Debate Swirls Around Fiscal Impact of Charter School (NJ)

July 27, 2010

The Hatikvah International Academy Charter School has gotten final approval from the state Department of Education to open this September, amid disagreement over the impact it will have on the school district budget.

As a public school, Hatikvah will be tuition-free.

The East Brunswick district has provided Hatikvah with $1.34 million in funding in the 2010-11 school budget.

The charter school, which will rent space from Trinity Presbyterian Church on 367 Cranbury Road, will open its doors this fall to 108 students in kindergarten through second grade.

The school plans to add a grade each year until it is a K-8 school. Kindergarten will be offered as a full-day program.

Hatikvah will become the first charter sch ool in East Brunswick, and the first public charter school in the entire state of New Jersey offering a Hebrew language program.

Officials at Hatikvah say the money the school district is spending to educate the 108 students attending the charter school this year is money the district would have needed to spend to educate those students regardless of where they attended classes.

But township Board of Education President Todd Simmens says that is simply not the case.

The gist of his contention is that just because students leave the existing school system to attend Hatikvah, that does not result in the district’s being able to significantly reduce spending. In essence, Simmens says that there is no dollar-for-dollar transfer of expenses when students go to the charter school.

According to Simmens, the charter school is requiring significant additional funding from the school district budget.

“The claim that the (charter) school will have ‘quite an impact’ only shows a profound lack of understanding,” said Hatikvah founder and board member Yair Nezaria. “Taxpayers do not pay an extra penny for having a charter school in town, period. To the contrary, the cost of educating a child becomes much more cost effective since typically charter schools are not unionized and have lower administrative costs than their public district counterparts.

“The district simply transfers money based on the number of students that attend the charter school, in our case a maximum of 108 students that, again, the district will not need to educate.”

Hatikvah officials point out that if costs East Brunswick an average of $13,057 to educate a child, Hatikvah will receive only $11,324 per ch ild, while the difference, $1,733 per child, remains with the district.

Hatikvah’s officials also note that their budget represents only one percent of the entire East Brunswick school budget.

Simmens pointed out that losing a couple of students from a classroom or a couple of students from a bus route because they went to charter school does not necessarily mean that the district can save any costs on teachers or transportation.

He noted that having a couple of students leaving for the charter school doesn’t mean the district can stop paying the electric bill, the heating bill or even save any money on the lunch program.

“It’s not simply a cost-per-pupil (issue) and then, as soon as people leave, our costs go down – that doesn’t happen anywhere,’ said Simmens.

Simmens said the school district’s costs are “generally fixed” and do not generally fluctuate based on enrollment.

“When they determine a per-student cost, that’s simply an accounting number just to give statistical information,” Simmens said. “But, when we send students to a charter school, we actually have to write a check for every student we send based on that accounting number they determine – and that’s a real cost.

“The financial impact on sending students to any charter school is incredible for a district.”