dis­tricts are com­plex organ­iz­a­tions that are dependent on a highly qual­i­fied work­force to sup­port long-term viab­ility. The dis­trict’s ability to sur­vive—and its health—is reflected in the morale and reten­tion of its employees, instilled in each suc­ceeding gen­er­a­tion of employees. In gen­eral, the health of a dis­trict is strengthened via a work­place in which employees feel safe, appre­ci­ated, sat­is­fied with their com­pens­a­tion and bene­fits, their work con­di­tions are gen­er­ally pos­itive, and their pos­i­tions are stable.

The opposite is true as well. A school dis­trict’s long-term health is at risk when employees feel unsafe, under­ap­pre­ci­ated, dis­sat­is­fied with their com­pens­a­tion and bene­fits, their work con­di­tions are subpar, and their pos­i­tions are in danger of being elim­in­ated. Broadly speaking, when a dis­trict or school site has a high number of teachers with a neg­ative work­place per­cep­tion, their atti­tudes influ­ence the instruc­tional quality they provide. When stu­dents receive inferior instruc­tion, par­ents blame their home school and the dis­trict for neg­lecting to uphold the edu­ca­tional social con­tract. As we described in chapter 1, the edu­ca­tional social con­tract states that the pur­pose of public edu­ca­tion is to pre­pare young people to be respons­ible cit­izens, who intel­li­gently exer­cise their right to vote, become pro­ductive indi­viduals, and pos­it­ively con­tribute to society.

In dis­tricts where teachers are dis­sat­is­fied with their work­place and chartered schools exist, par­ents are more likely to enroll their sons and daugh­ters in chartered schools, thus pushing tra­di­tional public schools toward a tip­ping point.

Demo­graphics

Demo­graphics are the pro­files of the stu­dents receiving public edu­ca­tion. Demo­graphic cri­teria include gender, racial, and ethnic iden­tity; gifted and tal­ented edu­ca­tion, spe­cial edu­ca­tion, at-risk, or Eng­lish-lan­guage learner des­ig­na­tions; social mobility; free and reduced lunch (Title 1) status; school level (ele­mentary, middle, or high school); and the edu­ca­tional level of a stu­dent’s par­ents.

School dis­tricts that inad­equately meet the needs of stu­dents that rep­resent par­tic­ular demo­graphic groups lose cred­ib­ility regarding their ability to serve their com­munities. If school dis­tricts have chartered schools, par­ents are presented with options that may better address the demo­graphics of their chil­dren. And this enroll­ment loss may push a dis­trict toward a tip­ping point.

Com­munity Change

In gen­eral, housing and com­munity redevel­op­ment dir­ectly affect com­munity change. Com­munity mem­bers that share sim­ilar ethnic or socioeco­nomic status or both often live in the same geo­graphic area. In order to ful­fill the edu­ca­tional social con­tract, it is incum­bent on school dis­tricts to identify and serve their stu­dents’ needs.

Often, when com­munity mem­bers have a high level of sat­is­fac­tion with their public schools, this indic­ates schools con­sist­ently ful­fill the edu­ca­tional social con­tract. But when com­munity mem­bers have a low level of sat­is­fac­tion with their public schools, this typ­ic­ally sig­nals that the school com­munity has failed to meet the edu­ca­tional social con­tract.

Low levels of sat­is­fac­tion may be a result of the fol­lowing: poor safety within a school (such as high incid­ents of viol­ence, drug use, or bul­lying); an unwel­coming envir­on­ment for stu­dents and par­ents; a dearth or absence of col­lege pre­par­atory, Advanced Place­ment, honors, or Inter­na­tional Bac­ca­laur­eate cur­riculum; or a lack of spe­cial­ized oppor­tun­ities, such as per­forming arts, STEM, or col­lege and career read­i­ness.

Fol­lowing are examples of US cities that demon­strate com­munity changes that drive a school dis­trict toward a tip­ping point.

In Detroit, Michigan, and St. Louis, Mis­souri, public school enroll­ment has decreased sig­ni­fic­antly due to large-scale res­ident exodus. Both cities were once major indus­trial cen­ters that attracted and sup­ported large pop­u­la­tions. But after massive factory clos­ures, the regions’ eco­nomies stag­nated and then shrank and, with them, their K–12 stu­dent pop­u­la­tions.

Detroit Public Schools (DPS) taught 156,000 stu­dents in 2002. But by 2016, that number declined by 70 per­cent to 46,000 stu­dents. As a result, DPS’s budget deficit has grown to hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars.

During our visit to St. Louis, we met with Robbyn Wahby, the city’s deputy chief of staff of the Office of the Mayor. She described that, at the height of St. Louis’s indus­trial boom, the pop­u­la­tion peaked at 850,000 in the 1970s. An extended period of decline fol­lowed. According to the 2013 census, the pop­u­la­tion was around 318,400, which rep­res­ents a 62.5 per­cent decrease. This sig­ni­ficant con­trac­tion explained why we saw hun­dreds of aban­doned build­ings as we toured the city. In fact, as cited by the St. Louis Post-Dis­patch, across St. Louis, forty-five schools have been vacated.

In Chicago, Illinois, white flight from the city to the sub­urbs that occurred after World War II led to a pre­cip­itous pop­u­la­tion decline. While Chicago’s sub­urbs flour­ished, its urban core withered. In 2013, Chicago Public Schools, the nation’s third largest school dis­trict, voted to close fifty-­four of its under­en­rolled and empty cam­puses. The dis­trict was—and is—buried under more than one bil­lion dol­lars of debt, and selling its assets is one way CPS has been addressing its fiscal crisis.

The char­ac­ter­istics of the com­munity in which a school is loc­ated should drive a dis­trict’s oper­a­tions and how it meets its stu­dents’ needs. In this regard, how a school dis­trict addresses changes within a com­munity plays a crit­ical part in determ­ining its tip­ping point.

Polit­ical Cli­mate and Oper­a­tional Needs

Under most state laws, school board mem­bers drive all pro­grams that affect dis­trict classrooms. In other words, they shape how dis­tricts operate their schools. Thus, the longer school board mem­bers have served, the greater impact they have on the dis­trict. In addi­tion, school boards approve all budgets. They also make decisions that affect the instruc­tional pro­gram, the wel­fare of its employees, and the gen­eral funding of the dis­trict.

Tra­di­tion­ally, local, state, and fed­eral politics have highly influ­enced school dis­tricts. Decisions made through politics affect a school dis­trict’s employees, cur­riculum, and gen­eral oper­a­tions, so a com­munity’s power brokers and stake­holders wield tre­mendous polit­ical power on school dis­tricts. Power brokers and stake­holders include elected leaders, suc­cessful busi­nesspeople, ser­vice club leaders, par­ents, boosters, heads of com­munity-­based organ­iz­a­tions, unions, reli­gious groups, and phil­an­throp­ists. These indi­viduals and organ­iz­a­tions are well funded and have a wide sphere of influ­ence. As a result, they have a sig­ni­ficant influ­ence on the opin­ions of the public at large, who are respons­ible for electing school board mem­bers.

Super­in­tend­ents and school boards benefit when they effect­ively make shared decisions with power brokers due to the influ­ence they wield. This res­ults in school dis­trict employees, power brokers, and other com­munity mem­bers ful­filling the edu­ca­tional social con­tract. And doing so reflects pos­it­ively on the school board and others in power pos­i­tions, feeding a pos­itive-out­come cycle.

In some states, one of the most important polit­ical rela­tion­ships is between school boards and unions. A union’s goal and respons­ib­ility are to advocate for its mem­bers’ salaries, bene­fits, and working con­di­tions. When school board pos­i­tions are up for elec­tion, unions will use their resources and influ­ence to sup­port can­did­ates whose views align with their object­ives. The rela­tion­ship between unions and school dis­trict admin­is­trators plays an important role in how pre­pared a dis­trict is to deal with decreased enroll­ment due to chartered schools. Often, school dis­tricts nego­tiate high salary increases. School dis­tricts are then under pres­sure to increase enroll­ment to gen­erate rev­enue. They often may also be required to reduce expenses by cut­ting back on resources, which often neg­at­ively affects edu­ca­tional ser­vices. A sig­ni­ficant loss of rev­enue can place a dis­trict in a very vul­ner­able place. It endangers a dis­trict’s ability to provide salary, bene­fits, and a com­pre­hensive edu­ca­tional pro­gram and main­tain its facil­ities and oper­a­tions.

Shrinking stu­dent enroll­ment also influ­ences the polit­ical pres­sure unions and com­munity mem­bers place on school boards. When it comes to unions, decreased enroll­ment in a dis­trict may mean staff pos­i­tions are cut. Fewer staff pos­i­tions mean a union has a smaller pool from which to draw mem­ber­ship dues. For com­munity mem­bers, when a dis­trict has decreased enroll­ment, the public often per­ceives this as a weak­ening of their local schools. Com­munity mem­bers fre­quently hold politi­cians respons­ible for the health of their public schools. As a result, when a dis­trict has decreased enroll­ment, unions and politi­cians often wield polit­ical pres­sure on school board mem­bers to keep the dis­trict from heading to the tip­ping point.

For a school dis­trict to remain healthy, it must have a suc­cessful cur­riculum; a prop­erly funded instruc­tional pro­gram; pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment pro­grams; prop­er­ties that are clean, attractive, and well main­tained; a safe and orderly envir­on­ment; healthy and nutri­tious meals; and adequate trans­port­a­tion. School dis­tricts that lack these char­ac­ter­istics will struggle with providing a quality edu­ca­tion to their stu­dents. When faced with com­pet­i­tion from chartered schools that suc­cess­fully meet their oper­a­tional needs, a school dis­trict may be pushed to a tip­ping point.

Tip­ping Point and Push­back

School dis­tricts are charged with main­taining strong lead­er­ship, fin­ances, and work­force cli­mates. They must accom­modate demo­graphic and com­munity changes. And they are respons­ible to adapt to the cur­rent polit­ical cli­mate and meet their oper­a­tional needs.

A dis­trict may suc­ceed in one or more of these areas. But a high degree of com­pet­ency in all aspects is required for a school dis­trict to main­tain long-term viab­ility and avoid a tip­ping point.

All vari­ables are also inter­con­nected, which means a weak­ness in one area will often neg­at­ively affect another. For instance, a school dis­trict’s fiscal woes will influ­ence its ability to meet its oper­a­tional needs or provide a work­place in which employees feel safe, appre­ci­ated, sat­is­fied with their com­pens­a­tion and bene­fits, their work con­di­tions are gen­er­ally pos­itive, and their pos­i­tions are stable.

The degree to which school dis­tricts, super­in­tend­ents, and others within the edu­ca­tional estab­lish­ment per­ceive the tip­ping point will also con­tribute to the amount and extent of push­back.

Forms of Push­back

His­tor­ic­ally, school dis­tricts have, for the most part, main­tained a mono­poly in edu­ca­tion and its options. With the onset of chartered schools, dis­tricts are now com­peting with chartered schools over the same pop­u­la­tion of stu­dents. With 10 per­cent, 20 per­cent, and 30 per­cent losses in market share, dis­tricts are having to con­sider market-driven prin­ciples. To address lower enroll­ment, terms such as “supply and demand,” “market share,” “com­pet­i­tion,” “public rela­tions,” and “mar­keting” have entered the public edu­ca­tion lex­icon.

Under this dra­mat­ic­ally chan­ging envir­on­ment, some schools are adjusting more will­ingly than others. Those fighting change and rejecting the market-driven prin­ciples chartered schools have intro­duced are doing so through push­back. This response by super­in­tend­ents, school boards, central offices, unions, state organ­iz­a­tions, and other groups to the growth of chartered schools may merely attempt to hold the chartered school move­ment in line or, at a more extreme level, aim to elim­inate chartered schools alto­gether.

Push­back mani­fests itself in diverse forms, depending on the interests and intent of its source. It mainly comes from school dis­tricts, unions, and local, state, and fed­eral gov­ern­ments. Thus, chartered schools have the unen­vi­able task of addressing push­back from mul­tiple sources.

Regard­less of its source, how­ever, push­back aims to hold on to as many stu­dents as pos­sible in the tra­di­tional schools. Its actions are mani­fested in the fol­lowing ways:

Written and unwritten belief state­ments: These are part of how school dis­tricts main­tain long-standing prac­tices. Within dis­tricts and cam­puses, written and unwritten belief state­ments are highly valued and a result of learned beha­vior at the dis­trict and school-site level. They help define and strengthen a dis­trict and school’s role within a com­munity, including the sup­port they receive from the neigh­bor­hood they serve. They are intended to uphold and cherish the quality of a dis­trict and school’s pro­grams and pro­mote the men­tality of always being the best. Written belief state­ments are embedded within policies and appear in mis­sion and vision state­ments and mottos. Unwritten belief state­ments are embodied in a campus’s colors and mascot.

How their schools fit within the broader US land­scape: Chartered schools are chal­len­ging and chan­ging the role tra­di­tional schools have played within society at large. For example, one type of chartered high school may have most of its stu­dents attend classes online. In this instance, ima­gine a public high school without a bust­ling campus, a foot­ball field and team, a band, and other markers of a tra­di­tional sec­ondary school. Those that identify a high school by these sym­bols may struggle to under­stand the diverse forms in which public schools can mani­fest today.

Policies, pro­ced­ures, and edu­ca­tional code: School dis­tricts strive to uphold and per­petuate their long-standing policies and pro­ced­ures. They seek to main­tain their policies and for­mulas for funding, hiring, instruc­tion, staffing, and com­pens­a­tion; the phys­ical appear­ances of their school sites; and their hier­arch­ical organ­iz­a­tional struc­tures, which have super­in­tend­ents at the top fol­lowed by admin­is­trators and teachers. School dis­tricts are also required to comply with state edu­ca­tional codes. Chartered schools are public cor­por­a­tions and operate under cor­porate law, both of which set them apart from how tra­di­tional schools are run.

Solvency through con­tinual growth: Every year, school dis­tricts must gen­erate higher amounts of rev­enue in order to cover rising oper­a­tional costs. The most common methods of boosting income are through increasing stu­dent enroll­ment and budgets.

Average Daily Attend­ance and Push­back

With the unpre­ced­ented and unex­pected chartered school boom, par­tic­u­larly within the past decade and as a result of large charter man­age­ment organ­iz­a­tions, push­back has become a highly organ­ized, well-funded, and aggressive policy. It is fueled by this prin­ciple:

Where stu­dents go, money and con­trol follow.

In order to under­stand this key concept within push­back, we will provide a brief over­view of how tra­di­tional schools are funded. Average daily attend­ance (ADA) is the found­a­tion of public school funding and com­prises the fol­lowing for­mula: the total days of stu­dent attend­ance divided by the total days of instruc­tion.

ADA is how states determine how much money a school dis­trict will receive for each stu­dent it serves. It is also a school dis­trict’s primary funding source. So without stu­dents, a school dis­trict would not receive the lion’s share of its rev­enue.

In addi­tion, school dis­tricts are required to set their budgets a school almost a year in advance. For example, the 2017–18 school year budget was actu­ally estab­lished in early 2017. In 2017, months before the next school year has begun, a school dis­trict must fore­cast how many stu­dents will attend its schools. Some states require fore­casting to pro­ject not just for the next year but also for many years in advance. This for­mula is largely based on the pre­vious year’s attend­ance. The dis­trict must determine how many teachers, admin­is­trators, and sup­port staff it will need to edu­cate its stu­dents. It has to account for the books, school sup­plies, and sup­port mater­ials it will pur­chase for the next school year. There­fore, by the first day of the 2017–18 school year, the dis­trict has already invested in stu­dents it has pro­jected will attend its tra­di­tional schools.

The com­bin­a­tion of ADA and budgets set months in advance is an effective funding model for school dis­tricts—as long as they can accur­ately pre­dict stu­dent enroll­ment. Thus, this funding for­mula’s reli­ab­ility hinges on the dis­trict’s ability to accur­ately assess the trends in its area—those related to eco­nomic con­di­tions, move­ment of fam­ilies in and out of the dis­trict, family size, as well as loss of stu­dents to non­tra­di­tional public schools within its bor­ders. If a school dis­trict budgets for a spe­cific level of school enroll­ment and large num­bers of stu­dents do not show up on its cam­puses, the dis­trict is now faced with a ser­ious fiscal problem. Herein lies the origin of push­back.

School dis­tricts assume the stu­dents within their bound­aries are solely theirs to edu­cate. According to this per­spective, chartered schools are siphoning off resources that school dis­tricts believe right­fully belong to them.

All school dis­tricts believe they are entitled to receive the funding asso­ci­ated with the stu­dents within their bound­aries.

Ima­gine the fol­lowing scen­ario: It is fall of the 2017–18 school year, and the school dis­trict set up its budget during the 2016–17 school year. A chartered school has recently launched, and due to stu­dents applying to it through open enroll­ment, the school dis­trict now has one hun­dred fewer stu­dents on its roster than it had fore­casted. In this par­tic­ular state, the school dis­trict receives ten thou­sand dol­lars per year for each stu­dent. So one hun­dred fewer stu­dents means one mil­lion dol­lars less to pay for everything the school had already budgeted for.

In this dis­trict, for every twenty-five stu­dents it loses, it must shrink its staff by one teacher. Thus, one hun­dred fewer stu­dents means the dis­trict must reduce by four teachers the teaching staff it had pre­vi­ously hired. Fewer teachers typ­ic­ally means class sizes will increase. In addi­tion, the school dis­trict has already pur­chased books, school sup­plies, and sup­port mater­ials for the one hun­dred stu­dents that have fled to the chartered school. With the unanti­cip­ated drop in enroll­ment, the dis­trict now risks run­ning out of money before the school year ends. What this scen­ario also means is the chartered school has taken one mil­lion dol­lars from the school dis­trict. This is because the money the state has avail­able for edu­cating stu­dents remains at a spe­cific level, based on the total number of stu­dents in state-funded public schools. The total amount is not con­tin­gent on which state-funded public school those stu­dents attend.

The Polit­ical and Eco­nomic Impact of Shrinking Foot­prints

Our nation’s major school dis­tricts are respons­ible for man­aging budgets of mil­lions, hun­dreds of mil­lions, and even bil­lions of dol­lars. For example, Los Angeles Uni­fied School Dis­trict, the nation’s second largest dis­trict, has an annual budget of more than seven bil­lion dol­lars. To put this into per­spective, this figure is larger than that of many US states. Clearly, with gigantic budgets such as this, school dis­tricts are tasked with enormous respons­ib­il­ities. They must plan for their present needs and pro­ject dec­ades in advance in regard to stu­dent demo­graphics, facil­ities, human resources, and more.

To illus­trate the com­plexity of what school dis­tricts face when enroll­ment drops, we will use the seem­ingly straight­for­ward example of school clos­ures. Let us say a school dis­trict has fewer stu­dents attending its schools and empty classrooms. One simple step to address sig­ni­fic­antly shrinking budgets and the high costs of facil­ities main­ten­ance would be to sell under­used or empty facil­ities. This is a common prac­tice within the cor­porate world. But for school dis­tricts, doing so comes at great polit­ical and eco­nomic cost.

We will first explore the polit­ical reper­cus­sions. Con­sider the con­sequences of a school dis­trict announ­cing it will close an under­used school and gen­erate des­per­ately needed rev­enue by selling the land. With the backing of their powerful union, teachers at risk of losing their jobs would protest. Angry par­ents would pack school board meet­ings. The mayor’s voice mail and email inbox would be flooded with incensed voters who would threaten to vote him or her out of office for closing down schools. The media would por­tray the school board as incom­petent, the city’s politi­cians as inept, and the par­ents as vic­tims of a cor­rupt and cal­lous edu­ca­tion system.

For example, in 2008, former chan­cellor of Dis­trict of Columbia Public Schools, Michelle Rhee, closed twenty-three cam­puses during her con­tro­ver­sial and high-pro­file tenure. (She made the cover of Time and was the sub­ject of the PBS news pro­gram Front­line.) Her move ignited large-scale protests against her lead­er­ship. The then-mayor of Wash­ington, DC, Adrian Fenty, also faced polit­ical back­lash for his out­spoken sup­port of Rhee. Fenty’s 2010 reelec­tion cam­paign was viewed largely as a ref­er­endum on Rhee’s chan­cel­lor­ship. Fenty lost the elec­tion, and Rhee resigned from her pos­i­tion shortly after.

Now, let us examine the eco­nomic con­sequences. Sup­pose that, des­pite the polit­ical fal­lout, the school dis­trict decides to close the campus and sell the land anyway. In the decade that fol­lows, the com­munity exper­i­ences a pop­u­la­tion rise. The dis­trict does not have enough schools to edu­cate its stu­dents and must build a new campus. But since the last sale of school prop­erty ten years ago, real estate prices have risen. Now, the dis­trict finds it cost-pro­hib­itive to pur­chase the same parcel of land it had sold off. This is one important reason school dis­tricts are reluctant to sell off under­used or empty facil­ities.

Due to the polit­ical and eco­nomic con­sequences of school clos­ures, dis­tricts across the nation are reluctant to reduce their real estate hold­ings.

As Chartered Schools Grow, so Will Push­back

The concept of push­back is new in K–12 public edu­ca­tion. For dec­ades, tra­di­tional schools worked along­side reli­gious and non­re­li­gious private schools in a largely non-adversarial and non­con­front­a­tional envir­on­ment. Tra­di­tional schools mostly viewed private schools as a niche that did not threaten their stu­dent base. The per­spective of the tra­di­tional school giant was “there are more than enough stu­dents for everyone.”

Even with the onset of chartered schools, tra­di­tional schools did not view them as a threat to their long-standing mono­poly. They believed they would fill a space sim­ilar to that of adult edu­ca­tion, con­tinuing edu­ca­tion schools, and magnet schools, all of which were entities cre­ated within the school dis­tricts them­selves. Thus, chartered schools were not viewed as com­peting against a school dis­trict’s interests. In fact, not even those who designed charter school law and estab­lished the first chartered schools foresaw their explosive growth—an expan­sion that has unfolded since their incep­tion.

Push­back is occur­ring wherever chartered schools are growing and in all states where chartered schools exist. Aware­ness and fears asso­ci­ated with the tip­ping point are motiv­ating school dis­tricts to aggress­ively pursue push­back, which is dis­ap­pointing to par­ents and those who have tire­lessly worked to improve public edu­ca­tion. Des­pite growing and well-funded push­back, the edu­ca­tional reform move­ment has not backed down. Driven by a pas­sion to put stu­dents’ needs first, chartered schools have vali­antly earned their place within public edu­ca­tion. As the saying goes, “Know­ledge is power.” Chartered schools must con­tinue to stay abreast of the latest tools of push­back to thrive in an increas­ingly adversarial public edu­ca­tion envir­on­ment and con­tinue to put stu­dents’ needs first.