Understanding Charter Schools

Dear Members:

• I posted a series of newspaper articles on our website about charter schools including one small school district in our area that normally receives only $400,000 a year in school funding from the state.  Compare that to MUSD’s $300 million in funding.  Teeny tiny New Jerusalem School District has only 16 kindergartners in its entire school district.  However, they received an additional $550,000 per kindergartner in additional funding or about $9 million extra.  $550,000 for EACH kindergartner.  Click here to read the charter schools articles on our website.  Fascinating reading.

 

• New Jerusalem supervises a number of private charter schools. The fact of the matter is they really don’t supervise them, but they sure do get paid for them.  That’s been the problem nationwide with private charters. No supervision.  New Jerusalem, for its 16 kindergartners, has a Superintendent and 3 Deputy Superintendents.  MUSD has ONE Deputy Superintendent.  One of their former Deputy Superintendents is running for the County Office School Board.  Maybe that extra $9 million helps with the extra admin cost to handle those…16 troublesome kindergartners. Plus, their teachers are the lowest paid in the county.

 

• As  you probably know, MUSD has a charter, be.tech, which is a DEPENDENT public Charter run by the district, and not an Independent Charter run by a private company or individual.  That means it is operated by the school district and has fewer freedoms than an independent charter, but still allows for innovation in curriculum, scheduling, and training.  They don’t take funds away from MUSD, but rather provide an alternative learning experience for students.  be.tech is a vocational program which is REALLY needed in education.  Private charters are run by private individuals or companies.