Patricia Levesque orchestrated a very professional presentation at a house meeting in Tallahassee promoting a Parent Trigger Bill -- allowing parents in a failing school to have a choice on management of the school if it has been failing for 3 years. Not a bill I like -- if Parent Empowerment and Involvement was the goal and not Privatization, there are far better things that could be done far easier and far sooner -- like getting parents involved today or at the latest when the school is deemed a failing school.
HB903, that says districts must either give Charter Schools a pro rata share of local money for construction, is a big issue.
It could move
- Over $100 million into the Charter School coffers
- Reduce bonding capacity for public schools
Three things that do not make sense:
1- Public school districts own public schools -- so when the state funds the new buildings, the public gets the benefit and keeps the asset -- with charter schools the assets belong to a private corporation and they charge the charter schools rent. Consider the following
Responding to this week's cover story about the charter school chain he runs, Frank Biden continues to insist Mavericks in Education Florida is not profiting from its schools. He says it's just the school buildings that bring in the dough.
Why should the public fund construction when the private enterprise makes money on the rent, they get the asset and there is no benefit to the public
2- In a Ball State study they found that charter schools get $2700 less per student, and $2000 of that is the local districts not allocating local taxes. Take that $2000 per student multiply it by the 200,000 students in Florida Charter Schools and that would be a $400 million swing -- more money for charter schools and $400 million less for public schools. If HB903 is passed, expect to see the same logic used with operating funding. What's worse -- is this could grow to $600 million or a Billion.
3- HB903 is saying that local government must spend their money the way Tallahassee wants it to and not have a choice -- if a local government refused to allocate the money to the charter schools the bill says the state will deduct this from their allocation to the districts
These actions could significantly reduce public school funding for building and in the near term even more significantly reduce school operating budgets.
Bad for public school students, bad for public school teachers, and very bad for local governments
Great post! This all seems scandalous.
ReplyDeleteBut I'm not sure I understand point #2- the districts get less money or the charter schools.
Charter Schools get less money than regular public schools because the local taxes go to local public schools -- which I believe is right -- if the money is collected locally the local government should have the right to spend it as it sees fit
ReplyDelete