D.C. charter schools would lose $24 million if changes to the city’s funding formula were approved in the District’s budget for the next fiscal year, but advocates are fighting back.
Nearly 50 people representing about 25 schools and organizations prepared testimony before the D.C. Council warning of staff cuts and school closures if the fiscal 2010 budget were approved as proposed.
“We believe this is the biggest threat we have encountered in our existence as a charter school, and wholeheartedly believe that it may jeopardize our ability to function,” said Jessica Wodatch, executive director of Northeast’s Two Rivers charter school.
The new formula used in the budget takes away an automatic $3,109 per student to cover facility fees. Unlike regular public schools, charters must find and maintain their own buildings.
Instead of receiving the automatic money, schools would submit requests for the funds they needed, according to a new and more specific definition of what qualifies as a facilities cost. It would mean that many of them wouldn’t reach the full $3,109 per student.
“It is one thing to reduce a line item, but another to create a new process with such far-reaching negative consequences,” said Jack McCarthy, managing director of the Apple Tree Institute for Education Innovation.
Deputy Mayor for Education Victor Reinoso told the council that the submitted requests would ensure schools weren’t receiving more than they needed and then putting the money toward other purposes, as some have done.
About $66 million to be doled out to the schools would be “sufficient to support all current facilities costs with a 10 percent growth rate,” Reinoso told the council. That estimate, which includes the $24 million in savings, came from an analysis of audits from about 50 charter schools’ actual building and grounds expenses.
“This reflects actual costs,” Reinoso said. “It aligns the expenses with the intent, which is facilities.”
But proponents of charters and school choice say the cuts are unfair, especially as charters have shown dramatic gains in enrollment.
“Whatever [Mayor Adrian Fenty’s] intentions,” said Robert Cane, executive director of Friends of Choice in Urban Schools, the result would be to catch charters “in a pincer movement … unable to save facilities funds to buy or lease commercial space.”
