Reply to Charter school funding gap in FY27 budget

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Reply to "Charter school funding gap in FY27 budget"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Oh yeah, this was the Rhee thing, right? Up salaries but make it easy to fire and throw in a really poor evaluation system to back both. [/quote]

No, these are base salaries that are fought and won by the Union. The evaluation system and bonuses were a Rhee thing, teachers can make way more than this with bonuses. Those bonuses are funded outside of the per pupil funding formula.

I see the argument for charter schools here. Charters can’t afford to pay high salaries because they have to pay rent, don’t get the extra funding for bonuses, I don’t know what else. And now they have to use their per pupil funding formula for basic utilities, renovations, and facilities while DCPS spends it just on salaries that keep going higher and higher. Taxpayers have to fund the general fund in addition to the per pupil funding to pay for DCPS facilities, utilities, etc. Also, Early Stages does not serve charter students. [b]Charter schools have to fund their early childhood special education programs through per pupil funding as well.[/b]
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https://www.earlystagesdc.org

You need to understand how this works. Early Stages is a separate program run by DCPS. It evaluates kids aged 2-5 (ish) for special needs, if those kids are not currently enrolled in a DCPS or charter school. Qualifying children can receive services through this program even if they aren't old enough for PK3. Charters do not run any evaluations or do services for kids younger than school age that I'm aware of. That is why charters don't get funding to do this.

I'm not sure this is still true, but it used to be that there are seats reserved in DCPS preschool classrooms for kids who have special needs and aren't old enough to start PK3. As soon as a qualifying child turns 3, they can potentially have one of those reserved seats, do a partial year of PK3, and then do a full year of PK3 with their age cohort. So basically it's a way to give kids a little extra preschool. Again, I'm not aware of any charters that do this. So when DCPS schools get money for doing this, it's different than the usual UPSFF special needs funding. Charters have to fund their early childhood programs through UPSFF for their own preschool students, yes, but they do NOT have to serve anyone who is not of proper PK3 age, and they do NOT have to give anyone more than 1 year of PK3. So that is why DCPS gets Early Stages funding-- because DCPS is doing things that charters don't do.

Fixed quoting.[/quote]

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