Charters in Their Crosshairs

Governor Paterson correctly vetoed the education budget bill adopted by the legislature since this bill contained a continuation of the charter funding freeze which would have held 2010-11 school year payments to charter schools at 2008-09 amounts. The Governor's rationale for vetoing the bill had nothing to do with the freeze since he originally proposed to continue it; rather, his veto is due to the legislature's failure to provide adequate financing for the added school aid to districts.

The state Education Department is charged with calculating these payment levels according to the statutory formula. The Department provided preliminary calculations for every school district in February (here), but there is no indication it completed the final amounts, which are usually posted in June. State Ed needs to finalize these payment levels and charter schools must ensure districts are paying them the proper amounts for their resident students.

Gotham Schools.org discussed the Governor's veto (here), where I said the fight wasn't over since there will undoubtedly be a push to re-impose the freeze. For charter schools, this is no time to celebrate; rather, they should be reminding their legislators they still lost nearly $50 million in funding last year due to the freeze -- money they'll never see again -- and they should not be cheated out of still more funding in 2010-11 since they still receive less than school districts. In other words, to legislators: "don't rob charter kids again by voting for another freeze."

Today's New York Post editorial rightly praises Governor Paterson for his veto, and points out the ongoing inequity between charter and district schools even without the funding freeze. The Post also reminded us that the teachers unions first pushed for this freeze last year, though it overlooked the fact that the Governor himself proposed to continue it.

School Districts Should Not Take Charter Funding
School districts, which already get more funding per student, should not be allowed to keep funding that rightly belongs to charter school students. Teacher unions and school district officials won't give up that easily, and will pressure the legislature to cut charter funding once again, and charter school teachers that pay these unions should speak out against such efforts, which would be union malpractice, plain and true. Until the unions and districts are willing to live on funding levels from two years ago, their efforts to take charter funding are as hypocritical and cynical as can be found in the Albany statehouse.

The answer is to instead provide more state aid to school districts by negotiating a funding restoration among the Senate, Assembly and Governor - not take funding from charter schools.

Peter Murphy
for The Chalkboard
Twitter.com/petermurphy26
Facebook: "Chalkboard Nycsa"