Charter Champion

By David Hill

Cordia Booth looked nervous. It was a cool August evening in the Mile High City, and once again Booth--an 8th-grade science teacher at Hill Middle School--found herself in the first-floor boardroom of the Denver public schools administration building, waiting to make her pitch. This time, she had company: about 45 supporters of her proposed charter school. The board had turned down the charter school several times before, and each time, the Colorado state board of education had ordered the district to reverse its decision. Booth had even filed a lawsuit against the district, claiming that it was breaking the law by ignoring the state's ruling. But the district had argued that the state charter-school law itself was unconstitutional, in that it gave a state body control over a local school board. And there the matter stood, tied up in the courts, with no resolution in sight. Booth's hopes of opening her school in the fall were fading fast.

Would the school board change its mind tonight? Probably not. At a meeting in April, board member Lynn Coleman had made her position on the matter clear, telling Booth, "I have a problem with you taking public dollars to experiment." None of the other board members

had publicly supported the proposed charter school, which Booth had already named Thurgood Marshall Middle School, so it seemed unlikely that they would do so tonight. Still, Booth was optimistic. About 20 advocates for the school had signed up to speak; perhaps their words...