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][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 choose to pay their teachers lower salaries in many cases.  They want to be independent and therefore they choose how to allocate their budgets.  They choose their staffing numbers, salaries, etc.  Advocate with your charter leaders to increase teacher pay in their budgeting.[/quote]

How would you guarantee the increase in budget would go to teacher salaries? There is not guarantee that all that money would go to salaries.  The lack of oversight and wanting an independent organization makes taxpayers such as myself wary of giving a bunch of money to charters.

WITH WHAT MONEY? How does a school pay their teachers more when the increase in UPSFF doesn't cover the inflationary increase to our fixed costs? Where do we get the funds? Many schools are enrolled to capacity- we can't just "add kids" because we have an enrollment cap. We can't reduce fixed costs on our facilities because we have to meet debt covenant ratios based on loans and it isn't like food/material costs are going down.

What magical budgeting skills do you think we have? Cutting "bloated" salaries...okay, lets just assume that I can do that...how much do you think that will save? A hundred grand? Cool- so all my teachers get a $2,500 raise? Compare that to the increases in DCPS...do you think we can keep teachers in our classrooms? If not, who does that hurt the most? The 48% of at-risk students that charters serve throughout the city.

Wake up- this isn't to fill to coffers of charter schools...[/quote]

You can apply for an increase in enrollment cap and that will allow you to increase class sizes.
You can try harder to fill up empty seats before Count Day.
You can stop spending money on consultants, admin salaries, and charter management organizations.
You can lower your quality to DCPS levels-- honestly, that's a big part of the difference.
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WHAT? Did you just say these public charter schools (that serve majority black and brown kids across the city) should just lower the quality of instruction? Wow.

Also, charters can't just "apply" for an enrollment cap increase. That whole process wasn't even available for the last two cycles due to PCSB changing the rules and not offering the opportunity last year. Also, the enrollment ceilings for most schools aren't just willy-nilly- they match the legal occupancy of your buildings. Of course we want to have more students, but our school facilities are very different than DCPS- we don't have large underutilization in most charter schools.

I do agree- the place to cut would be consultants, admin, and CMOs (for the ONE CHARTER IN DC THAT PAYS A CMO). However, that isn't going to get you very far when it comes to raising teacher salaries to mirror DCPS.

I understand being flummoxed by the situation. I wish the Mayor decided to do this the same way it was done the last two times there was a WTU increase and put the funds through the UPSFF. There is a lot of historical precedent for the city following the law around equitable funding after large WTU increases. These are operational funds and should, by law, go through the funding mechanism. If they want to change that- change the law, but that will require public discourse. Not just a budget hearing.

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I said they can match DCPS' quality. If you have a problem with that, then maybe you should be more supportive of DCPS.

If you want more space there's always trailers, like DCPS uses. Or dividing across multiple buildings, like DCPS does. Or utilizing less than ideal spaces, like DCPS does. It's a bit rich to complain about money but refuse to implement the solutions that DCPS has to use.[/quote]

Nope- you said No, you said "You can lower your quality to DCPS levels-- honestly, that's a big part of the difference." You can literally read it in your pp.

And I am hugely supportive of DCPS- I send one of my kids there, volunteer on the LSAT, and show up for DCPS hearings/groups, etc.

You are so wrong to think that charters don't use trailers, or divide across multiple buildings. The occupancy study across all schools found that DCPS has major underutilization (esp. at the high school level).

Unfortunately, I don't think you are very in to backing up your statements with any data (and you don't seem to know much about the charter sector's very real challenges with facilities, staffing, and all of the other challenges DCPS faces). I find it stunning that people are so intrenched in a political point of view that you would want the teachers and children in those schools to get less funding....mind blowing.

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NP and I’m glad you are a supporter of DCPS but I would guess you are a supporter of a ward 3 school or your kid is in PK or K.  My guess is you don’t see the real challenges many DCPS schools face in terms of student population.[/quote]

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