New Connecticut Fellowship Designed to Bring More Charter Schools to State

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The launch of the North Star Fellowship, an initiative to help train school leaders in their efforts to develop more charter schools in the state, is the latest push for more school choice options in Connecticut.

The fellowship was created out of a partnership between education organization Latinos for Educational Advocacy and Diversity, or LEAD, which has been a strong proponent in an ongoing struggle to open a charter school in Danbury, and The Mind Trust, an Indianapolis-based nonprofit that has opened over 50 charter schools in Indiana in the last 18 years.

“We need something that is transformational and disruptive,” said Jose Lucas Pimentel, the CEO of LEAD, who noted that students of color, particularly Black and Latino students, continue to trail behind their white peers in almost all academic metrics.

“We realized that 30 years have gone by. Three decades waiting for things, and changes, and conversations, and forums, and speaking and nothing has happened and things have gotten worse,” Pimentel said. “We believe, unless somebody suggests some other way, that a charter school … can be a very creative way to empower leaders, like ourselves, to create a model tailored to our communities.”

The creation of more school choice options has proven to be a controversial issue, with advocates arguing that existing public schools aren’t serving all students’ needs and opponents countering that charter schools take away funding from the public school system, which is already stressed with limited resources.

Under the fellowship, four people — with a preference for Connecticut residents — will receive a full salary with benefits for up to two years as they undergo “personalized coaching and support from a network of educational and executive leaders,” collaborate with a cohort, travel and engage with other charter schools across the country.

The group will also have access to “expertise and feedback on the school development, Connecticut charter approval, launch and local community engagement processes,” according to the North Star website. Applications opened in late October and fellows are anticipated to be chosen in the spring.

“I think that every community has different needs and we want to encourage everybody from all demographics to apply,” Pimentel said. “What we’re looking at in the fellowship are innovative schools that are not just traditional college prep — almost the same additional school — but things that prepare kids right out of high school to have life-changing jobs, that can really transform communities, because we have just seen a stagnation, especially in the Latino community.”

The initiative may face challenges, as Connecticut is the only state in the country that requires legislative approval in the creation of charter schools, according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

Despite an initial approval from the state Board of Education, some charter schools can get delayed or stuck in the legislative process if lawmakers decide not to fund them.

This has been the case for over a handful of years in Danbury, and recently in Middletown, after both schools were left out of the state’s two-year budget during the 2023 legislative session after hours of debate and some lawmakers voting against party lines. A new budget approval process begins in January for the next biennium.

In the past, Sen. Julie Kushner, D-Danbury, and leadership from the Connecticut Education Association, the largest teachers union in the state, had been vocal opponents of charter school expansion in Connecticut. 

Kushner and CEA officials did not respond to recent requests for comment.

But during the 2023 legislative session, Kushner said she believed funding was the biggest barrier for traditional public schools and that a charter school would not be a solution for districts facing overcrowding or large populations of high needs students.

“There are people like myself and others within the community that have decided the best approach would be to resolve those issues of overcrowding and underfunding by working on improved funding for our traditional public schools,” Kushner told The Connecticut Mirror in a March 2023 interview. “That has been the focus of a lot of [our] opposition. We should invest in really finding good solutions for the whole student population, as opposed to a charter school solution, which would really only address a very small percentage of the student population.”

In 2023 written testimony for a proposed bill that would have removed the legislature from the charter school approval process, the Connecticut Education Association also argued charter school funding has outpaced that which is provided to traditional public schools and “for some [charter schools] cannibalizing the public school systems in urban districts (and beyond) is the goal.”

The bill, which made it out of two committees but ultimately failed, was opposed by Sen. Matt Lesser, D-Middletown, who had a proposed charter school in his district in 2023. His opposition to the Capital Preparatory Middletown Charter School garnered strong criticismfrom members of the local community, including from NAACP membership.

Lesser, in an interview last week with the CT Mirror said he didn’t “consider himself a charter opponent,” but that “there are different dynamics around the state.”

“I think there have been places where charters are what community is looking for, and they may work, but wherever you’re looking to change the environment, you should be fundamentally listening to the community in their wants and needs,” Lesser said, adding that there needs to be continued efforts to strengthen traditional public schools and “make sure that everyone is entitled to a world class education.”

Lesser also said he didn’t know much about the launch of the North Star Fellowship, but did express reservations about a partnership with an out-of-state organization.

“The fact they’re looking to bring in out-of-state activists sort of seems like just one more effort to impose a top down solution on Connecticut’s educational system,” Lesser said.

But, Pimentel said the Indianapolis organization was “invited by an organization that is on the ground and that has deep roots in Connecticut.”

“Most of us were raised here. Some of us were born here, lived our entire lives here,” Pimentel said of his team. “They didn’t come to us, … we went to them and convinced them to come because what they had that we didn’t is the expertise in running fellowships that work. We have the communities. We have the leaders that want to be trained. … [The fellowship] is the most homegrown you can possibly get.” 

Pimentel said he hopes the fellowship begins “to spread a conversation that needs to be had,” where charter schools aren’t “pitted against traditional schools the way they are now,” and that instead it offers an avenue that promotes innovative curriculum. 

“I’m not a proponent of all charter schools and some of the legacy ones that been there from the beginning,” Pimentel said.

“We are a proponent of new kinds of charter schools that are transformational. … I believe that the gap is going to widen and our people are going to be left behind, and instead of kind of just sitting there and always asking someone else to do something about it, we wanted to pilot a kind of school that will really meet the need of this population,” Pimentel added, referring to the state’s growing number of multilingual and other high needs students.

Pimentel also said, despite challenges in Danbury and Middletown, that not all charter schools are controversial, pointing to the 2023 approvals of Edmonds Cofield Preparatory Academy for Young Men in New Haven and Norwalk Charter School of Excellence in Norwalk.

“I think that what the fellowship tries to do more is not try to get bogged down into the Danbury issue, because the Danbury issue has not been replicated everywhere else. Most of the state does not have issues with charter schools,” Pimentel said. “We sometimes focus so much on the place that it’s not being accepted, but we see schools doing amazingly well and getting along really well with the ecosystem of schools in their districts, and that’s what we want.”

This story was originally published on CT Mirror.

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