WA CHARTERS
February 2, 2001

Dear Friends,

I apologize for being "off-line" for so long. Here's the latest WA charter school news:

SUMMARY:

• Legislature will not consider a charter bill in 2001
• Using the Alternative Public School Law to create a new school
• Final numbers for I-729

WA LEGISLATURE WILL NOT CONSIDER A CHARTER BILL IN 2001

I am sorry to report to you that the Washington State Legislature will not be considering a charter school bill this year.

Although I-729 came very close to passing, winning several large counties, earning over 1.1 million votes and more than 48% of the vote statewide, pro-charter legislators have decided that the odds of passing a bill in the current legislature are too low to justify the effort.

The key obstacle to a compromise bill is Senator Rosemary McAuliffe (D-Bothell), a longtime opponent of charter schools who chairs the Senate Education Committee. Although the majority of voters in her legislative district supported I-729, the same voters also reelected McAuliffe to her third four-year term.

Although charter schools has strong bi-partisan support in the House, in the Senate McAuliffe has been able to use her power as chair of the Senate Education Committee to block charter school bills several times, including last year.

McAuliffe is likely to remain chair of the Senate Education Committee as long as Democrats control the state Senate. Democrats currently enjoy a 25-24 majority in the state senate. By contrast, power is shared in the state House, where both parties hold 49 seats.

ALTERNATIVE PUBLIC SCHOOLS -- THE ONLY CHOICE AVAILABLE FOR NOW.

Accordingly, if you would like to create a new public school choice, your only alternative is to request your local school district to create an alternative public school as authorized by existing law. Although this is usually more difficult than creating a charter school, it is not impossible, and many alternative schools have been created in recent years, especially in more innovative districts such as Lake Washington and Federal Way.

If you are interested in creating an alternative public school, you should contact the Washington Association for Learning Alternatives (WALA). The folks to contact there are Bob Wiley (Executive Director) and Lile Holland, President. Their contact info is:

Bob Wiley (walakids@gte.net)
800/455-9252)

Lile Holland (lileh@cksd.wednet.edu)
360/698-3477)

WALA's annual conference is coming up in March. The event will be held in the Ocean Shores area of the central Washington coast between March 15-17. If you are seriously interested in creating a new public school under the existing alternative school laws, you should plan to attend. FYI, both Fawn and I plan to attend. Please call Bob Wiley or Lile Holland for more information and registration forms.

FINAL NUMBERS ON I-729 (The Charter School Ballot Initiative)

I-729 received a total of 1,125,766 "YES" votes (or 48.17%) versus 1,211,390 "NO" votes (or 51.83%). A total of 2,337,156 people voted YES or NO on I-729, which was less than any other initiative and 150,327 votes fewer than the 2,487,483 votes cast for President.

In other words, I-729 could have won without changing a single NO vote to a YES vote; the campaign only had to convince slightly more than half of the "neutral" voters to vote YES. Unfortunately, the campaign management firm that Paul Allen hired (Gogerty Stark Marriott) made a number of tactical mistakes which, in my opinion, cost I-729 the election. These mistakes included:

• providing almost no funding for grassroots activities
• ignoring I-729's support among conservative & moderate talk radio hosts
• waiting until Bush/Gore and Gorton/Cantwell were running their TV ads before running any I-729 TV ads (which meant our ads were lost in the "noise" of all the other political ads).
• failing to leverage I-729's support among legislators, especially in rural areas and in Eastern Washington
• failing to tailor a special message to voters in Eastern Washington and rural areas
• failing to compare the low cost of I-729 with the high cost of I-728 & I-732.
• failing to run any radio ads whatsoever.
• failing to do a daily tracking poll to monitor the effectiveness of the PRO-729 TV ads on a daily basis during the three weeks when the ads were running.

Despite these mistakes, I-729 still received majority support in five counties:

I-729 won 49% of the vote in King County, and would have won King County except for a poor showing in the extremely liberal 7th Congressional District. I-729 won throughout King County (except in the 7th Congressional District).

IRONICALLY, I-729 won the 1st Legislative District (Rosemary's District), although the same voters re-elected her (go figure!).

In sum, I-729 received its strongest support in the surburban and growth-oriented rural areas around Puget Sound.

I-729 also did reasonably well in the following counties:

I-729 performed worst in six lightly populated rural counties:

In all other counties, I-729 received at least 40% of the vote (as you may recall, in 1996, I-177 did not earn 40% of the vote in any county).

All of the above data can be verified on the Secretary of State's web page:
http://www.vote.wa.
gov/vote2000/results/
measures.tpl?m_id=729&m_code=I

Thanks again for all you do to help bring the choice of charter schools to the children, families, and educators of Washington state.

Hold the Vision! Our time will come.

Jim
Jim & Fawn Spady, co-directors,
Education Excellence Coalition
4426 - 2nd Avenue NE
Seattle, WA 98105-6191
Jim office phone: 206/634-0589
Jim & Fawn home phone: 425/434-7440
Jim e-mail address: JimSpady@WAcharterschools.org

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