Note: This is an edited version of the original story. Ed.
Superintendents from five area counties issued a Friday condemning the use of public school budgets to fund charter schools and criticized them for not being subject to the same government oversight and mandates as public schools.
"...Using vouchers to fund private schools or to funnel public school dollars away from local schools to fund charter schools is fundamentally wrong and inequitable," the group of 26 superintendents said in the news release. The school districts included Lehigh and Northampton counties.
"Local schools are mandated to play by different rules than charters and private schools and private schools are subjected to far less government oversight and unfunded mandates."
The statement was issued at a time when the House is about to consider Senate Bill 1, which would make it easier for charter schools to open, and remove local school districts' authority to approve them and give it to the state.
The superintendents said cyber charter schools were particularly subjected to inequitable funding.
"We believe that our legislators know the cyber charter school funding formula is defective, yet it remains uncorrected," the statement said.
In an article in The Morning Call, Salisbury Township School District Superintendent Robert Gross cited Vitalistic Therapeutic Charter School of the Lehigh Valley's financial and managerial problems as an example of the lack of oversight.
"We can't expect local school districts to be the local oversight mechanism to go in and review the fiscal operations and the academic operations of each of the charter schools, because that's not our charge," Gross said in the article.
The Salisbury Township School Board will review Thomas Lubben's application to open the, a performing arts middle school in the district, at a Dec. 12 public hearing. Lubben founded the Lehigh Valley Charter High School for the Performing Arts, but retired from there more than a year ago.
The superintendents' report cited data that showed charter schools performed lower on the 2010-11 Pennsylvania Systems of School Assessment tests than their public school counterparts
Public schools, which are required to pay for students in their district who attend charter schools, are losing millions of dollars because the state no longer gives partial reimbursement. Salisbury has lost $500,000, Gross said.
"School choice is not a bad thing," Gross said in the article."What we're saying is let's do it properly and let's not burden the local taxpayer and the local school district."
Life people and the world isn't black and white there are made shades of gray in between. Finland is also about the size of just 1 of our states...so your analogy doesn't even make sense. Our country needs immigration and the more we do to educate people to their potential who live in this country the better our country will be.
One of the things that top ranking countries such as Finland does is pay their teachers well. Their profession is also held in high regard being compared to a doctor or a lawyer. You also need to be a good teacher to keep your job but and they are given creative flexibility in their classrooms. They tailor the style to fit the children. http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/09/teacher-pay-around-the-world/
It has been a difficult year trying to recover from the previous mismanagement, unknown to those who now continue to provide a therapeutic environment for children deserving of a good start in life. The current administration is working diligently to become the best school of its kind. Public school districts have not been exempt from mistakes in judgement. Just recently, many in Pa. were involved in credit swaps that ended up in terrible financial losses that were passed to the taxpayers. It would be unfortunate to make broad sweeping characterizations of charter schools without looking at the merits of each one to determine its viability.
Also, the Lehigh Valley has 3 Catholic High schools with an approximate enrollment of 1800 students, most from the Lehigh Valley. You can't tell me there is "little savings" there! Whole school buildings would have to be built and MANY teachers (I approximate 80) hired if tomorrow all those kids decided to re enter the public school system. And I don't even know how many kids are in the cyber charter schools.
May God bless you, Martha, for the work you do in trying to meet these kids individual and unique needs. This is indeed what school choice is all about!
The constitution states that PA will have public education. If you do not like that arrangment, change the constitution. Until then, all choice should mean you chose to pay privately. If any of my tax money goes towards some kind of choice, I should be able to go to that school for a redress of greivences and should be able to vote for it's ruling body. This movement is not about widespread reform. It is about the opportunity for private interests to make money. Ripping public education is an important part of moving that agenda forward.
2. Charter schools are owned and operated by individuals or investors, usually both. It gains it's income from the taxes that are structured within a district. Therefore, why would any charter school go inner-city, when the ax base is minimal. The challenge is what happens to the charter school if local and municipal funding were to be removed? Not only is the Charter system an added burden to the school district, but rather than sending a child to a private school or parochial school, which is predominantly funded by parents, the Charter school will dramatically offer a considerably cheaper option for parents, thereby stressing to privates and parochials. Eventually, it will create a stress on the public entities as well, decreasing enrollments and decreasing dollars. NOTE- see the number of 'Directors' of Charter schools who leave after a few years, as well as the scores of the Charter schools. It's all about profitability and cost shifting. And what happens to the children from the inner city who want to attend Charter schools in affluent communities? Is there an equal amount spent on them as those from the burbs? And who is financing it? The inner city tax or suburbia's tax ?