Opponents of the measure, including democratically elected education committees around the state and labor organizations, charge that charter schools will sap more than $450 million from traditional public schools this year and that increasing the number of charters would lead to larger class sizes and reduced school accountability in local communities.
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That analysis includes Lowell, which had 1,490 charter-school students in fiscal 2016.
“The enrollment in Massachusetts’ charter schools means that local school districts lose more than $400 million in the state’s Chapter 70 aid”.
The waiting list of students wanting to study at charter schools in MA now stands at almost 33,000, according to the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.
Voters will decide this November whether to lift the cap now limiting charter school expansion to 12 per year.
In the hours before the meeting, charter school advocates trumpeted the release of a report by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research that said MA charter schools pose no financial threat to traditional school systems.
Eileen O’Connor of Great Schools Massachusetts, a pro-charter group, said the opposition has built a campaign “founded on blatant and willful lies”.
But some charter school advocates spoke in favor of the ballot question.
Yet, as school officials may argue – and what the report also mentions – a technical per-pupil increase still doesn’t erase the challenge of students lost to charter schools. “Only a small percentage of trustees are parents or students at the school”. But the Brookings study found the state’s oversight of the schools robust. That’s because more money could be spent on charter schools as the size of the Boston school budget increases from one year to the next.
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The Manhattan Institute on Wednesday released a report that concluded charter school enrollments “effectively” increase statewide per-pupil district spending by about $85 million each year, and that there is “little evidence in MA that charter schools harm traditional district schools”. Even so, Eden said, it still causes an increase in the per-pupil amount. That funding arrives on top of regular state aid, which charter supporters argue is still being used to educate children in public charter schools. When a student switches from a traditional school to a charter school, the traditional school continues to receive per-pupil funding for that student for six years, she said, though that funding percentage decreases from 100 percent to 25 percent over time. “Voters deserve to be told the truth-and the truth is that Question 2 will increase public education funding and give parents more opportunity to choose the best school for their kids”.
