Lake City Principal Defends Charter School Funding (SC)

February 4, 2011

The principal of a Lake City charter school says schools like hers are underfunded and deserving of a bill that would shift some money from the state’s public school districts.

The House Education Committee voted 14-4 on Wednesday to advance a bill that would require most of South Carolina’s public school districts to spend some of their local property taxes on charter school students around the state — about $21 million from the local districts, state Superintendent of Education Mick Zais told The Associated Press.

The bill will now go to the House floor.

Charter schools are public schools, said Dr. Deloris Brown, principal of Lake City College Preparatory Academy, and charter school students are required to take the same tests as other public school students. Therefore, they deserve equitable funding, she said.

“We must use scientifically proven best practices to provide an education for public school students,” Brown said in an e-mail interview.

The 11 charter schools organized under the statewide charter school district — five of which are online schools — get no money from local property taxes.

School board officials told the AP that it’s unfair to ask districts to part with that money as they face another round of state budget cuts.

Brown said public school students, including those at charter schools, must take the same tests required by No Child Left Behind.

She said, however, that if a student leaves a local public school and travels less than one-quarter of a mile down the street to a charter school where he or she intensively would study dance or another art form, the charter school will receive about 80 percent less money to educate the same student, she said.

“It doesn’t matter that we have a longer school day, which ends at 4 p.m., nor does it matter that we provide access to instrumental music, dance, art, and theatre,” Brown said.  “We still get approximately 80 percent less funding to operate, and we still have to pay out of our small underfunded budget to provide transportation for our public school students.”

Dr. Wayne Brazell, superintendent of the South Carolina Public Charter School District, said his district is one of the nation’s lowest funded public school districts. For public school students to face such a disproportionate level of funding is unacceptable, he said in an e-mail interview.

“Of course, as superintendent … I am concerned about the students and schools in this public school district receiving a fair share of public educational funding,” he said.

It is impossible, he said, to keep schools open with a total funding level of around $3,500 per student.

Parents who have chosen to have their children attend to Lake City College Preparatory Academy, a legislatively authorized public school, lose almost $5,000 in funding per child when they attend that school as opposed to the other public schools in Lake City, Brazell said.

“We support the concept of public school funding following the child, but my major goal is to establish our funding leve l at a sustainable level,” he said.

More than 9,000 students attend the state’s charter schools, Brazell said.

“We are the 24th largest school district in the state, and we have been operating schools for less than three years,” Brazell said.

Two new charter schools are scheduled to open next year, while two or three additional schools per year are expected to open for the foreseeable future, he said.

“There is obviously a lot of support for a parent-choice program such as charter schools,” Brazell said.