Charter School's Funding Under Fire - Marin IJ - Novermber 28, 2004 - By Jennifer Gollan, IJ Reporter

Article Last Updated: Sunday, November 28, 2004 - 4:28:50 AM PST

Charter school's funding under fire

By Jennifer Gollan, IJ reporter

Novato board chief wants part of money withheld
Challenging state law, the president of the Novato Unified School District Board of Trustees wants to withhold a portion of funding for a local charter school to reduce the district's $3.7 million budget deficit through 2006.

Board President Cindi Clinton said she will propose a measure at a trustee meeting tomorrow that seeks to keep about $180,000 in district funding designated for the year-old Marin School of Arts and Technology in the 2005-2006 school year.

"My concern is that (the Marin School of Arts and Technology) is taking away much-needed funds from every other student that attends school in our district," Clinton said. "I am willing to go to jail over this, that's how strong I feel about it."

State law requires that charter high schools throughout the state receive an equal amount of money per student. In Novato, the amount required is more than the per-pupil expenditure for Novato students attending the district's traditional schools, a situation viewed as unfair, among other things, by Clinton.

Last year, the per-pupil expenditure for regular high school students in Novato was $4,787, while the expenditure required by the state for charter high schools, including the Marin School of Arts and Technology, was $5,494 per student, according to the most recent figures available from the state Department of Education.

Daniel McLaughlin, chief executive officer of Envision Schools, a San Francisco-based nonprofit organization that oversees Novato's lone charter high school and City Arts and Technology High School in San Francisco, declined to comment on Novato's forthcoming proposal. He said the money the district gives to the school represents a small portion of the budget deficit.

The dispute goes to the heart of the debate over charter schools - taxpayer-funded schools that are exempt from most rules governing traditional public schools. Charter schools offer parents an opportunity to take the education of their children into their own hands, allowing them to pick up where they feel school districts fall short.

The Bush administration's No Child Left Behind law, which seeks to boost academic achievement of all students, gives schools that fail to meet the required goals for improvement the option of becoming charter schools.

With charter school enrollment increasing by an estimated 15 percent annually, some critics blame the schools for luring students away from traditional schools in their districts. Critics of charter schools say this affects districts' bottom lines, as most of California's more than 1,000 school districts receive a combination of state taxes and local property taxes based on average daily attendance.

Money for students at regular schools is spent largely at the discretion of district governing boards and their top administrators. Money for charter schools, however, is untouchable by school districts, meaning its expenditures are under the purview of charter school parents and administrators.

Revenue limits

Novato is one of at least several unified school districts statewide - those that include students in kindergarten through 12th grade - that receives less revenue limit funding than that required for charter high schools. The revenue limit is the general purpose money a district receives from the state based on its average daily attendance. Statewide, charter high schools receive equivalent funding based on the averages of revenue limit funding statewide and daily attendance.

When the Marin School of Arts and Technology began last year with 80 ninth-graders, Novato officials said the district kicked in about $90,000 from its general fund to cover the difference between the funding levels, as well as other costs.

The financial burden on the district is expected to grow as the school adds one grade each year, ending with the 12th grade in fall 2006. The district's payment of $119,000 to the school this year could jump to an estimated $240,000 in 2006, said Connie Benz, Novato's coordinator of communications and student data systems.

In California, at least several unified school districts are required to make up the difference between their revenue limit and the level of funding set for charter high schools statewide. In each case, the districts are responsible for those students living within their boundaries. They include, according to the Department of Education, the San Francisco Unified School District, which distributed $612,000 for its charter schools last year; Vacaville Unified School District, which paid $150,000, and the Vista Unified School District in San Diego County, which doled out $350,000.

Questions

Victoria Li, deputy general counsel assigned to charter schools in the San Francisco Unified School District, questioned the reasoning behind the state law requiring some districts to make up the disparity between their revenue limits and that of charter schools. About 1,600 of the 68,000 students in the San Francisco district attend charter schools.

"I think it's unfortunate, because it does impact us to a certain extent," she said. "Sometimes you want to ask the people who drafted the legislation 'What were you thinking?'"

In the meantime, districts might have few means of sidestepping their financial responsibilities to charter schools, said Cindy Chan, education fiscal administrator at the state Department of Education.

"In order for any deviance from the law, there has to be a change to the law," she said.

In January, Sen. John Vasconcellos, D-San Jose, who chairs the Senate Education Committee, proposed a bill that would have required the state to fund the disparity between the revenue limit of each unified district and that of charter schools. The bill was never heard but the California Charter Schools Association said it will lobby to have the measure reintroduced this year.

Statewide, the disparity issue seems to have spared those school districts that are basic-aid, meaning they rely primarily on local property taxes.

For example, in the Sausalito Marin City School District, local taxes allow the district to comfortably cover its costs, including those of Willow Creek Academy, an elementary charter school, said George Stratigos, president of the Sausalito Marin City District Board of Trustees.

State laws

Aside from the per-student cost, state law requires the Novato Unified School District provide a space for the charter school. The district covers the charter school's rent - $150,000 annually - for its facility at College of Marin's Indian Valley campus. The money comes out of the district's $107 million facilities bond revenue, approved by voters in 2001.

"It is devastatingly unfair because we can't even make our multiyear projections and serve the kids in our own district," Novato Superintendent Jan La Torre-Derby said.

But McLaughlin, the CEO of Envision Schools, said: "The great majority of students at MSAT (Marin School of Arts and Technology) are from the Novato Unified School District. We serve Novato Unified School District kids."

A confluence of factors have led to the district's $3.7 million budget shortfall through fiscal year 2006, Benz said. They include declining enrollment in the district's traditional schools, which dropped by 240 students to 7,637 since 2001, the failure earlier this month of the district's parcel tax proposal, as well as increased costs of employee benefits and workers compensation. The district has a $51 million budget this year.

Financial need aside, the district's consideration of a measure to revoke part of the charter's funding would be "the logical thing to do," said Mary Bergan, president of the California Federation of Teachers, which represents 70,000 school personnel statewide.

"We are probably going to see more of this simply because it's just more and more difficult for people to pay their bills and it becomes particularly difficult when people have other costs," she said.

But Gary Larson, vice president of communications at the California Charter Schools Association, a Los Angeles-based advocacy organization which represents more than 500 public charter schools statewide, said the charter school was entitled to the funding level set by the state.

"Sometimes it can be difficult for some school districts to recognize that taxpayer dollars are meant to fund students' educations over the district bureaucracy," he said.

Contact Jennifer Gollan via e-mail at jgollan@marinij.com

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