Summary

Testimony of Rolfe McCollister

Founder and Member, Board of Directors

Children's Charter School, Inc.

As a co-founder and member of the board of directors of Children's Charter School, Inc., I speak to you about the educational opportunities available to the school children of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Despite 43 years of involvement by the Justice Department, Baton Rouge's schools are in trouble. Our test scores are terrible and our enrollment rates are declining, even though the parish's population is rising. Baton Rouge parents know what we all know, that our schools are failing our children. Unfortunately, many lower-income and minority parents don't have the option of leaving the public schools. Their only hope is creating improved educational opportunities within the public school system.

To that end, our group hoped to bring the exciting educational alternative of charter schools to Baton Rouge. We opened one school, Children's Charter School, which currently offers grades K-4 and enrolls 100 children. But even gaining approval this year to expand to the fourth grade was a long hard battle. We hoped to offer this opportunity to 1200 more students by opening United Charter School for grades K-12 in an inner-city mall this year, but the Justice Department has blocked its opening - despite broad community support.

The Justice Department and the NAACP claim to speak for the "people of the United States." Yet they ignore the voices of minority parents, who know best for their children, when those parents say that they want charter schools. The Justice Department instead focuses on the existing public schools and racial statistics, when instead they should be focusing on providing a high-quality education for our children.

Testimony of Rolfe McCollister

Founder and Member, Board of Directors

Children's Charter School, Inc.

on

Oversight of the Department of Justice

Civil Rights Division

before the

U.S. House of Representatives

Committee on the Judiciary

Subcommittee on the Constitution

October 14, 1999

Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to comment on the Justice Department's impact on the educational opportunities available to minority children in my community. I speak to you in my capacity as a founder and member of the Board of Directors of Children's Charter School, Inc., a non-profit corporation formed by citizens of Baton Rouge who are concerned about the educational opportunities available to local children. We at Children's Charter hope to improve those opportunities by running two charter schools. The first, Children's Charter School, is already open, with grades K-4. The second, United Charter School, which is the largest charter to be granted in Louisiana, has not been allowed to open yet because of the Justice Department's opposition. As a result, 1200 children, mostly black and low-income, are denied high-quality educational opportunities.

Unfortunately, our efforts to open these schools and to improve the educational opportunities available to our community's children, especially lower-income and minority children, have been thwarted at every turn by the Justice Department. Although the Justice Department's lawyer has proclaimed in our initial meeting that he represents "the people of the United States," the Department's actions show that they do not care at all about what is really best for the people of East Baton Rouge Parish, especially what is best for our school children.

First, the Department's involvement in our school system has done nothing to improve educational opportunities for minorities - or anyone else, for that matter. It's ironic, because the whole point of the Department's involvement and the desegregation suit by the original minority parents 43 years ago was to improve the education available to minority school children in Baton Rouge. Unfortunately, that has not happened. In fact, the quality of education available to most students in the East Baton Rouge Parish system has suffered.

Despite the parish's population growth (up from 366,000 20 years ago to 396,000 today), attendance at Baton Rouge public schools just hit a 20-year low - down to just under 55,000 - compared to the peak of 67,000. Despite the parish's 10% growth, the school system's population has declined 20% over the past twenty years. It is interesting to note, that is how long the Department's current lawyer, who claims to represent "the people," has been on the case.

Most of Louisiana's schools are in trouble. The state's newest accountability report shows that 9 out of 10 of our schools fall below the national average in the LEAP test, which is a nation-wide standardized test. Our capital city did not fare well, either, and parents want more. Recently in Baton Rouge, 5,568 low-income children -- mostly minority -- applied for 250 private scholarships from the Children's Scholarship Fund. Among those selected, the average household income was just above $16,000. The families contributed 37% of the tuition costs - an average of more than $800 per child - but this sacrifice was worth it to the parents because they could choose the school.

These numbers demonstrate that Baton Rouge parents know what we all know: that our public schools are failing our children, especially many minority children and those from lower-income families who don't have the option of going to private schools. For them, creating improved educational opportunities within the parish school system is their only hope - but nobody seems to be representing their interests, least of all the NAACP and the Justice Department.

That's where our group, Children's Charter School, Inc., comes in, along with two other charter schools. Encouraged by learning of successful charter school programs in other states and seeing a need for alternatives and innovation in our own state, we hoped to bring this exciting educational opportunity to the children of East Baton Rouge. We planned to open two schools. One, Children's Charter School, is up and running. We have grades K-4 - although was a tough fight every step of the way this year to expand the school to fourth grade so that the students could remain in our elementary school.

Our other planned school, United Charter School, was approved by our local school board and created much excitement in the inner-city neighborhood. It received support from our mayor, two African-American state legislators, and two African-American ministers. Despite this broad community support, it remains closed due to opposition from the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Justice Department. What justice is this? When we tried to intervene in the case and ask for a court hearing, the Justice Department opposed us and the federal judge turned us down.

But, what is really important is that the parents of East Baton Rouge -- black and white -- strongly support charter schools. We have had waiting list for each of the grades at the Children's Charter School and normally have 75 percent of our parents attend our monthly fellowship dinners at the school. This is the parental involvement everyone desires - and our school has a 98 percent at-risk population. Why would the Justice Department oppose a school like this?

This same school offers an extended-day program and runs through the summer until July 23 - eleven months. There are 20 students in each class with a teacher and an aide. One African-American parent, whose child is now making A's, said, "My daughter gets a lot more help and they take a lot more time with her." Another black parent said, "The parents are really involved. They have a voice in how the school operates. It's more a community-type thing." And a student added, "I learn more stuff here." Children's Charter School is approximately 90% African-American. The at-risk percentage is 98% -- the highest in the East Baton Rouge Parish School system.

Children's Charter is located in an inner-city area near downtown where parents have never had a choice concerning their children's education. For the first time ever, these parents can choose the school that they think will best educate their child - and 100 have chosen Children's Charter School.

We hoped to offer the same opportunity to another 1200 students by opening United Charter School to serve grades K-12 in an inner-city mall. Despite overwhelming community support, the Justice Department has succeeded in preventing its opening by blocking the required court approval.

You would never know, however, of this support for the charter schools from listening to the Justice Department and its ally the NAACP. Both groups claim to speak for minority parents in Baton Rouge, but they do not. In fact, they have repeatedly acted against the expressed interests of many minority parents in the parish.

Even when minority parents - who know best what works for their children - voice overwhelming support for charter schools as a means to best improving their children's education, the Justice Department ignores their voices. This attitude was evident at the very first meeting between Children's Charter and the Justice Department. For example, when I told the Department's attorney that some minority parents believed that United Charter School was their "last hope" for their children, he replied, "what the parents want isn't important to me. I'm interested in the law."

When we mentioned the success of our Children's Charter School, we were told that it was an "illegal school which had never received his or Judge Parker's blessing." The Department was not interested that these children were learning to read and the parents were very pleased with their experience. In fact, to this day, the Department's attorney has never set foot in our charter school. He simply looks at the numbers - white and black. That is a travesty of justice.

It has been quite evident that the Justice Department, instead of caring about what's really important - providing high quality educational opportunities - instead only cares about two things:

One, protecting the existing public schools (despite their failings) and their coffers from competition, and two, racial statistics.

The justice department has repeatedly fretted about how charter schools "take kids" and "take money" from the public schools. These worries don't make any sense. The charter schools are public schools - so how are they taking anything from the public school system? Charter schools don't "take" anything away from the system, they only offer an alternative choice to traditional public schools. Students attend by choice only, the same as a magnet program. But a magnet school is not an option for many of these at-risk children. Charter schools are, but the Justice Department is denying them that choice.

Doesn't the Children's Charter School sound like the type of school and educational experience the Justice Department and the NAACP are supposed to be fighting to create? So why aren't they praising the school board for creating the charter schools instead of fighting us? Why aren't they the champions of providing these choices to minority parents instead of the biggest critics of such choices?

It is evident that the Department cares more about power and racial statistics than about really improving educational opportunities for minority children.

For example, at a second meeting with the Justice Department, we explained that charter schools are open to anyone to apply. The Department told us we must agree not to accept any "white" students coming from a school where they were a minority. The nearest school to our site is Melrose elementary, which has an enrollment of 356 -- with only five students who count as "white." We were told that we could accept all of the black students but would have to deny the five other students if they applied. We refused to accept those conditions. It just so happens, the five students classified as "white" or "non-black" are all Hispanic. Would the Justice Department have us discriminate against Hispanics?

We pointed out to the Justice Department, that regardless of what it wanted to pretend, Melrose Elementary was already a "one-race school" and holding five "white" students, who are actually Hispanic, hostage would not change that. They should have the same choice as any other student. I pointed out that if the students were denied the choice, their parents might become angry and pull out of the public schools altogether and move to private schools. The Department's lawyer responded, "I don't care if they go to a private school, they just can't go to your charter school." He went on to say if we wouldn't agree to this point our discussion and meeting was over.

The superintendent of the East Baton Rouge public school system, Gary Mathews, has sounded an emotional warning that the schools are at a "tipping point." This means that the number of white students will fall -- again --and it will be practically impossible to reverse those trends within a year or two. The dire consequence of that, Mathews and many other observers believe, is a heavily black school system that will be facing enormous difficulties with an economically challenged student population, and with little realistic political chance of winning from voters the tax support needed for better schools.

Today, almost 70 percent of the system's population is African-American. The theology of desegregation formulas -- a 50-50 black-white ratio -- isn't relevant to the challenges facing the system's children. It has become so convoluted that in our current consent decree, a school that is 50% white and 50% black is not defined as "desegregated." What is relevant is the quality of education available.

Yet, it seems the Justice Department and the NAACP would rather we spend more time in the courtroom fighting about harming the already failing public schools and about racial balances than in the classroom educating children -- particularly African-American children.

I believe the Justice Department and the NAACP are acting in bad faith in pretending to represent the educational interest of African-Americans in the community. There is no monolithic "black opinion."

Who is the NAACP representing, I wonder? The Rev. Lee Wesley, a local black pastor of Community Bible Baptist Church, has his opinion. He told me, "When it comes to education, the NAACP does not represent the view of the majority of blacks in EBR parish." He added, "The overriding concern of blacks is children getting a quality education--and that is being done through charter schools."

Most of the people I speak with, many of whom are African-American, agree with Rev. Wesley and no longer understand the objectives of the NAACP or U.S. Justice Department. Are they only focused on desegregation or has it simply become a power struggle to run the whole system? The parents and children in this community--black and white--are the ones suffering while the fighting goes on, and they are getting weary and losing hope.

Do the lawyers for the Justice Department and the NAACP really believe they are representing the interests of minorities by keeping Children's Charter School from expanding and by keeping United Charter School from opening? Where is the justice in denying these desperate parents the opportunity to choose a nurturing environment and quality education for their children?

In closing, the Children's Charter School board and the citizens in our community would like to know just which "people of the United States" the Justice Department is representing by blocking the school house door.

* * * * *

Mr. McCollister is a co-founder and member of the board of directors of Children's Charter School, Inc. In 1997 and 1998 school, that entity received Title I grants in the amount of $50,793. It also received charter grants through the Louisiana Department of Education in the sum of approximately $70,000. Children's Charter School received federal lunch money grants in 1997 and 1998 of an estimated $27,000 and $36,000 respectively.