Education Funding Woes Spark Idaho Charter School Opposition

March 24, 2010

The Nampa School District unsuccessfully pleaded with the Idaho Public Charter School Commission this month to reject any new charters in Nampa until financial conditions improve.

The same day, the Meridian School District posted an article on its Web site arguing that granting new charters spreads available state dollars too thinly. The district said charter schools in effect are new, small districts that take a bigger slice of the budget pie than if their students remained in the larger districts surrounding them.

Meanwhile, families call for more choices in public education, with some 8,800 students on waiting lists for charter schools throughout Idaho.

A bill aiming to selectively lift Idaho’s six-per-year limit on new charter schools is apparently dead in a legislative committee after drawing stiff opposition from state organizations representing school districts, administrators and teachers.

The measure’s sponsor, Senate Education Committee Chairman John Goedde, said he fears the bill’s demise will hurt Idaho’s chances for winning $120 million in "Race to the Top" education-stimulus funds from the federal government.

The one thing that could revive the bill, he said, is if the government’s analysis of Idaho’s first application, which failed, indicates tha t changing the state’s charter-granting policy could make a difference in the second round of competition this summer. But the Legislature will likely adjourn before that federal analysis is received in April, he said.

Goedde, R-Coeur d’Alene, said he was disappointed by opposition to the bill, which would allow more than six new charters in a year only if those new schools focused on specific populations such as at-risk, minority, disabled or gifted/talented students. Only five of the state’s 41 open or about-to-open charterschools fit that description now, he said.

"Changing anything in public education is like turning the Queen Mary," Goedde said. "It just doesn’t happen fast."

Some feared the bill would open the floodgates to new charters, he said, but since Idaho gained its first charter school in 1999, there has been only one year when more than six would have been approved without a cap.

"To suggest there would be a huge run on an open door was maybe less than genuine," Goedde said. "But they didn’t want to open the door any further to competition for education dollars."

IS MORE CHOICE TOO EXPENSIVE?

Nampa School District leaders are among those striving to shut that door in the face of deep budget cuts. Idaho’s first charter school opened in Nampa in 1999, and as of next fall Nampa will have five charter schools, more than any other district in Idaho.

That number will grow to six in 2011, now that the Idaho Public Charter School Commission has OK’d the planned Legacy Charter School. Nampa School Board Chairman Dale Wheeler urged the commission to say no.

&# x0A;"By granting additional charters, the commission forces the state to cut an already shrinking budget pie into increasingly small slices," Wheeler wrote to the commission. "We respectively submit that more choice is too expensive at this time."

The commission unanimously approved the new charter March 4, stressing the community’s demand for more charter-school space, particularly for Harbor Method schools such as Legacy. One parent told the commission her 8-year-old son has been on the waiting list for Nampa’s two existing Harbor schools since he was an infant.

CHARTERS DEPLETE NAMPA ENROLLMENTS

New charter schools within district boundaries draw many or most of their students from district schools, which reduces the amount of money the district gets from the state and the number of teachers and other employees those dollars support, said Paula Kellerer, the Nampa district’s chief academic officer.

Kellerer developed best-case and worst-case scenarios for the impact of new charter schools, estimating a loss of at least 176 students and eight teachers next year from the addition of the district-approved OWL (Once Was Lost) Charter Academy, and a new Valleywide virtual charter school, Another Choice. Her worst-case scenario increases that loss to 420 students and about 20 teachers.

The impact of new charter schools would be offset if significantly more students move into the Nampa district, spokeswoman Allison Westfall said.

But enrollment, now about 14,700, has been flat in the past couple of years, she said, and district leaders don’t anticipate an influx of students next year.

State school-funding policies guard against sudden drops in school enrollment and revenues, State Department of Education spokeswoman Melissa McGrath said. In the first year after an enrollment drop, she said, a district receives 99 percent of the previous year’s funding, so that leaders have time to adjust to their new enrollment reality.

THE DISTRICT ‘DOESN’T OWN THOSE KIDS’

Ken Burgess, community manager for the Coalition of Idaho Charter School Families, said the real issue is not which dollars go where, but whether parents can choose the type and approach of education they want for their children. If enrollments decline as a result of new choices, he said, that’s not necessarily bad.

"Districts tend to think of it as charter schools stealing their kids," Burgess said. "But the school district doesn’t own those kids. Their parents do."

With more than 34,000 students, the Meridian School District is the largest and fastest-growing in the state. District leaders aren’t worried about losing enrollment, and no new charter schools are currently proposed for Meridian, spokesman Eric Exline said.

The key issue for Meridian, said retired district Controller Jim Correia, is efficiency in using available state money.

Schools’ state funding is based largely on how many students attend, and because of "the economy of scale," the funding formula allocates more dollars per pupil to small districts than to large ones. And charter schools are funded like small districts.

Pulling the most recent school-revenue figures available, from 2007-08, Correia posted an article on the Meridian district Web site March 4 citing discrepancies in the per-pupil revenue for big local school districts and the c harter schools within them.

The Meridian district received $4,712 per student in state general fund money that year, while its four charter schools drew between $5,695 (Compass) and $7,658 (Meridian Technical Charter) per student.

In Nampa, those per-pupil numbers were $4,681 for the school district and from $5,698 (Victory) to $6,255 (Liberty) for charter schools within its boundaries.

"If the school districts were funded at the same average revenue per pupil as the charter schools that are physically located in them, the state would have to commit $95,519,783 more in education funding per year É just for the Treasure Valley," Correia said.

IT’S NOT ALL ABOUT PER-PUPIL REVENUE

The gap between charter schools and large districts in per-student funding becomes significantly smaller when you factor in all of the general maintenance and operations money the districts receive, said Tim Hill, deputy state schools superintendent.

A big difference between charter schools and school districts, large or small, is that charter schools have no taxing authority, Hill said. They can’t ask residents to approve a supplemental levy for operations or a bond levy to build a new school.

Once local tax money and some state-administered federal funds are added in, the Meridian district’s per-student take for 2007-08 rises to $5,917, Nampa’s $5,474. (Federal funds also boost the charters’ total several hundred dollars per student – to $6,276 at Compass and $7,983 at Meridian Tech).

The average per-student spending among all Idaho school districts and charter schools was $6,393 that year. Of the 29 charter schools then operating in Id aho, 10 received higher than average funding and 19 got lower than average funding, Hill said.

DISTRICTS SAY THEIR CHOICES COST LESS

The state funds charter schools and school districts through the same formula, McGrath said, except that it distributes federal start-up money, an average of $100,000 per year for two years, to help new charter schools get going.

Hill stressed that the formula is complicated and doesn’t rely solely on the number of students.

Other factors include the education and experience level of the school’s or district’s teachers and the nature of its student body. For example, high schools get more money per student than elementary schools, and alternative schools – required by law to have smaller classes – have a higher funding level.

Nampa and Meridian district leaders say they offer plenty of choices within their districts and they can meet families’ needs without an influx of new charter schools.

Meridian offers a range of specialized schools to serve students with interests and aptitude in the arts, math, science, culinary arts and more, Exline said.

"We have as many kids in schools of choice as there are kids in charter schools in the entire state of Idaho." he said. "And we contend that we do that at a considerably lower cost."