ARCHIVES OF THE MAYOR'S WEEKLY COLUMN Archives of Rudolph W. Giuliani

New York: City of Helping Our City's Charter Schools Help Our Children

Last week, I had the pleasure of touring one of the city's new charter schools, Bronx Preparatory. It is one of the city's 16 charter schools established to give real alternatives to parents and spur much-needed competition within the public school system.

These schools were made possible by the passage of New York State's Charter School Law in 1998, which enabled the creation of 100 new charter schools and unlimited public school conversions. It was a moment of great promise for education reform in New York City.

Charter schools - which operate outside the direct control of the Board of Education - give real freedom to parents clamoring for alternatives; enable communities to create new, locally-managed schools; and allow educators to replace the burdensome bureaucracy of the Board with their own independent and entrepreneurial management.

Unfortunately, the State Charter School Law does not support the schools in their efforts to obtain capital improvements and equipment. Regular public schools get substantial capital funding -- in fact, we currently have the largest capital plan in the history of the Board of Education. But charter schools are left out.

Charter schools in New York City receive about two-thirds of the per-student funding that district-run public schools receive. That's not right. Charter schools shouldn't be given particular privileges, but neither should they be specifically disadvantaged. We ought to be going out of our way to see that those who are granted charters are given every opportunity to succeed.

This is, of course, much more than a local or statewide movement. It's a national movement. Around the country, a record 519,000 children are learning in more than 2,000 charter schools. Every one of those schools offers a hopeful alternative to parents who were, in many cases, desperately in search of options. And most importantly, they bring new ideas to education systems that are all too often characterized by rigid resistance to change - and they bring genuine autonomy and school-based accountability.

During my visit to Bronx Prep, I announced a new initiative, the Charter School Improvement Fund, which will offer charter schools in the five boroughs much-needed support for construction projects, new equipment, laboratories, libraries and air conditioning. The Fund -- the first to be offered by a local government, and the most generous capital fund in the nation -- will be offered in the form of competitive grants in amounts up to $250,000, with a total of $10 million available.

Charter schools with specific capital needs may apply for a grant by submitting a plan detailing how they intend to utilize the funding. Administered by the Office of Management and Budget, the Department of Youth and Community Development, and the Department of Design and Construction, the Fund will determine whether to grant an award, and in what amount. Grants will be based on a school's demonstrated need, and on its ability to carefully plan for its future. We want to see planning that will result in improved student achievement.

This program is very exciting because it gives the charter schools a chance to expand the good work that they're doing, and hopefully it will help create more schools beyond the 16 that we have now. And there's another exciting feature to this plan: a performance-based system will give schools whose students excel academically an extra 10% bonus - and will withhold 10% of the grant total from schools whose students are lagging behind. We want to create an incentive with clear goals that every school can strive to reach.

New York City can become a leader in the charter school movement. We can point the way toward a more innovative, performance-driven, entrepreneurial vision of schooling, and we will do this through innovative approaches like the Charter School Improvement Fund.

We hope that ultimately this money, and this model, will be part of a broad group of changes that helps create a system of schools that puts students first, and ultimately leads to a better education for thousands of New York City schoolchildren