Thus article addresses the inequities with school funding:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dc-charter-schools-deserve-fair-funding/2013/04/20/ca521fbe-a891-11e2-a8e2-5b98cb59187f_story.html

That's only for the most extreme case - I bet the majority of special needs students in charters do not get most of that extra funding.

And only then does it begin to start costing more than the per-student cost of the AVERAGE, non-special-needs student in DCPS.

There's still a huge disparity in funding. Charters get the short end of the stick.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Even the MAXIMUM special needs funding to charters is less than the AVERAGE per student funding in DCPS.

This isn't true.

Signed,

Special Ed coordinator in a charter school.

Oh, really? Not true?

Average spending for a normal (no disabilities) student in DCPS is $35,000 a year. There are many kids in the DCPS systems who cost the system $50,000 a year and more.

How many kids without disabilities in your charter get $35,000 a year from the system to spend on them?

How many special needs kids in your charter get $35,000 a year from the system to spend on them?

How many students in your charter get $50,000 a year from the system to spend on them?

Charter school students who receive the maximum special ed funding receive more than $27,000 in just special ed funds. In addition they receive per pupil funding, and many of them also receive an additional bonus for being in a more expensive grade, for being ELL, for being Title 1. They also receive facilities funds. Significant number of them receive free transportation from DCPS.

This adds up to significantly more than $35,000 a year.

In addition, you have to keep in mind that OSSE pays the tuition for charter school students who are referred to $50,000 private schools.

I'm not saying that there's not a discrepancy between DCPS and Charter spending on special education, but the statement that the maximum funding for a special ed student is below $35,000 is false.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No exaggeration. Divide the DCPS budget by the number of students.

Meanwhile, divide any charter's budget by number of students and you get a far smaller number.

That budget includes sped transportation, sped education tuition and teacher pensions. Again, your number is a fallacy.

The charter school budget numbers ALSO include special education and teacher benefits. The charter school numbers include EVERYTHING.

You're claiming it's because of special needs - but I've done the math. The overall average works out to over $30,000 per student in DCPS. The claim has been made that the real cost figure is only $11,000 per student in DCPS. If that's the reality, and given that only 13% are special needs students, there would have to be a cost of $150,000 per special needs student in order to have it balance out to the $30,000 per student average cost overall across DCPS.

I don't think anyone here believes that it costs $150,000 per special needs in DCPS, but certainly there's plenty of anecdotal information about special needs kids being sent out by DCPS to attend private schools at an expense of over $50,000 per student - and likewise, nobody here believes that it costs $11,000 per student in DCPS, as that figure was already debunked in another thread and was shown to not include the building, utilities, school lunches, textbooks, and many other big ticket items - the real cost per student for non-special-needs is far higher than $11,000 per student.