Mayor tries to clear air about charters

It's been eight years since the first charter schools opened in Indianapolis, and yet many people still don't understand what they are. The confusion is a concern for Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard. Monday, the mayor hosted the first Indianapolis charter school fair to help educate interested families.

Mayor Ballard inherited the oversight of the schools from Bart Peterson, the mayor he defeated in the last election. Peterson pushed the legislature to allow him to be the first mayor in the nation to sponsor a new kind of public school.

Keven Teasley opened the city's first charter school. He said many people still don't understand what they are.

"People believe that charter schools have tuition or that they're selective, and we're not. We don't have tuition. We are not selective. The only selection that we do is a lottery," said Teasley.

Teasley said the lottery is only used if there are more students who want to enroll than actual spots available.

Charter schools are public schools, but they are given more creative flexibility than traditional public schools. Mayor Ballard said another misconception about charter schools is that they are not closely monitored. He said his schools are assessed every month. The law said that charters can be revoked if the schools don't reach high academic goals.

"There's three-to-four organizations that look into them and we don't use just one parameter to look at this," said Ballard.

The mayor said several of the charter schools have several hundred children on waiting lists, but many are expanding and have open enrollment through March.

There are 49 charter schools throughout the state and they are all concerned about a bill that passed the Indiana House and is in the Senate. It calls for an immediate moratorium on the building of new or expanding of existing charter schools. Some legislators believe the charters take too much money and too many students away from traditional public schools.