Charters in a neighborhood bring cars. Lots of cars. That's got to be the most troubling part of having a charter build in your neighborhood. That's at least part of what some Freedom Academy's neighbors are complaining about, though the quotes in this story seem to indicate that even with no traffic the charter expansion would still be unwelcome.
Instead, upset neighbors say things like, "We're fighting for our neighborhood. Neighborhoods are threatened in Provo. If we let this happen the neighborhood will be gone."
Charters rightly have the same zoning exemptions as all other public school, meaning that a city can't use zoning rules to keep a public school away. What charters lack is the ability to find land and condemn it and then raise taxes to pay for a new building.
2 comments:
Lincoln,
I happen to live in the Rivergrove neighborhood and I can tell you that for the most part, the neighbors are very supportive of the school. Many parents in our neighborhood send their children to Freedom Academy and love it. Unfortunately, there are those on both sides of this issue that are trying to turn it into a debate about the merits of charter schools, but I don't think that's where we as a neighborhood want to see this go. Again -- we support Freedom Academy.
What we don't support is the potential for increased traffic in an already congested neighborhood during pickup and drop off times. The current school already stresses the infrastructure and to add to that is not reasonable -- especially because we believe there are other suitable locations in close proximity to the school. There are several sites, for example, along 820 north.
I am a supporter of choice in education and I don't think that's what this is about. This is about one entity's failure to properly plan and negatively impact a neighborhood as a result.
I think Charter School advocates should get in on this and get informed about what is going on. I think it's a mistake to allow the school to proceed and negatively impact the neighborhood without doing the proper planning and due diligence. Proceeding in the rushed way that Freedom Academy is currently proceeding is likely to result in more legislation and tighter controls on other charter schools that are doing everything right.
As a supporter of choice in education, I think we should both be working to convince Freedom Academy to be a good neighbor and work with the locals to come up with a win-win solution.
I live in the neighborhood and my kids attend Freedom Academy. The problem here isn't that the neighbors don't want a high school nearby -- the school had previous plans to expand just a half a block away on a wider road with better access and none of the neighbors made a fuss about it. The problem is, rather, that the site the K-8 school is on has many, many problems that have not been adequately solved for their current students, much less the addition of 400 more, including teenage drivers.
The school is backed up against a hill with only one small, narrow road that provides access. There are no sidewalks on these streets, no turn lanes, and there are some blind corners involved. Additionally, the site itself is very small for an elementary school in our area and when you add a high school on the same property, you take away green space and further tax the resources of the tiny lot.
Parents at the school are not keen on the idea of teenagers sharing such a small space with young children and were never surveyed about plans to build on-site.
Another issue is that while school boards can condemn land and have more freedom in some ways than charters, School Board members are elected by and accountable to all the citizens in their area, not just the parents. Charter schools can be run by parents who have no interest at all in the neighborhood they reside in and because of that, they can impose decisions on a neighborhood without considering the impact or the neighbor's concerns.
There's been a blog created to discuss all the issues about Freedom Academy's expansion here:
http://freedomexpansion.blogspot.com/
Interestingly, I've seen some discussions from lawmakers suggesting that because of how this expansion has played out in our neighborhood, there will likely be some changes made to the laws to make charter schools more accountable to neighborhoods and cities and not just parents. I'm curious to see how that will play out.
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