Education board OK's 3 charter schools

Three Commonwealth charter schools that hope to lure students from Cambridge, Lynn, and the Marlborough area were approved yesterday by the state Board of Education.

The approval followed weeks of letters, phone calls, and stormy public hearings in which residents criticized the proposals as a threat to the fiscal stability of their public schools.

Approved were the Advanced Math and Science Academy Charter School, a rigorous math and science program for grades 6 through 12 slated for the Marlborough region; Community Charter School of Cambridge, a 7th-through-12th grade school with a high-tech and community service focus; and KIPP Academy Lynn Charter School, geared toward putting middle-school students on a college track.

The Lynn school, said Commissioner David P. Driscoll, should be open next fall while the others must address curriculum and enrollment issues and will not be ready until 2005.

Board member Roberta R. Schaefer said she was convinced of the need for a rigorous high school in the Marlborough area after receiving letters from students lacking grammatical skills. One letter she released contains no punctuation at all. "I don't think it should be gone through with if it does get excepted Marlboro High School will lose money it doesn't have," the letter said.

"If I didn't think this charter was necessary, this [letter] would have convinced me that [Marlborough] schools are not doing an adequate job of teaching English language arts," Schaefer said.

Rose Marie Boniface, Marlborough school superintendent, denied that students had been pushed to write letters.

The lone board member to vote against all three proposed charter schools was Jeff DeFlavio, a Belmont High School senior and member of the Student Advisory Council. "There's the fiscal crisis, which makes it inappropriate to impose a charter school on a community," DeFlavio said.

Local school officials and teachers said they are concerned that the new schools will drain thousands of dollars from public schools, which lose money with each child who transfers to a charter school. Officials in Marlborough and Lynn said a new charter school could lead to further cuts in districts that have already suffered severe teaching losses.

A Cambridge teachers' union official said it would start advertising the strengths and successes of Cambridge Rindge & Latin High School to keep students there, and officials in and around Marlborough are exploring filing a lawsuit to block the new school.

Opponents charge that the proposal to create the Marlborough school was changed after the public comment period, when founder Julia Sigalovsky told state officials that she did not intend to "track" students, but to "group" them according to their abilities.

Residents were never able to comment on those changes, said Sheldon Berman, superintendent of schools in Hudson. "This final proposal did not receive public review," Berman said. "To create an elitist academy is antithetical to the role of public education."

State education officials said the proposal did not change, but was supplemented by Sigalovsky's comments.

James Peyser, the board's chairman, recused himself from voting on the Cambridge and Lynn proposals. Peyser said that an organization in which he is a partner, NewSchools Venture Fund, gave a grant to High Tech High, which will be working with the Cambridge charter school. Peyser also said he will be serving on another board with the head of the KIPP charter school.

Charter school opponents have repeatedly questioned whether it was ethical for Peyser to vote on charter school applications while he was working to promote and fund charter schools. He said he has been cleared by the state Ethics Commission.

Suzanne Sataline can be reached at sataline@globe.com.