Concerns over funding lead state ed board in New Hampshire to impose a moratorium on charter schools
Interesting Education Week story on the decision by New Hampshire’s state board of education to impose a moratorium on state-approved charter schools because of concerns over a lack of adequate funding for the schools from the state Legislature.
Last week’s state school board vote jolted the state’s charter school community. It may even have jolted the N.H. Legislature into action.
State Rep. Kenneth Weyler told Ed Week this week that legislators would somehow find $5 million to cover the costs of recently approved schools.
According to the original Ed Week piece:
Board members voted this week deny all applications it receives to open new charters in the state until more funding is provided for those schools.
In a letter explaining the decision, board Chairman Tom Raffio said the panel “continues to be supportive of charter schools.” But he noted that the board has approved eight new charter schools over the past two years, increasing the state’s costs by $5 million. Without additional funding, he said, “it would be inappropriate to approve any new charters schools at this time.”
The moratorium would apply only to charters that come to the state for approval. Charter schools that seek approval by individual school districts—an option allowed in New Hampshire—could still go forward, if authorized by local officials, Raffio explained.
New Hampshire has only a fraction of the number of charters in other states. But the sector is poised for rapid growth, with the state having received 15 applications for new charters, said Paul Leather, the state’s deputy commissioner of education, said in an interview.
The state is obligated to pay a per-pupil cost for the charters it authorizes, Leather said. Presumably, as those costs rise, other costs would fall as students leave regular public schools for charters. But that budgetary trade-off is not occurring to the extent needed to keep costs in check, for a variety of reasons, Leather said. The reduction in regular public school expenses, based on student enrollment, does not occur quickly enough to offset state costs, he said. And even when regular public schools lose students, some of their costs, such as those covering operations and personnel, are fixed.
“One [cost] going up doesn’t cause the other to go down,” Leather said. Over time, the state’s expenses are “ramping up very rapidly.”
–From Maureen Downey, for the AJC Get Schooled blog
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111 comments Add your comment
CharterStarter, Too
October 1st, 2012
10:11 am
Sneak Peak – you say, “It is all the more pointed when the legislature has shown such contempt for public education in Georgia.”
Why should they show ANYTHING but contempt for a public school system that has continued to fail and be at the bottom in our nation, has example of example of corrupt school boards in danger of or actually losing accreditation, and rampant waste of education funds allocated by the legislature.
What has the establishment done to deserve otherwise? Can you answer that simple question?
The establishment has thrown their teachers and kids under the bus to protect power and money. There is now an uprising of parents working through the charter sector, with a legislature that backs them and their kids’ rights to an adequate education…and I daresay, one of these days the teachers in our public schools will wisen up and see what is being done to them by weak boards and power hungry superintendents and their bloated central offices and will join the fight, too.
Our kids deserve better.
CharterStarter, Too
October 1st, 2012
10:21 am
@ Sneak Peak – you say, “I would love to have someone like you, who is obviously dedicated and works tirelessly, to engage in working to better our public schools rather than support an entity that will lead to a segregation and, ultimately, privatizing of our educational system. I want a quality education for all, not just a select few.”
You know, I HAVE tried to work within the system, but the entrenched power of the individuals leading these systems and protecting their golden eggs is too much for one mom (or even several) to handle. I worked in PTA and taught school and volunteered for all sorts of things in the traditional setting before getting involved with chartering. Not even a blip in education in Georgia has improved in decades. Not for all of the newfangled education plans, the 3 different curricula, the technology push, and the zillions of dollars funneled to educational contractors etc. Nothing has made a difference.
You know what HAS made a difference? Charters. We have tens of thousands of kids in successful charter schools, and for THOSE kids, there is a different that the traditional districts didn’t make.
The charter sector doesn’t seek to JUST educate the few hundreds that pass through their doors every year – yes, that is a goal, but a bigger objective is to REFORM what we have in our Georgia public schools. To put enough pressure on the districts through real competition that they will CHANGE, PROFOUNDLY, their priorities in spending, their views on the importance of teacher and parent input at the school level, and how they educate kids.
Frankly, I’m glad this process has been challenging to the district officials – that means the charter sector is doing its job and breaking up this educational morass that has plagued our state (and nation) for decades. Eventually, that will be better for kids and better for the educators instructing them.
Mary Elizabeth
October 1st, 2012
10:26 am
Bottom line. Representative Jan Jones sponsored HR 1162, the resolution that became the heavily politically divisive constitutional amendment. Jan Jones is also a member of ALEC’s educational task force. Look into the motivations and stealthy operations of ALEC. I have given many links on this thread in which readers can become more politcally aware and savvy both of ALEC and of what is happening politically in Georgia relative to education. Look toward movements, as much as to detail, to know what is happening and how those movements will effect every child and family in Georgia.
Why did state Superintendent of Schools Dr. John Barge come out against this constitutional amendment’s passage? Why has such intense opposition to his statement position been exercised, including a possible lawsuit? He has had to remove his opposition statement from his professional website because of that possible lawsuit (although he remains opposed to the amendment). There are heavily invested political reasons for this amendment’s passage (or not), and those reasons are more than likelly not all altruistic ones, imo.
DeKalb Teacher
October 1st, 2012
11:20 am
Mary Elizabeth
I would like to add ALEC to my list of reasons to not like Charters, but I need help.
1. I don’t understand how ALEC is any different than the for-profit organizations that feed off traditional public schools.
2. I don’t understand how management companies are more for-profit than the executive administrations across the state with administrators making $200K – $400K+ annually in salaries and benefits.
Thanks for your help!!
CharterStarter, Too
October 1st, 2012
11:42 am
@ DeKalb Teacher – EXCELLENT questions!
CharterStarter, Too
October 1st, 2012
11:47 am
@ Mary Elizabeth –
Explain to me why some legislators such as Alisha Thomas Morgan and Margaret Kaiser are supportive of this measure. You keep trying to point your finger to Jan Jones, but you have failed to show that every legislator in support of this is a member of ALEC or gives two hoots about them.
As for the huge pushback against Barge’s statements and the possible lawsuit, those are VERY simple to answer.
1. What he published is a pack of lies that is refuted by the state’s own annual reports and data.
2. He was a district superintendent, leads ALL superintendents, and is deeply vested with GSBA and GSSA.
3. Parents are tired of officials wasting tax dollars on their personal agendas to mislead the public. He and the school districts engaging in these activities are going to have a whole lot of work to prove that this wasn’t illegal or unethical.
CharterStarter, Too
October 1st, 2012
11:53 am
You know what is truly funny? That the opposition has nothing more than lies to publish. They can’t stand on truth, reason, or even anything noble (because what’ noble about power and money?), so they have to fill the media and blogs with lies.
I can assure you, folks, the pro charter and pro reforming public education folks will uncover these lies one by one. It’s easy to do when truth and data is on your side.
Mary Elizabeth
October 1st, 2012
2:25 pm
DeKalb Teacher, 11:20 am
Both of your questions address the profit factor which is an element within traditional public schools and has been for decades. Notice that I said “an element within.” Profit is not the overriding motivation behind the existence of traditional public schools. Traditional public schools exist to serve all students equally within school districts through public taxes. Please understand that the overall movement behind ALEC is to transform most public institutions to private ones, not simply educational institutions. I believe in balance. I believe ALEC’s ideology is unbalanced because of its over-emphasis on privatization. The public interest traditionally serves the common good of all citizens. Private markets serve private interests. I believe that profit needs to stay out of public education as much as is possible. The answer to your question, in a nutshell, is the DEGREE of emphasis on profit in traditional public schools vs. the DEGREE of emphasis on profit within privatized schools and within some quasi-private public charter schools. Many of the proponents of school choice wish to tap into the “educational industry” for overall profit reasons. School choice proponents often try to persuade the public that the profit factor within traditional public schools is equivalent to the profit factor in the private school market in order to sell their agenda to the public, but that equation cannot be made entirely equivalent because public schools serve the public good, primarily, not private, special interests, primarily.
Secondly, you must ask yourself why ALEC has attempted to keep its motivations, and even its existence, secretive for so many decades as it has advanced its ends for corporate interests. ALEC’s purposes have now been exposed to full public transparency through many publications, such as the article by Diane Ravitch to which I gave a link to yesterday on this thread. Moreover, corporations such as Coca-Cola are now withdrawing from ALEC, as are some legislators. One must ask why? Much of this is explained through the “ALEC links” that I provided earlier on this thread.
ALICE is an organization offers an antidote to ALEC. Notice how this organization has been open to transparency regarding what it wishes to accomplish since its inception. Notice, also, that it relies on public interest advocates and volunteers, not paid corporate lobbyists, to help form its legislation. I provided information about ALICE (and the link about it) in my 12:38 pm post yesterday on this thread. (I’ll repeat one paragraph for you, below.)
The below content about ALICE, from the link I provided yesterday, will offer you a contrast with ALEC:
“Like ALEC, ALICE is a values-based nonprofit that offers model legislation over a broad range of state and local issues. But it’s easily distinguished from its counterpart. ALICE aims to promote, not destroy, economic fairness, environmental sustainability, and effective democratic government. Its model laws are public, not secret. They’re written by public interest advocates and volunteers, not paid corporate lobbyists. They cover local, not just state, policy. They include law originating from the executive branch and directly from citizens, as well as from legislative bodies. And ALICE only provides such model law and written supports for its persuasive communication.”
Thirdly, notice that billionaire donors such as the Koch Brothers, who are major contributors to ALEC, have had a stealthy ideological mission to to turn America to a more liberatian nation in which government is minimized and the private sector maximized for decades. Of course, minimizing government helps to keep under suppression government regulations that directly effect the Koch Brothers’ corporate expansions and, therefore, their financial expansions. (See The New Yorker article, “Covert Operations,” by Jane Mayer, August 30, 2010. Link to that article: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer )
I believe, however, that America must maintain a balance between the public and the private sectors for the nation to function well, and part of maintaining that balance means keeping public schools truly public ones that serve the common good, not quasi-private public schools that are motivated to exist through the accruing of profit. We must improve public education from within, with the help of district-assigned charter schools. We must stop the ideological mission to dismantle traditional public schools.
DeKalb Teacher
October 1st, 2012
2:51 pm
Mary Elizabeth … OK … I’m with you … sort of …
The for-profit entities in ALEC want to make more money than the for-profit entities at traditional public schools. ALEC’s secret motives and contributors … OK. That’s all a bit tenuous. I was hoping for something I could sink my teeth into.
I’m definitely with you on being against quasi-private traditional public schools we have now. How do we get the private sector out of our traditional public schools? I guess we’ll leave that for another blog thread.
Mary Elizabeth
October 1st, 2012
5:00 pm
DeKalb Teacher, I’m glad your are with me!
Public institutions have often outsourced specific job functions within their operations to private companies, but what is going on, today in Georgia relative to education, is an attempt to completely overhaul the educational delivery system away from traditional public schools toward various other “school choice” delivery options – that will, also, happen to enhance the pocketbooks of private profiteers.
Read as much for the following link as you have time. Ms. Knopp does an excellent job of explaining this national movement, which has tentacles into Georgia’s legislature, via ALEC.
http://www.isreview.org/issues/62/feat-charterschools.shtml
To answer your last question, one poster wisely suggested that all schools (traditional public schools and charter schools) should be audited regularly by an impartial out-of-state auditing service to make certain that the private companies that are hired by public schools are not assigned for personal profit purposes, but that they are hired to serve a job function which specifically serves the common good.
sneak peak into education
October 1st, 2012
5:59 pm
@CS2- Wow, looks like you are becoming flustered with your last post-what a rant!! Impressive but sadly, more delusional than sane. Tell me where are the lies about ALEC, about the success of charter schools, about the motives of the profiteers, about how some charter schools get their high graduation rates. I could go on. It is true that there is nothing that anyone could say to you about the truth behind the for-profit charters.I would love nothing more than a shining light to expose everything that is happening in education-in both the traditional public schools and charter schools. There are countless episodes of shady dealings in both sides and that is very wrong. However, I do feel though is that traditional schools serve EVERYONE. We need to continue to work to improve those schools so that EVERYONE gets a fair shake at an education.
I think that the public is becoming educated on the truth behind the current pro-privatization and big corporation movement within education and they see that they and their children are being used as pawns in order that they line their pockets.
Let parents, teachers, and communities unite to work together to build on the foundation of our schools and not tear them down in order to line the pockets of the few.
Vote No in November and keep democracy alive. Don’t deprive yourselves of a voice in your local school districts by passing that power into the hands of an non-elected board.