they know are bad policy.
The bill was to take about 3% of the SLPS and KCP budgets and transfer it to the charter schools in their districts. The argument for doing so being that it makes all of the per pupil dollars follow the students that go to the charter schools
The bill was to take about 3% of the SLPS and KCP budgets and transfer it to the charter schools in their districts. The argument for doing so being that it makes all of the per pupil dollars follow the students that go to the charter schools
(currently a small share of local dollars stays with the districts).
While this change sounds fair and “equal,” the problem is it’s not so simple to think that charters and traditional public schools have all the same costs and therefore deserve all the same public funding.
While this change sounds fair and “equal,” the problem is it’s not so simple to think that charters and traditional public schools have all the same costs and therefore deserve all the same public funding.
Members pointed out that due to various selection bias and other enrollment differences , traditional public schools serve populations with significantly higher numbers of special ed needs, ESL and poverty rates.
Traditional public is required to provide transportation, which we as a state consistently underfund, and which most charters do not provide. Traditional public is also required to maintain room for every single school aged child within the district -
so if one or more charter schools closes in their district, the traditional public must be able to absolute them. This all means dramatically higher administrative costs and even basic educational costs.
All while traditional public are also subject to various regulations like transparency and accountability that charters are not subject to.
Very simply - equal distribution of dollars without equal distribution of costs only exacerbates the challenges faced by our traditional public schools, further disadvantage groups them and the students they serve.
Most of this committee understood all that. We have some wonderful bipartisan supporters of public education on this committee. Yet most of them voted yes on this bill out of fear of repercussions from leadership (like killing other budget items they care about) if they voted no.
That’s the system... and frankly it sucks.”
This is a direct result of too much money in politics, such as DeVos funded groups & Rex Sinquefield, that push for charter schools.
This is a direct result of too much money in politics, such as DeVos funded groups & Rex Sinquefield, that push for charter schools.
