Buffalo School Superintendent James Williams and two-thirds of the Board of Education remain in an anachronistic time zone when it comes to charter schools. At its Dec. 2 meeting, at Williams’ recommendation, the board voted 6-2 to request the state Board of Regents impose a “moratorium” on new charter schools for Buffalo. Such a policy would do nothing to improve education for Buffalo children if it is accepted by the Regents.

Neither the board nor Williams has gotten the memo on charter schools.

Perhaps no area of the state has greater need for a better public educational choice than Buffalo, where a majority of students fail to graduate on time, or at all. Charter schools have brought new hope and success for thousands of students in Buffalo by improving student learning and achievement to the point where every charter school outperforms the district’s percentage of students who meet state mathematics standards; and nearly all charters outperform Buffalo in English standards.

Charter schools in Buffalo also have been held accountable for results. When two charters were failing, they were summarily closed, rather than being allowed to perpetually underperform.

Charter schools’ academic success for Buffalo’s students has come at a bargain price of as little as 60 cents on the dollar. That is, the per-pupil cost to the city for charter schools is nearly 40 percent less than what Buffalo spends per pupil in district schools.

In fact, the district arguably profits from them since state school aid pays four of every five dollars in district costs. Buffalo’s resident charter students remain counted as district enrollment to generate state school aid, so charter expenses are more than covered, along with state largess for school construction, transition aid for charter payments and other funding programs.

The board’s action would serve only to eliminate healthy competition and parental choice, rather than solve Buffalo’s financial problems. Instead, the district should confront state mandates and legacy costs forthrightly, rather than bullying the reform that’s effective and in demand, with so many students on charter school waiting lists.

This counterproductive board vote only reveals a conventional, spineless imagination that persists in failing school districts. Williams, who arrived with such promise, has become the consummate bureaucrat by giving up on using charter schools to transform and improve public education.

Will the Regents heed this request? I doubt it, for the simple reason that the Regents and SUNY, which also approves charters, have been dismissive of prior district opposition to new charter schools. Both bodies correctly view Buffalo’s education system as long-term abysmal and have approved quality charter schools as a means to improve it. That must continue in order to maintain any hope for change.

Peter Murphy is policy director of the New York Charter Schools Association and writes for The Chalkboard weblog (

www.nycsa.org/blog/

).