Looking at my Twitter feed this AM, it looks like I missed one very important bill, H7808, which changes the state’s education-aid “funding formula” in a way adverse to charter schools (h/t Jason Becker).

Primary sponsor Jeremiah T. O’Grady explained the intent of H7808 in a letter to the Valley Breeze…

The problem…is that the per-pupil local share number includes more than those costs directly associated with the education of any particular student. It also includes a portion of the district’s facility costs (grounds, utilities, maintenance), enrichment costs (sports, class trips, after school activities), legacy costs (pension and OPEB obligations), and some highly expensive special education costs (particularly Early Intervention services for at-risk preschoolers, and out-of-district placements for severely disabled children). These expenses do not follow the student to the charter or decrease with the removal of any one student from the local system, but instead are left behind to be shouldered by the remaining district revenues.

Michael Magee, the CEO of Rhode Island Mayoral Academies, summarized the practical impact in a letter to the same paper…

[P]ublic charter school budgets across the state would be reduced by 10-20 percent. Most of them would go bankrupt and some would leave behind millions of dollars in state-obligated school construction bonds that taxpayers could be on the hook for.

From Magee’s description, it certainly sounds like charters have capital costs commensurate with district capital costs, and it’s something of a mystery as to why anyone would expect otherwise.  Rep. O’Grady’s explanation, on the other hand, sounds like the latest version of the claim that since district bureaucracies have been really inefficient with public funds, they should be entitled to them first.

 

That’s the background. Here’s the description that would have gone into today’s list, with a high-ranking:

H7808: Converts Rhode Island’s current education “funding formula” away from a follow-the-student basis, into a politically-rigged formula intended to punish schools for not being managed by traditional district-level bureaucracies. (H Finance; Mon, Jun 16)