Face The State Staff Report
As the Aurora Public Schools District prepares to ask taxpayers for a pair of tax increases this November, charter school officials allege they have been largely excluded from the proposed financing bump.
The APS Board of Education voted earlier this month to approve two measures, one to increase the district's mill levy and another for $215 million in new bonds, for the November ballot. Excluded from the proposals is funding equity for the district's five charter schools.
On July 31st, the district's five charter schools sent a letter to the district asking to have their facility plans considered as part of the bond and mill levy proposals. The APS school board declined, instead telling charter officials that they could get $750,000 in bond funds for capital needs and $100 per student in mill levy funds, if both measures are approved by the voters.
Using 2007 enrollment data, charter school students would each receive an estimated $452 in bond money, while district students attending non-charter schools would each receive $6,737. While more than five percent of APS students attend a public charter school, they would receive less than one half of one percent of the bond proceeds.
District Superintendent John Barry says a per-pupil analysis confuses the issue because some schools have greater costs associated with facilities upkeep or student needs. "You cannot responsibly balance taxpayer money based on even allocations on a per student basis," he said. "You have to do it by need."
According to Barry, an independent advisory committee made up of local residents determined which projects should benefit from the bond money. The board concluded, according to Barry, that the charter schools "didn't make the cut." Still, he maintains they were not excluded from the process. He said during the committee's June meeting, representatives from three of the district's five charter schools showed up and only two made presentations.
In addition to APS's five current charter schools, a sixth is also preparing to open this month. The schools include Aurora Academy, Global Village Academy, Lotus School for Excellence, New America Schools, and Vanguard Classical Schools. AXL Academy will open this fall.
Rob Miller, director of operations for Vanguard, a second year charter school, said, “We hope that APS responds to the Aurora families that send their children to charter schools by including charter schools in their future plans.”
Barry counters that every school is receiving some money, and some are even receiving less than the charters. The Aurora Sentinel has reported Barry saying the district would use the increase in funds from the mill levy increase to give salary increases to all employees, implement full-day kindergarten, fund future pilot school growth and fifth-block programs, and continue with technology improvements. If the measures passes, he says $60 million will be spent on a new high school.
Barry also told Face The State the bond money is intended for capital construction, and that all but one charter school, Aurora Academy, rent their facilities.
Aurora City Councilman Ryan Frazier said he is "concerned over the fact that charter schools will receive little benefit" from the bond money, and he said fellow Councilman Larry Beer has also expressed trepidation. Frazier also expressed concern about the district's "bad public policy" to hinge the possibility of a salary increase on whether the measure passes.
In an August 6 editorial, the Aurora Sentinel criticized Colorado's state charter school law and called charter schools the “unwanted orphans” of local school districts. The editorial asserted that charter schools lack accountability, including a suggestion that charter schools could spend bond money any way they wished.
The editorial has outraged school choice supporters. “The claim that charter schools lack accountability is laughable," said Ben DeGrow, an education policy analyst with the Independence Institute, a Golden-based free market think tank and frequent supporter of charter schools. "In many ways they’re more accountable than traditional public schools. If charters are managed poorly or fail to meet academic performance standards, they actually can be shut down.”
Under state law, charter schools receive less funding than traditional district schools. A charter school is a semi-autonomous public school of choice operated by parents, teachers, or community members that signs a charter with a school district or other authorizer to meet certain standards. Charter schools are automatically freed from some state laws to operate with greater flexibility, but cannot discriminate in their acceptance of students. Similar to traditional schools, charter schools receive funding tied to each student under the state's per pupil revenue system. This includes funds for operating expenses, like salaries and textbooks. The charter school’s authorizer, the school district or state chartering authority, however, may keep up to 5 percent of per-pupil revenue for documented administrative expenses.
In “Shortchanged Charters: How Funding Disparities Hurt Colorado Charter Schools,” the Colorado League of Charter Schools states that just 19 percent of the state’s charter schools receive bond proceeds from their local school district. Instead, on average, charter schools spend $480 of their designated per student operating funds on facility costs.
According to DeGrow, it is not uncommon for charter schools to have to dip into operating revenues to defray facilities costs.
The result, according to DeGrow and other charter school advocates, is that many charter schools are artificially limited from serving high poverty populations.
According to the Colorado League of Charter Schools, just 28 percent of charter schools have kitchen facilities that meet federally-subsidized Free/Reduced Hot Lunch standards, leaving limited options for charter schools serving high-poverty students such as in the Aurora School District.
Other metro school districts have included public charter schools in their bond questions. In Denver, both the Omar D. Blair Charter School and the Odyssey Charter School operate in new district-owned facilities. Denver School of Science and Technology and KIPP Sunshine Peak receive bond funds, $5 million and $3 million respectively, to help meet their facility needs. The facility agreements state that should the charter school close, the properties would revert to the school district.