OKC charter school drawing families downtown

"Located in the heart of the city's downtown, [John Rex charter] school is viewed as a catalyst for convincing families to move into the growing number of apartments and condos being built in the area," The Oklahoman reports. "Last year, 28 percent of John Rex students came from the downtown attendance boundary. This year, John Rex will serve more than 600 students with another 500 on a waiting list, according to school officials. Students living inside the school's downtown attendance boundary are offered automatic enrollment, and while that includes some low-income neighborhoods beyond downtown, it also includes residential developments that can cost as much as half a million dollars."

Vouchers would 'restore the choice' of Oklahomans who have voted with their feet to the suburbs

Great letter to the editor today in The Oklahoman from Susan Cohlmia of Oklahoma City.

Ed choice and urban revitalization

"It's often noted that school choice policies offer great benefit to families, particularly the low-income," The Oklahoman notes today in an excellent editorial. "But an often overlooked benefit of school choice policies is that they can also revitalize communities."

Education choice will help revitalize OKC

Excellent op-ed today by real-estate professor Bart Danielsen and former Oklahoma City mayor Kirk Humphreys.

Is school choice good for the environment?

Yes, and it can also help spur urban revitalization.

Environmentalists for school choice

Economist John Merrifield makes the connection between school choice and environmental impact, "not to mention the very fiscal and economic sustainability of central cities. Family flight to the suburbs has been a disaster; tax base loss, loss of business/jobs, and environmentally. The latter disaster arises from the blight of property abandonment and infrastructure decay, loss of open space to suburban sprawl, and increased driving which means more pollution."

Jeffersonian Project supports charter school expansion

[Below is the text of an issue alert distributed yesterday by The Jeffersonian Project, the 501(c)(4) affiliate of the American Legislative Exchange Council.]

To:          Members of the Oklahoma House of Representatives 

From:     The Jeffersonian Project 

Re:          Please Support HB 1696

This week, the Oklahoma House will consider House Bill 1696, which allows the cities of Oklahoma City and Tulsa to authorize charter schools. Each municipality may only authorize a charter school inside their own inner-city school district and within their own city limits. This bill is specific to Oklahoma City and Tulsa public school districts and provides students in some of the lowest-performing schools additional school choice opportunities.

Any charter authorized by Oklahoma City or Tulsa is subject to a veto by the people of the school district. The bill is permissive only, and the cities do not have to exercise the new power. All potential charters are still subject to the reforms and accountability measures recently included in Senate Bill 782, which expanded charter opportunities outside Oklahoma City and Tulsa, but did not significantly expand charter opportunities in the inner cities. 

The Jeffersonian Project recognizes there should be a variety of institutions that can authorize the establishment of charter schools and that independent but publicly accountable multiple authorizing authorities—such as the cities of Oklahoma City and Tulsa—contribute to the health and growth of strong public charter schools and thriving economies.

Therefore, the purpose of this bill is to establish the cities of Oklahoma City and Tulsa as potential charter school authorizers in addition to other authorizers already defined in law.

Additionally, this bill provides the people of a community with ultimate oversight by providing the authority to fully veto a charter. There is no fiscal impact to HB 1696. HB 1696 passed the Senate on April 22 by a vote of 38 to 6. 

In accordance with the model policies of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the Jeffersonian Project supports HB 1696.

School choice keeps families in the city

Jeff Murray explains.

'School reform gets cool'

Naomi Schaefer Riley says "it's no longer just for nerds," a remark I'm tempted to resent but won't.

'Why Catholic schools matter'

"They’re still the best hope for poor, inner-city kids."

Urban dwellers for school choice

A month ago in The Journal Record, Republican urban dweller Andrew Spiropoulos said school choice is good for cities.

Today in The Wall Street Journal, Democratic urban dweller John Norquist says the same thing.

School choice boosts cities

One of the positive by-products of school choice that doesn't get enough attention involves the revitalization of cities (click here and scroll). As law professor Andrew Spiropoulos, OCPA's Milton Friedman Distinguished Fellow, pointed out March 31 in The Journal Record, high-quality private schools "are indispensable to the city’s survival."

Why? Because the health of the city and its public institutions (including the schools) depends upon the existence of vital communities. The city must attract, and keep, stable and successful (or, at least, self-supporting) families. Families will be far more likely to stay in the city if they can choose from a meaningful number of excellent and affordable schools for their kids. A set of thriving private schools, especially if they present a diverse range of religious and secular options, will appeal to numerous families and help persuade them that they need not flee to the dreaded suburbs.

So if you care deeply about fostering a new urbanism, you shouldn’t lament the exercise of parental choice; you should expand it. Our cities will be among to first to benefit from the enactment of meaningful school choice programs. No city worthy of the name is made only of the rich and poor. Middle-class Oklahomans must have a real choice of schools to live in the communities we wish to preserve. 

New Urbanists for school choice

In the August 1 issue of World magazine, Marvin Olasky points out that "on school choice and community-building, conservative Christians can work alongside New Urbanist groups." Among those who recognize the benefits of school choice are San Francisco architect Peter Calthorpe, Duke economist Thomas Nechyba, and John Norquist, president of the Congress for the New Urbanism.

'Back on Uncle Sam's plantation'

"The legacy of American socialism is our blighted inner cities, dysfunctional inner city schools, and broken black families," Star Parker writes in her latest column ('Back on Uncle Sam's Plantation').

Wanna go big league?

Try school choice.

School choice brings families back to inner-ring suburbs

If city officials in Oklahoma want to bring families with children back to the older parts of our cities, they ought to be lobbying the legislature to expand school choice -- more charter schools, vouchers, tuition tax credits. Here's a recent example from the Cincinnati area of the positive effects of school choice on the revitalization of older neighborhoods:

The homes are square and solid, like the dark-red bricks from which they're built. Old steps and wrought-iron railings lead to small porches shaded by big trees. The uneven sidewalks, postage-stamp yards and 1950s styles look like so many neighborhoods in Cincinnati's aging first-ring communities.

But something is happening on the quiet, clean streets that straddle Golf Manor and Amberley Village: It's a mini-population boomlet.

While most of the city has been losing families to suburbs that offer more land, newer houses, lower taxes and better schools, this neighborhood is a magnet for young professionals with large, growing families.

A recent inventory of new residents includes an ophthalmologist, a Procter & Gamble manager, an Internet entrepreneur, a journalist, two in real estate, two in construction, two in the nursing home business, a restaurant owner and seven rabbis.

Nearly all of these Orthodox Jewish families were attracted by two things: Cincinnati Hebrew Day School, and vouchers provided by Ohio EdChoice.

The vouchers are especially important to young parents who are still working on advanced degrees or medical school, said Rabbi Ben Travis, development director at the Hebrew Day School on Losantiville Road, which has become "the cog around which the community revolves."...

Tuition at Hebrew Day School is $6,365. Students in neighborhoods with failing public schools are eligible for private school vouchers up to $4,375, depending on income, Motzen explained. Families usually pay more of their tuition as their careers take off, Travis said.

The two communities mentioned are called "first-ring suburbs" -- bedroom communities, just outside the limits of the core city, set up to accommodate the post-war baby boom wave of new home buyers. Fifty or sixty years later, these inner-ring communities have long since been passed over by families in favor of newer suburbs further out. Often the infrastructure, housing stock, and retail stock has aged badly. They're in a kind of no-man's land -- lacking the amenities of the core city and newness of the newer suburbs.

Inner-ring suburbs can be found around Oklahoma City -- e.g., Midwest City, Del City, Warr Acres. Because of the annexation policies Tulsa pursued in the '40s and '50s, Tulsa doesn't have these kinds of communities as separate municipalities. (Highland Park -- 31st to 36th, Yale to Hudson -- was one, but was annexed by Tulsa. Tulsa used its water supply and much higher rates for out-of-city customers as leverage to bring new neighborhoods into the city.) But Tulsa does have neighborhoods with similar characteristics -- e.g., along Peoria north of 36th St. N. and the 21st and Garnett Area. Some are in better shape than others, but in many of them, homes that once housed families of four or more now house singles and couples. The density is no longer there to support the level of retail that once existed in these areas.

School quality is the major deterrent to attracting families back to these areas. In this case from Ohio, vouchers are giving young families the ability to have affordable housing and high-quality schooling at the same time.

(Hat tip: Brandon Dutcher. Crossposted at BatesLine.)