Opinion: Charter schools meet the varied needs of Utah’s varied families

For the past 10 years, I have led the Utah Association of Public Charter Schools, or UAPCS. Founded 20 years ago, UAPCS exists to make sure Utah families have more options to meet their children’s educational needs. Over those 20 years, Utah has seen a flowering of charter school options and innovations. Today, a full 12% of the students in Utah’s public schools attend a charter school. Moreover, Utah charter schools educate an even larger share of students with special needs, or that need other accommodations. Last year, they educated 14% of the students in public schools with a disability.
For some charter school critics (including candidates for public office), that point is perhaps surprising, though a moment’s thought exposes why that is to be expected. Families with a disabled child want to find a school that meets their specific needs. Perhaps that child has a speech or hearing impairment. Perhaps they are not neurotypical, and instead lie somewhere on the autism spectrum. More than most, families with a disabled child are willing to overcome the natural inertia that takes them to the local district school.
In saying that these families are willing to overcome inertia, I am not saying or implying that my friends in school districts can’t or don’t meet the needs of students with disabilities. Far from it — they serve tens of thousands of those students well, and they do that every day, every week, all year long.
And yet some families are looking for something different. Perhaps they want a Montessori or a Waldorf education. Utah has several charter schools like that. Perhaps they want a more patriotic focus. If you’ve never been to a Veteran’s Day assembly at American Preparatory Academy, and heard hundreds of children sing the anthems of our armed services to honor the invited veterans, you really are missing out. It is hard not to shed a tear. Other families want an arts or a science focus. AMES, NUAMES, UCAS, Beehive or SLCSE may be attractive for those families.
At each of these schools, a large share of their student body have Individual Education Plans (IEPs). I regularly visit charter schools and ask how large their special education population is. I usually hear somewhere in the 15% to 20% range. Not infrequently that number approaches 25%, and north of 30% happens.
There are many other dimensions along which charter schools differentiate themselves. Those differences exist because what parents are looking for, what their children need, are just as varied. I expect we’ll see more students attending Utah charter schools. Although Utah’s overall K-12 population will be flat for the next decade, families like the choices charter schools offer. That’s why Wallace Stegner Academy’s three campuses on the northwest side of Salt Lake have all opened full over the past eight years, and why I expect they’ll open more full campuses in the next several years. That’s why the U.S. Department of Education recently awarded UAPCS a $44 million grant to expand the number of high quality Utah charter schools.
There are so many options, so many opportunities for parents and teachers and schools to partner. Utah’s rich charter school landscape can and will continue to grow. And they will continue to serve students with all kinds of needs — English language learners, students with a disability or students who aspire to join the academic elite.
M. Royce Van Tassell is the executive director of the Utah Association of Public Charter Schools.