Rochelle Riley

Detroit Free Press Columnist

For years, we have viewed charter schools as political footballs, as answers to a policy question that requires taking one side or the other.

Let's deal with why we choose sides: It is because we refuse to call charters what they are: private businesses that discriminate. With our tax dollars. And we — voters, parents and elected officials — allow it.

The arguments for and against the proliferation of charters in Detroit continue as the city attempts to create a new education system while facing the toughest challenge in the state. In 2014, DPS had 52,500 students with 8,800 — or 16.7% — getting special education, according to the state. Last fall, the district had 45,786 students, with 8,733, or 19%, getting special education, according to DPS.

DPS has 97 schools, serving fewer than 46,000 students. Detroit has 63 charters serving 36,000 students, a small, unknown number of them receiving special education services, according to the state Department of Education and other sources. (Some of those students don't live in Detroit, so that number is to estimate capacity only.)

How to make charter schools pro-teacher and pro-reform in Detroit

Charters are supposed to teach children with special needs, but many contend they don't have the resources. They get our tax dollars, anyway.

I don’t have a problem with charter schools. Charter schools do compete with public schools, but competition is American and as as much a part of our economy as any other industry borne of capitalism and need.

I don’t have a problem with choice. I cherish it. I just believe every parent should have it.

But some parents don’t.

Just ask Michelle Fecteau of Detroit. She is a member of the State Board of Education. But more importantly, she and her husband have raised 18 children, from birth, from foster care, by adoption. Five had special needs ranging from autism and hearing impairment to cognitive impairment and lead poisoning. And Fecteau's second full-time job — besides being a labor representative at Wayne State University — was making sure they were educated.

"We've been dealing with the school system here for 25 years," she said of herself and her husband, a special education teacher. "In Detroit, one of the most glaring problems is that there are not enough special ed teachers and services and funds to provide those services. When you talk about choice ... we were desperate to find alternatives for our oldest son (who is autistic and now 26). At the end of the first day of kindergarten at a public magnet school that kids had to apply to get into, they said 'Don't bring him back tomorrow.' We fought, but eventually took him out. We called 35 charter schools, and every one said no. We didn't know what to do. That was our introduction to choice. Nobody wanted him."

No parent should have to search for a way to educate their children — not according to Michigan’s Constitution.

We cannot allow any more parents to watch a stellar charter school open down the street from their home and see their children rejected. Of course the school has high test scores. It is not providing resources for many children who might lower the scores.

So the answer is simple: Any charter that does not have services, real services, for students with special needs must also refuse to accept tax dollars.

That is fair. That is what makes a public school a public school.

And when charters no longer discriminate, then opponents of choice will no longer have an argument to fight them.

Contact Rochelle Riley: rriley99@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @rochelleriley for updates on the #FlintWaterCrisis and the Detroit Public Schools.