Charters getting 7% less funding
LAO recommends equalizing dollars
Under state law, charter schools and district public schools are supposed to be funded equally. That’s not happening, according to a report by the Legislative Analyst’s Office, which found that charter schools receive on average $395 per student or 7 percent less than district schools. And for the half of charter elementary schools that don’t qualify for class-size reduction subsidies, the gap increases on average an additional $721 per student.
Click to enlarge (Source: LAO)
The LAO recommends equalizing funding over time for the state’s 440,000 charter students, given the state’s budget crisis. One way, which Gov. Jerry Brown is proposing, is the adoption of a weighted student funding formula, favoring English learners and low-income students, for all districts and charter schools. Short of that, the LAO recommends increasing the categorical block grant for charter schools – the primary source of the disparity – and then giving equal flexibility over spending decisions to charters and district schools.
Charters and district schools get about the same basic program funding, which on average is $5,077 for elementary schools and $6,148 for charter high schools.
LAO researcher Jeimee Estrada found that the difference in funding is with categorical programs, which have restricted funding. Charter schools received a block grant of $409 per pupil in 2010–11, $150 less than funding that districts get for the same programs. (If the Legislature agrees with Brown’s plan to eliminate home-to-school transportation, that difference would fall to $50 per student.) Districts received $245 per student more than charters for other categorical programs. Charters also aren’t entitled to the $46 per student that districts receive as reimbursement for state mandates.
The class-size reduction subsidy is available for K-3 schools, but it was frozen in 2008, so all charters that have opened since then aren’t eligible. Only 49 percent of charter K-3 schools get money for the program, compared with 95 percent of district elementary schools.
The LAO study doesn’t take into account facilities costs, another expense for many charter schools. Although districts are obligated, under Proposition 39, to provide comparable building space free of charge, the process has been contentious and unsatisfactory in many districts. ** Some charters rent space in the community or building facilities at their own expense.
Some charters, like Pacific Collegiate in Santa Cruz, and charter organizations like KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) do substantial private fundraising to support their schools, while others don’t or can’t. Aspire Public Schools and Rocketship Education operate their schools on state tuition only but use philanthropic dollars to help support their central offices.
In his 2012-13 budget, Brown proposes several measures to help charters financially. He wants to speed up the process by which charters can seek exemptions from delays in state payments, which hit charters especially hard. And he wants to qualify charters for short-term borrowing instruments, called TRANs, to lower the interest payments that charters are paying. Brown would increase the charter categorical block grant by $50 million to account for the growth in charter schools; the per-student amount – $409 – would remain the same.
** Charters won a victory in the battle over Prop 39 last week, when the State Supreme Court let stand an Appeals Court ruling that admonished the Los Altos School District in its long-running battle with Bullis Charter School over what constitutes “reasonably equivalent” facilities. The district short-changed Bullis in offering facilities based on faulty space calculations and comparisons with other district schools. The decision spells out what districts must do to make fair offers in the future and will be binding on lawsuits in lower courts in California.
Under California’s system, it’s really hard to expect local districts to be fair judges when it comes to dividing up assets like building space and money, or even to allowing charter schools to exist, regardless of state law or the will of the legislature. That’s why alternatives should be more easily available, either through alternative authorizers (most interesting in this respect is Minnesota’s recent innovation to allow teachers’ unions to sponsor charter schools) or through direct applications to the state government, without having to go through the expensive and time-consuming appeals process we have in California. The latter suggestion is most nearly equivalent to the situation in Sweden, whose free schools (friskolor) are world leaders in some respects: there new schools are proposed directly to the national ministry of education, which makes an immediate, binding yes/no decision on the applications, and lacks the biases and counter-incentives towards charter schools that California’s local districts normally have, especially in tough times like these.
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I have to say when I voted for Prop 39, I never envisioned a COUNTY charter school could close one of the high performing schools in LASD. Bullis Charter seems like a fine place to get an education, but what right do they have to shut down my child’s school, disrupt my child’s education and fracture our school community?
Here is a partial list of the demands BCS makes in their Prop 39 facilities request.
Reasonable?
You decide.
• A performing arts center/facility is crucial to the program!
• A gymnasium, tennis courts, track as well as locker room facilities(all this for their 27 junior high students)
• Computer room
• Dedicated Math room
• Dedicated Art room
• Science room and lab equipment
• Dedicated Music room
• Dedicated ELL room
• Dedicated resource specialist room
• Dedicated small instruction room(s)
• Technology and video production room/studio
• Home economics room
• Second science lab for Jr high
• Woodworking facilities
• Dedicated child care facilities
• Student store
• Jr High study room
• Outdoor amphitheater
How many of you have a school with a preforming art center or a video production studio?
Do you have rooms dedicated to music? Do you even have a music program anymore?
Think it can’t possibly be true? Read it in their facilities request.
http://www.bullischarterschool.com/cms/lib6/CA01001253/Centricity/Domain/39/BCS_Prop_39_Request_2012-13.pdf
Why are we expected to provide this to 440 kids at the expense of the other 4,400 kids in the district?
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“Charters also aren’t entitled to the $46 per student that districts receive as reimbursement for state mandates.”
Isn’t this because they don’t have to comply with those mandates? And since charters don’t have to (nor generally choose to) provide home-to-school transportation, it’s perfectly reasonable that they’re not funded for it.
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el: There are some mandates that charters must do, including student testing, criminal background checks, collective bargaining (for those that have unions). There are other programs that districts as authorizers pressure charters to adopt (for good reasons, one can argue) – immunizations, health screenings, high school graduation requirements – even though it’s unclear whether they have authority to enforce them.
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Oh cry me a river. Let’s talk about Pacific Collegiate. Their approval on appeal costs the district of residence over $3 million in lost revenue per year. Did the costs to the regular schools go down as a result of losing those students? No. All of the programs are still in place to serve the remaining 3,000 students.
Pacific Collegiate provides no transportation, no meal service, has no English language learners, no low income students and an extraordinarily small population of low-need special education students. Together, providing those services takes $1800 off the top for every general ed student in the district impacted by, and concentrated by, the existence of Pacific Collegiate. Add in the impact of the revenue lost by skimming district students – the cost to the 3,000 students in the other high schools to subsidize the private school by the sea is over $2,800 per year per student. And that’s without factoring the last three years of state budget cuts, another $1200 per student.
If $500 less per kid is such a burden, tell us how they have accumulated an 84% cash reserve of the taxpayer’s money? Sounds like excess revenue to me.
And @el, that $46 in mandates hasn’t been paid to districts in years. One of those mandates is, for example, physical fitness testing. PCS is exempt.
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Kay:
Bullis charter school did not, as you claim, “demand” the facilities as you assert. Instead, if you read their request letter, they simply ask for “reasonably equivalent” facilities in comparison with what the district provides to the schools it runs–as the law and simple common sense of fairness dictate.
Bullis’ facilities request letter explicitly states that “BCS does not claim it is entitled to every single type of non-teaching facility . . . but is entitled to a reasonably equivalent amount.” Bullis’ letter merely states that the types of space “may” include the items you list above, among others.
If the distortions in your comment reflect the attitude of parents in Los Altos Hills generally, it is no wonder the district board has ignored its obligations to provide “reasonably equivalent” facilities to Bullis and as no surprise that the court ruled so strongly and emphatically against the district and in favor of Bullis.
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Let’s see. $395/pupil multiplied by about 5.6 million students gives you $2.2 billion. If we were smart enough to make schools as flexible as charters, we could save $2 billion and arguably provide a better education to kids.
By the way, thank you, John for mentioning the facilities issue. When you look at everything (and one needs facilities to run a school) a 2010 Ball State University study shows that charters in California get 36% fewer public dollars than traditional public schools.
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If my elementary district was funded like a charter school, we would have $3.3 million dollars more in our unrestricted revenues due to the increasing allocation per ada for different grade levels.
Most charters in my experience do not provide services to the special education pupils they enroll…that falls to the District that authorized he charters.
Many charters don’t have facilities (onlines) so no utility costs, no maintenance costs, etc.
Most charters do not seek federal funding; thier choice. Most charters do not apply for mandated costs, yet the state distributed mandated money to them as well as districts that never applied or did the accounting.
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And don’t forget that charters serve significantly fewer of the most challenging and costly-to-educated students — English-language learners and students with disabilities and special health care needs, including the most severe disabilities. And they are free to pick and choose and impose as many hurdles to admission as they wish, so they may serve only the most motivated and compliant students, and from motivated, compliant and supportive families.
I’ve been cheerleading for Gov. Brown and defending him against outcry over his proposed budget cuts, but I have to say that his own charter, Oakland Military Institute, is quite open about its hurdle-imposing admissions process that aggressively screens out or gets rid of the non-compliant and unmotivated. Other charters selectively deny theirs.
(Oakland School for the Arts, an audition school, has a legitimate and open admissions process.)
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Clarifying my comment about Oakland School for the Arts — it’s Brown’s other charter school. Its audition-admission process is openly built into its design.
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