Members of the state Board of Education voted Wednesday to approve a ruling clarifying that they are not responsible for determining which charter schools are permitted to receive state funding. That responsibility falls to lawmakers.

The ruling counters a claim from supporters of two proposed charter schools — one in Middletown and one in Danbury — that, while the legislature appropriates money for charter schools, it should be up to the state board to select the schools that receive those funds. 

“The state board did its job [to approve the initial certification], and now to become a full-fledged charter school … it’s in the hands of the legislature,” said Mike McKeon, the attorney for the state Department of Education.

The decision followed two hours of public testimony during which community members from Danbury and Middletown, charter school leaders and students at Capital Preparatory Harbor School in Bridgeport pleaded with the board to allow Capital Prep Middletown and Danbury charter schools to open. 

In March 2023, the state Board of Education voted to grant an initial certificate of approval for Capital Preparatory Schools to open a charter school in Middletown, overriding the recommendations of Education Commissioner Charlene Russell-Tucker, who wanted to give community members more time to submit comments to the board. But that June, the legislature decided abruptly to remove funding that it had allocated in the budget for the new charter school, leaving it without the necessary resources to open. The state has not provided any funding for the charter school since. 

Years ago, a charter school only needed approval from the state Board of Education to begin the process of opening. But in 2015, the legislature changed the law to require lawmakers to approve the school’s funding. 

Earlier this year, Capital Preparatory Schools submitted a “Petition for Declaratory Ruling,” asking the state Board of Education to outline clearly which body is responsible for allocating funding to specific charter schools. The Board of Education in May agreed to have the Department of Education look at the charter school funding process and issue a ruling. 

In the petition, Capital Preparatory Schools argued that while the state legislature is responsible for allocating funding to new charter schools in the budget, it should be up to the Board of Education to decide which charter schools receive the money. The organization argued that because Capital Prep Middletown’s application for an initial certificate of approval received the highest score of any charter school the board approved that year, the school deserved to be funded first with the money granted to any new charter schools.

But the Board of Education and the Department of Education disagreed with that argument. In a draft ruling, McKeon wrote that Capital Prep was “misreading” the law and ignoring past application of the law. The ruling noted that lawmakers had clearly chosen not to fund Capital Prep Middletown and that the Board of Education did not have the authority to grant the school funds. 

“Given the legislature’s clear rejection of Capital Prep’s application for charter-school status, and its unambiguous appropriation of funds to two different charter schools, it would have been patently illegal for the State Board or the CSDE to ignore the purpose for which the General Assembly appropriated these funds and apply them elsewhere,” the ruling reads. 

In April, the Danbury Charter School Planning Team and Elevate Charter Schools filed a petition for “party status” in the petition case. The Danbury Charter School for Excellence received an initial certificate of approval in 2018, but has never been funded. 

At the board meeting this Wednesday, Mark Sommaruga, an attorney with Pullman & Comley who is representing Capital Prep, said he believed the declaratory ruling may have been “prejudged,” based upon a January letter from Natalie Braswell, an attorney for Gov. Ned Lamont. In her letter, Braswell said the claim that the state Board of Education acted illegally by not appropriating funding for Capital Prep Middletown was “both baseless and concerning.” 

“In this instance, no funds were appropriated by the legislature for the Capital Preparatory Charter School Middletown. Therefore, any claim [that the Department of Education] is withholding funds unlawfully is categorically false. The law is unequivocal: without a legislative appropriation, SDE cannot and will not disburse funds,” Braswell wrote. 

Anita Ford Saunders, co-chair of the Capital Prep Middletown Planning Committee, said at this week’s meeting that students of color lagged behind white students in academic scores and college and career readiness across the state of Connecticut. 

“ When folks are saying that Middletown doesn’t need Capital Prep — what are you looking at? You’re not looking at the statistics,” she said. “ Give students of color the choice they deserve. Middletown is very different — we are not Bridgeport or Waterbury or Hartford where we have a lot of options. We have the neighborhood public schools.”

Saunders praised Capital Preparatory Schools, saying an overwhelming majority of Capital Prep Harbor School students are considered college or career ready, compared to a much lower proportion statewide. 

Laura Dunkley, a Middletown resident, said she wished that Capital Prep existed when her children were in school.

“ There are teachers who look at students, in Middletown in particular, where they think [the students] can’t be what they want to be, they can’t succeed because of their color of their skin, whether they’re Hispanic or they’re Black, and that is not fair,” she told members of the board. 

Multiple students from Capital Preparatory Harbor School in Bridgeport, dressed in their school uniforms, lent support to the proposed school in Middletown. They talked about their academic successes, their pride in their school and the help they’d received in planning for the future.

Not everyone spoke in favor of the charter schools. Lisa Loomis-Davern, a former member of the Middletown Board of Education and current assistant principal at Kinsella Magnet School of Performing Arts in Hartford, told the Connecticut Mirror that she didn’t believe Capital Prep was the right fit for Middletown. She said that unlike in Bridgeport, where Capital Prep Harbor School enrolls only a small percentage of the total students in the district, a charter school in the much smaller district of Middletown would take a significant number of students out of the public schools — enough to force a school closure. 

According to their charter application, Capital Prep Middletown would gradually build up enrollment to a maximum of 910 students after 5 years in operation. The current Middletown Public Schools enrollment is about 4,400 students.

Loomis-Davern, who previously taught at Capital Prep Magnet School in Hartford, said she was concerned that a charter school in Middletown would also draw teachers away from the small city’s public schools when the district is already short-staffed. She also questioned Capital Prep Harbor School’s enrollment practices, noting that it enrolls a lower percentage of students with disabilities and English-language learners than the rest of Bridgeport.

“ Definitely Middletown needs to do better by Black and brown students. Like every district, our public schools were not built to serve Black and brown students well. So I agree 100% that that is an issue. I just don’t think that a Capital Prep charter school is the answer,” she said.

In a statement, Scott Roberts, a spokesperson for Middletown Public Schools, said that the district’s “core mission” is “an unyielding commitment to cultivating the brilliance in each student.” He said school leaders strive to make sure that students feel that they belong. 

“Our community is dedicated to fostering a culture of respect so that every student is empowered to grow and achieve their fullest potential, inside and outside of the classroom,” Roberts said. 

Roberta Downer, president of the Middletown Federation of Teachers, which represents teachers in the district, said in written testimony to the board that the charter schools’ petition was aiming to “circumvent the democratic process.” 

“Middletown’s public schools serve every child who walks through our doors — regardless of background, ability, or circumstance. Our educators are stretched thin, our budgets are tight, and our students’ needs are growing. We cannot afford to divert public money to privately managed schools that serve only a fraction of our community,” Downer said. 

Ford Saunders, of the Capital Prep Middletown Planning Committee, took issue with Downer’s and Loomis-Davern’s claims. She said because of the way Connecticut funds school districts, state support for charter schools would not take money away from the public schools, which receive funding for pupils who attend “choice” schools like charter and magnet schools. She said Capital Prep students are chosen through a lottery system, which gives no indication of whether a student is an English-language learner or has a disability. She also said that charter schools are subject to stricter scrutiny than public schools, including a regular review of their operations and finances by the state Department of Education. In response to concerns about teachers leaving, she said that teachers would have the choice to work wherever they felt was best.

Danbury 

Many people at Wednesday’s state Board of Education meeting also spoke in support of funding Danbury’s charter school.

Stephen Tracy, chair of the Danbury Charter School Planning Committee, said the proposed school had committed to paying teachers equal or better than those in the Danbury Public Schools, that it had a fully equipped facility and an International Baccalaureate curriculum. He said school leaders had asked the Danbury Public Schools to run the lottery that would pick their students. 

“What we’re facing here is the ideological stubbornness of a handful of politicians who can’t imagine families being able to go outside the established system to find the best school for their kids. That’s it,” said Tracy. 

Tomas Reyes, an Oxford resident and former member of the New Haven Board of Alders, questioned why Danbury was not allowed to open the charter school.

“Danbury has been waiting seven years. Children don’t get those years back. Those years are gone. Their families don’t get them back, either,” he said. 

Other Danbury residents complained that overcrowding in the local public schools was making it difficult for children to receive individual attention and support. Some said not having the charter school was particularly hard on immigrant families. 

Lucas Pimentel, chief executive of Latinos for Educational Advocacy and Diversity — which has been advocating for the charter school — said his own experience coming to Danbury as an immigrant at age 12 made clear what was lacking in the community.

“I was in a high school of almost 4,000 students. Nobody knew who I was. I barely survived. I’m here by the grace of God,” he said. 

Pimentel said he worked as a teacher for 23 years in a charter school in Bridgeport, where he said he learned the value of teaching children in a small environment. He urged the board to take responsibility for getting the charter school funded. 

“These are your schools. Nobody else is approving the schools, managing the schools. This is your community,” he said. 

One Board of Education member, Seth Zimmerman, voted against the ruling, saying he felt there was “real ambiguity” in the law around what it meant to approve a charter school and who had that authority. According to a Department of Education estimate, five or six charter schools have been granted initial approval by the board but have not been funded. 

McKeon said that while he felt some of the concerns speakers raised at the meeting were strong, there was nothing that the state Board of Education could legally do beyond issuing the initial certificate of approval.

“They should be addressing the General Assembly. They should be addressing the legislature that they have elected, because it is only the legislature that can turn a charter school applicant into a charter school,” said McKeon.