MA Question 2: Yes, It's Personal

EAST BOSTON, MA — Tatiana Garces is waiting.

She moved her family to East Boston two years ago. Housing is more affordable, but the transition has been tough on her 12-year-old, Jonathan. Back in his Waltham elementary school, Garces says her son excelled in English and took top marks on the math portion of the MCAS. Since moving, she says, his grades have dropped, and he's struggling to fit in.

"I know that's not my kid," Garces says.

She believes it's the learning environment, a Charlestown middle school that's two T lines away and simply hasn't meshed with her son's educational or social needs. An alternative is right around the corner, but for Garces it might as well be back in Waltham.

Shortly after moving in, she got Jonathan on the waiting list for their neighborhood charter school, Excel Academy. Two years later, she says, he's still in line — No. 47.

Garces believes a ballot question up for a statewide vote this November is a solution — if not for Jonathan, then for kids like him in the future.

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A "yes" on Question 2 would allow the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education to approve up to 12 new charter schools, or expand enrollment in existing charter schools, by up to 1 percent of statewide public school enrollment every year, starting in 2017.

But opponents say the measure ultimately hurts district schools in Massachusetts, and the students who remain in them. They say it opens a door that can't be closed, and exacerbates the very challenges that have so frustrated Garces.

Of the four ballot questions Massachusetts will vote on this November, none is more personal than Question 2. And for good reason: it's children at stake.

Perhaps that's why it has attracted more than $38 million in campaign funding, money that's pouring onto the airwaves as both sides seek to cut through a contentious presidential election to reach your ears.

Behind the roar of advertising dollars and outrage are the teachers, parents and the students who would be impacted.

This is the second in a four-part series on Massachusetts' November 2016 ballot initiatives. Through these articles, Patch hopes to shed light on voters' choices through the eyes of the people the outcomes impact. Please email alison.bauter@patch.com to share your thoughts and experiences with these important issues.

Angela Rubenstein teaches math to 7th and 8th graders at Jamaica Plain's Rafael Hernández School. Before that, she worked for the Boston Public School District. She's a former charter school teacher, and a mother herself.

She believes that experience lets her see the debate on Question 2 from multiple perspectives, and what she sees is a war zone.

It's a tough sight to take in, Rubenstein says, because she has friends, and even a sibling, who teach at charters, people she respects. Moreover, she feels for parents in Garces' situation.

"I don't want this to be a battle, but I think because of the funding structure, it turns into that," she says.

It's an opinion derived from time spent helping principals balance budgets and assess staffing needs, making "agonizing decisions over how to keep the resources that they need for their kids."

Those financial challenges will only get worse with the expansion of charter schools and enrollment, she believes.

Charters are licensed through the state, but operate independently from local school committees. They have more leeway on budgets, curriculum and hiring. Under Massachusetts law, if a student leaves a traditional public school to enroll in a charter, their state-allocated, per pupil funding follows.

Anti-charter expansion forces have so far spent some $9.3 million on this ballot question, much of it on ads which translate this into a frightening-sounding figure: "Charters take $400 million out of public schools every year."

That isn't quite the whole story. The state does reimburse schools for that funding loss, substantially cushioning the blow for years after a student has gone.

Quick Look: Learn About All Four Massachusetts Ballot Questions for November 2016

It also isn't quite true that that system solves all problems in practice.

Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, who is generally pro-charter, says the state has not fulfilled its reimbursement pledge, causing a shortfall.

"State reimbursements to cover the district’s transitional costs have been underfunded by $48 million over the last three fiscal years, a shortfall projected to grow into the hundreds of millions if the ballot question passes," he argued in a recent op-ed.

It's Rubenstein's worry too — this idea that Question 2 opens the floodgates for long-term financial challenges.

Also, like Walsh, she worries that lifting the cap to this degree could lead to the kind of rapid expansion that she saw take down the charter where she worked in Illinois, a school she says had good intentions, but grew too quickly to succeed in its educational mission.

Walsh is among those who worries more rapid expansion could dilute the quality of a charter system that numerous studies found ranks among the best in the nation, particularly when it comes to hard-to-reach students, such as black and Latino children.

"I don't think you have to be anti-charter to disagree with how this is written," Rubenstein says.

But it's tough to talk long-term funding challenges or incremental lifting of charter caps when it's your child on the line.

Garces got a call from her son from the Orange Line just last week after another student punched him in the lip, she says; he's gone from taking accelerated math classes to failing the subject.

"I think that kids should have the right to a proper education, an education where they feel they can grow," she says. "Right now, I feel like my son is reversing."

She knows well that her situation is the result of ongoing, systemic issues, but Garces says she feels like she's racing against time, that Jonathan will lose interest in school if she doesn't act soon, and that by the time he hits high school, it will already be too late.

She takes offense when people suggest the solution lies not in sending students to charters, but in fixing problems with the existing public school system.

"As a parent, it infuriates me," she says. "It's something that was broken before I stepped into it. That's a cop-out argument."

Garces is the self-described "pain in the butt parent" barraging her sons' teachers with emails, scheduling meetings with principals and school counselors. She says she understands why some parents lose hope. She's frustrated herself — desperate, even. But it's not in her nature to give up.

"'It is what it is' — I hate that phrase," Garces says. "It's not 'what it is.'"

But because of Massachusetts' population and voting demographics it isn't a vote from Garces or Rubenstein that will determine Question 4's fate.

In the words of charter advocate Marc Kenen, "This election will likely be won or lost in the suburbs."

That's why pro-charter groups have spent some $17.5 million, largely targeting suburban areas. They're hoping to combat what they see as "scare tactics" deployed by the anti-charter campaign.

It isn't as if suburban areas with high-performing schools are immune from the ballot question's impact, Kenen concedes, but they're far down the list because the question explicitly stipulates that low-performing schools get preference. Moreover, parents in communities with high-performing schools tend to be more affluent and better able to move if their child's school is a bad fit, says Eileen O'Connor, a spokesperson with "Yes on 2."

"We believe that when voters are presented with the facts... that they will want that for all kids," O'Connor says. "It's an issue of fairness and equity and choice."

On that, charter expansion opponents agree.

Steve Crawford, a spokesman for the Save Our Public Schools' "No on 2" movement says many parents choose to send their children to public schools; those who decide to enroll their children elsewhere do so at the expense of the students left behind.

"The charter school supporters' claim that they have the moral high ground does not hold for thousands of parents across this state," he says.

Here's How Much All Four Massachusetts Ballot Questions Cost

Kenen describes Question 2's stakeholders in growing, concentric circles: there are the teachers and the parents with kids in school who are highly interested and deeply passionate about the issue; then, there is a second ring of voters who are interested, but not as passionate.

Polls bear this out. Even in a round of ballot questions where legal marijuana is on the menu, statewide surveys suggest that raising the charter school cap generates the most public interest, and has shown the most change in public opinion, as more voters engage with the issue closer to Nov. 8.

That's why those tens of millions of dollars are pouring into our state. Opposing sides have tried to vilify the funding as coming from self-interested unions or money-grubbing, out-of-state interests.

But where the money comes from doesn't necessarily matter to a parent on the charter-school wait list, like Garces, or to a teacher at BPS, like Rubenstein, who wants her own daughter to attend a traditional public school some day. What matters is not the money or the messaging, but what it means for them, and their children.

And with this initiative in particular, for better or for worse, those repercussions could be rippling forward for years to come.

Top photo by Patch staff

This story has been edited to clarify language regarding anti-charter expansion ads.