Unfair mid-year cut to charter schools
Summary
- Last summer, Legislators and the Governor agreed on a budget that relied on "trigger" cuts if revenues in December 2011 were not at the levels that were expected when the budget was enacted; in that event, an agreed upon tiered approach to cuts would be implemented
- When the trigger cuts were implemented, one of the programs which lost funding was the home-to-school transportation program
- SB 81 would restore the transportation funds by instituting an across-the-board cut to revenue limit funds
- Results in an immediate, mid-year cut of about $42 per student
Impact on Charter Schools
- SB 81 is an example of the continuing problem in education funding - in every issue, there are winners and losers. Even among charter schools, there are funding inequities. None, however, are as large as the funding inequity between charter public schools and district public schools - up to $1,068 for some charter schools, according to the Legislative Analyst's Office.
- Unfortunately, in this instance, SB 81 asks all schools to "take a haircut" to restore the Home-to-School Transportation funding, even though charter schools do not receive this categorical funding.
- Originally, transportation funding was rolled into the charter school categorical block grant, although the block grant was subsequently de-linked to specific program funding in exchange for higher block grant rates.
- To this day, the block grant remains underfunded by $150. That's why we asked you to make your voice heard on SB 81. If charter schools are going to "share the pain," the Legislature must acknowledge our consistent underfunding and that inequity goes much deeper than different transportation funding rates between school districts.
CCSA Action & What You Can (and Did!) Do
We asked you to step up and let your Legislators know that you were opposed to SB 81 unless it was amended to take the needs of charter schools into account. And in less than 48 hours over 1,900 of you responded - THANK YOU! This collective effort to protect charter school funding helped change the conversation in Sacramento.
While the Governor signed SB 81, at minimum, our opposition gave voice to the fact that this was not a simple, easy fix. As each committee and house of the Legislature debated the bill, there was increasing discussion on the need to address these inequities as the budget discussions for 2012-13 begin. It is heartening to see such bipartisan acknowledgement of charter school funding inequities.
Thank you for your willingness to stand together, in an incredibly short amount of time, and make your voices heard. The public policy arena is always rapidly changing, and there is always another fight on the horizon. Thank you for helping us fight the good fight on behalf of students.