Meck-Wake charter gap: Smacking my head

A light bulb went on when I read the front page of this morning's Observer.

I've been puzzling over the large numbers of charter schools opening or planning to open in the Charlotte region, compared with much smaller numbers in Raleigh's Triangle area.

A number in the fact box with Mark Washburn's story on Mecklenburg County hitting the one million mark grabbed my attention:  Charlotte's metropolitan statistical area,  which includes surrounding counties,  has 2.3 million people.  Raleigh's has 1.2 million.

What?  Charlotte's metropolitan area is almost twice as large as Raleigh's?

That caught me by surprise,  probably because I've been so focused on the two school districts.  When I started the education beat in 2002,  Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools was the state's largest district,  with Wake second.  A few years later,  with CMS growing fast and Wake growing faster,  those positions switched.  I knew Charlotte was bigger than Raleigh,  but in my mind the two regions were comparable in size.

School districts,  of course,  are limited by county lines.  Charter schools are not.  Many of the large charters in our area are located near county borders and draw from two or more counties.  So the fact that we have so many more people in our greater suburban area probably signals a significantly larger market for charters,  whether they're located inside or just outside Mecklenburg.

Plenty of important questions remain about what the charter surge will mean for CMS, taxpayers, property values and,  above all,  for students.  But at least the raw numbers seem a bit less perplexing now.

No slowdown in Charlotte-area charter interest

I'm starting to sound like a broken record:  Mecklenburg County again dominates the state in charter-school interest,  based on letters of intent to seek charters for 2015-16.  The N.C. Office of Charter Schools got 170 letters by Friday's deadline,  and 43 were for Mecklenburg. Another 20 were for surrounding counties; charters can take students across county lines.

Next highest was Wake with 20,  then Durham and Guilford with 12 each.

That doesn't mean that many new schools will open,  of course.  This is just the first step in a long process.  Full applications are due Dec. 6.  They'll be reviewed by a charter school advisory board,  with the state Board of Education making the final decision about which will be approved for state,  local and federal money.  The state got 156 letters of intent for 2014 charters,  with 70 full applications that were eventually whittled to the 26 that just won approval. Eleven of those are in Mecklenburg and surrounding counties.

Students at Invest Collegiate, a charter that opened in uptown Charlotte in August

The big question is why the Charlotte region is spawning so much interest in charters,  which are alternative public schools run by independent boards.  Critics of CMS say it's dissatisfaction with district schools,  which still serve about 80 percent of the county's school-age children.  School board Chairman Mary McCray disagrees.  She noted that CMS already offers many of the themes that charter schools are touting,  from math-science magnets to credit-recovery programs for at-risk teens.

"They are basing their themes on us,"  McCray said.  "It's not like we're copying them."

Eddie Goodall of Union County,  a former state senator who now heads the N.C. Public Charter Schools Association,  theorizes that it boils down to risk and reward.  There are plenty of potential students in Charlotte and its suburbs,  while less densely populated areas pose a bigger risk of failing to draw enough students to survive.  Meanwhile,  counties that provide more for their local school district also channel a per-pupil share when students go to charters,  making the potential reward richer in Mecklenburg than in poorer rural counties.

Probably true  --  but it still doesn't explain why the densely populated Triangle area,  with all its higher education, high-tech and government resources,  isn't spawning a similar level of would-be school entrepreneurs.