When it comes to oversight, Ms. Barkley said, "There isn't a lot of regulation for local authorizers on what that means".
Mr. Richmond said problems arose "when an authorizer relies on a very narrow reading" of the law.
After leaving Academy of the Pacific Rim, Mr. Lemov served as the Vice President for Accountability at the State University of New York Charter Schools Institute, the leading authorizer of charters in New York, where he designed and implemented a rigorous school accountability system.
Despite these new laws, charter schools face sustained backlash, the most prominent of which came in the form of a Georgia Supreme Court decision this May -- upheld Monday -- that deemed unconstitutional a state-level authorizer of charter schools that was designed as an appeal for charter schools that did not receive approval from local school boards.
Maine's charter-school law includes the creation of a state-level authorizer for charter schools similar to the one found to be unconstitutional in Georgia.
His full-time job is as a suspension authorizer for special education with the city's Department of Education, where he has worked the past 29 years.
"It's leading states like Georgia in the reverse way: Its locales don't want to send the local portion of their student funding to a state authorizer who has authority over kids in their district," he said.
While the school mounted an aggressive defense at its renewal hearing for why it should remain open, citing the relatively high rate of proficiency--and put tremendous political and public pressure on SUNY--the authorizer ultimately decided that New Covenant had not lived up to its promise to provide every student with a high-quality education and voted to close the school.
The lower number turns the usual relationship between authorizers and appropriators on its head: Authorizers are usually the "good cop," urging more spending, while appropriators play the "bad cop," imposing restraint.
"They lifted the cap but added in language that requires district authorizers to look at potential fiscal impact on the district, which might be used as a different kind of cap," he said.
