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Can’t Mr. Merriman get his hedge fund backers to write more checks?  

Or how about this — increase your class sizes to the rest of the city’s class sizes.  That will
help bring in more money.  And stop counseling out the kids who need help.  That will help you hang onto funding.  And then start giving the struggling kids the help they need.  That should bring in more Special Ed and Title 1 funding, not to mention better press.   Charter advocates always like to say their schools are public schools, so start acting like they are!

The IBO found that charter schools in Board of Ed buildings (the vast majority) received basically the same amount of taxpayer funding as public schools. On top of that they have unrestricted access to private donations. There’s absolutely no reason charters should get a funding increase while public schools are getting cuts.

Um, public schools aren’t REALLY getting cut, at least not the way charters consider funding. The DOE principals are dealing with a DISCRETIONARY cut, not a REAL dollars cut. You see, charters don’t have built-in increases in our budgets and contracts the way the DOE does. If we did, we would not have even survived on the zero increase in last year’s funding.

Philanthropy doesn’t grow on trees; and it’s available to DOE schools as well. Isn’t that Carolyn Kennedy’s job? And can’t DOE principals write grant proposals with their time just like many charter principals choose to do?

Plain and simple, the funding formula discriminates against charters.

“Um public schools are not really getting cut, at least not the way charters consider funding” That’s apples and organge and a really puerile argument.
Carolyn Kennedy is no longer at the DOE and the efforts she led seem to have faded away. Fund raising by DOE employees is limited by law. You can’t use private money to supplant public money….at least that is what I have been told. As a resutl, many funders will not contribute to a public institution.
If the hedge funders were that eager to contribute, why wait? If, as we have been told repeatedly, it’s the same students in the same area, what is holding back an entrepreneur from trying her/his hand in contributing to a DOE school? Laws. Look at what happened when the Phizer bldg was supposed to be donated to the DOE. There is no mechanism. Here, now, is the Mayor’s/Chancellor’s opportunity to alter the law so that someone of a beneficent streak can do the things like create smaller class sizes, create a longer school day or year.

My understanding, KS, is that district school principals have been dealing with real dollar cuts for several years now. Not imaginary cuts but real cuts. Anyway, the charter schools have always bragged that they could do better with less; let them prove it!

Children should not be discriminated against based on what kind of school they attend. Students in charter schools were supposed to get the same amount of public funding as students in district schools. It is patently unfair to freeze charter school funding while accepting federal stimulus funds to increase the district school funding. Fair is fair. And it’s appalling to hear the argument that charter schools should rely on private funding to make up the difference. I don’t think it’s fair for public schools with wealthy parents to pay for extra staff in their schools and it’s not fair to make charter schools spend their time begging donors for money when public funds should be allocated evenly across all public schools, charter and district alike.

This is not debatable. The bloomberg administration is not working towards equality. It is moving to provide opportunity and advantage wherever and whenever possible to charters. Meetings with the deputy mayor???

My school is being hacked away at by Harlem Success Academy. They are demanding more of my school’s classrooms at PS 241 with no plan offerred for the future. They come to my school and say give us your rooms or we’re going to complain to the chancellor. Equallity??? Complain to the chancellor???

Not debatable – not if we don’t use facts.

“And finally, I’ve never heard a response from the charter community on the shameful practice of counseling out students they don’t want after they’ve gotten the funding for them.”

I would like to address this, because it is a charge that I heard from a CEC president and a Superintendent, and they were very surprised to learn that this is 100% wrong.

A charter school must invoice the city for students whom they take in. An invoice for special education students is submitted approximately every two months, and is detailed down to the minutes of services and the day the student began the school and left the school. The charter ONLY receives funding for the precise amount of FTEs that the child was present in the school: they do not receive funding for students who have left the schools.

In about July of each year, the school must submit to the DOE a “reconciliation” showing all the students, both general and special education, in the school and they day they began and the day they left. If the school has been overpaid for students, that amount of money will be taken from their per pupil payments in in about October or November of the next school year. If they have been underpaid, they will receive that funding. For these reasons, most charters try to make sure that they are fully subscribed at all times.

Please feel free to check this with authorities.

Charter dollars (real dollars, not washed through the contracts) are staying flat. Again.

DOE dollars are going up. Again.

Discretionary dollars are going down for DOE principals – but only because all of the stakeholders have removed their pound of flesh before it makes it to the school level. Don’t confuse your class size matters rhetoric with the facts about which dollars are going up and which are not.

And by the way, what does charter funding have to do with class size in district schools?

Arthur, you’ll have to ask the chancellor for the full explanation. Here’s my understanding: the DOE total expenditure is going up, because there are fixed cost increases that can’t be changed. For example, your salary will increase if the contract says your year of teaching constitutes a step or whatever it is, regardless of whether the DOE agrees to a “raise.” Same is true for every teacher across the board.

If teachers get, on average, a 3% COLA increase built into the current contract, which will remain in effect as long as there is an impasse, but the total expenditure or state allocation only goes up 1% or 2%, then there is a 1% or 2% difference that has to come from somewhere to make up for the salary obligation.

The same is true for a lot of other contracts. Add it up and you get the 4% discretionary cut, or whatever it is.

I didn’t negotiate any of those contracts, don’t look at me. Don’t shoot the messenger, but I am talking about the following facts:

FY 2009: DOE spent $20.66 billion
FY2010: DOE budgeted $21.89 billion
FY2011: DOE has proposed $22.56 billion

Where is the cut? I don’t have the DOE per-pupil expenditure because I don’t have accurate enrollment figures, but I understand that DOE enrollment is going DOWN, which emphasizes the INCREASE in total expenses.

Now let’s look at charter school per-pupil revenue from the state:

FY 2009: $12,443
FY 2010: $12,443
FY 2011 (proposed): $12,443

Hey, KS, thanks for that great explanation.  Odd that our budget, cut 4%, is down 7.  There’s a complicated explanation, similar to yours.  I won’t pretend to understand it.

Perhaps I’ll share your message with the inconsolable young woman I referred to before as well as the other 11 excessed teachers, the 2 excessed paraprofessionals, and the 15 excessed school aides.  I’m certain they’ll find it precisely as persuasive as I did.

 I’ve seen the figures, and the truth is, like every other public school, we got our budget cut.   The DoE budget support who knows who doing who knows what, gala luncheons, tea parties, junkets to exotic locales, fresh crumpets and pastries for the geniuses at Tweed.  On the ground it’s carnage, pure and simple.

Maybe you’re fooling yourself, but I’ve had a very, very rough day and you certainly don’t fool me.

KS
There is no disputing that you are a facts guy. However, like many of your Ed deformer bretheren, many of your facts fail to add up to any truths.