Reply to Petition to DC Council for FY 2024 Charter School Budgets

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Reply to "Petition to DC Council for FY 2024 Charter School Budgets"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Yeah I don’t think so. Tell your charter board to increase teacher salaries if you don’t like current pay structures. Charter teachers should unionize if they want the collective bargaining power that the WTU has. Why on earth should they benefit from the DCPS union’s efforts if they choose not to unionize (MV aside)?

Some context for anyone who’s trying to figure out what this is about: https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1109459.page

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This is silly. Salaries can't be increased independent of funding. The salaries of the unionized charter school are lower than the other charters. It isn't that the union isn't effective, they just can't raise salaries to compete with other charters (or DCPS) without getting equivalent funding. [/quote]

Charters can make changes to their payscale and salaries if they want to. They get to manage their own budgets. If they wanted to cut back on something else, they could afford more in salaries. Some schools have costly buildings. Some have more aides, some have less. Some have smaller class size, some larger. Then there's salaries for their leadership, and how much they pay to consultants and charter management organizations.

At our school (ITDS), there are way more aides than DCPS provides for its schools. In DCPS, for example, there would not typically be a full-time aide in an upper elementary classroom unless it were PTO-funded or required by a student's IEP. DCPS aims for class sizes of 22-24ish for elementary, but will go higher on a case by case basis-- I've personally seen elementary classes as high as 29 kids. ITDS caps class size at 24, occasionally 25. If ITDS school went up to 25 in all classrooms, it would have $100K in formula funding. It's the school's choice to make. But it seems perfectly right and fair for a school with more students to get more funding.[/quote]

Wouldn't a school with more students automatically get more funding through the Uniform funding formula, precisely because they have more students?  So you are right that it is fair that a school with more students gets more funding.  That is not the same as equitable funding per student, however.

And the only way that DCPS can find money to pay their teachers more is because they are getting this money outside of the uniform funding formula.  Charters aren't getting the same increase to also increase their salaries.  You are right that they could change their pay structure, but that isn't the issue here. DCPS is getting this extra money outside of the UFF that charters aren't in order to increase salaries.  They aren't having to make alterations to their budgets, as you suggest, to find the extra money.  It is just being given to them.  [/quote]

When a student leaves a charter after count day, does the money follow the student to the receiving school or does the charter keep it?  When a student leaves a charter, does the charter have to fill that seat, perhaps from a waitlist? Is a charter required to take students at any time during the school year?

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Right now, the charter keeps it. No they don't have to fill the seat. No, they don't have to take students at any time during the year. Some charters choose to, others will tell you it's "not our model". Basically it's too haaaaaard, oh so haaard, so disruptive, their supposedly excellent teachers just can't handle what most schools in this country routinely do.[/quote]

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