|
|||
|
|
|||
|
This advisory includes:
A. Student Population Enrollment- Charter Schools B. HB 297 - Key Corrections For Charter School Law
HB297 has the most important issues needing remedy in the state’s charter school law. Charter schools also need a formula for targeted state funding as part of the public system, e.g. 80% of the calculated state average total cost per student.
A. STUDENT ENROLLMENT & CHARTER SCHOOLS
If every approved charter school met its enrollment targets for the next 2 years and if all schools in the pipeline go forward and are approved, the total student population needing funding is 372 in 2005-2006 and 695 in 2006-2007.
Complete data regarding New Hampshire charter school population projections can be found here: http://www.nhschoolreform.org/NHCSGrowth.htm.
B. HOUSE BILL 297 - House Education Committee, Friday, 1:00 p.m.
Key issues:
School boards should decide if they want to hear proposals or not, but cannot. Right now the entire legislative body has to vote just so school boards may review proposals. And this procedural requirement can take a year. The recommendation is to let school boards, not the entire legislative body, decide whether or not to review proposals.
School districts mandated to consider choice, or that need solutions for too many private special placements, or who find themselves over-crowded and needing options cannot, themselves, look at proposals without legislative body voting. Meanwhile, eligible parties can ask for state board authorization in a few months. The current procedure for local approval prevents groups from seeking local approval even when it is a district charter school being proposed.
The important control is the district voting ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on actually authorizing a specific proposal. This provision would be unchanged even if the statute is revised to allow school boards to decide if they want or need to review proposals.
State laws rated as “best” provide student funding directly from the state to the charter school (state authorized schools, in particular). Direct-pay solves many problems. It saves days and days of billing and collecting time and curtails related budget discussions at the local level. It assures state funding actually reaches the charter school students. Also, district schools have to show the pass-through money as an “expense” which is a problem for many districts. Basically, the through-the-district system creates problems for charter schools AND districts. Plus, the pass-through system doesn’t seem to work. Give charter schools a vendor number, as with other public schools, and distribute their students’ state funding directly. Otherwise, there is no guarantee that charter school students will have money for their teachers. Much charter school board time this year has been trying to figure out how to solve this problem. School board time should be spent making sure schools work well.
The student enrollment projection for charter schools is 372 in 2005-2006 and 695 in 2006-2007. Several schools would agree to undertake the record-keeping if the legislature will just let the state funding flow directly to the charter schools. Even if all 20 charter schools were approved and at full capacity, the total projected enrollment is under 3,000 students.
State funding intended for education of public students in charter schools should be guaranteed to reach those students. That’s not what is happening now.
The financial model for New Hampshire public schools has several components, including an amount of state funding for students and a separate amount of funding for facility construction reimbursement under certain circumstances.
Charter schools use available buildings and could lease-purchase except they do not have the assets to guarantee a mortgage or lease/buy arrangement or even a long-term lease.
The US DOE’s 38 million dollar charter school facility project provides guarantees for charter school loans, mortgages, and leases. But NH schools cannot access these funds because there is no direct revenue stream tied to facilities. Even $300 per student as a facility stipend would open the door for NH charter schools to seek participation in the charter school facility projects nationwide. And since this is the most difficult expense issue for non-district charter schools, allowing a small facility stipend would be of great benefit, e.g. having some backing to negotiate a lease-purchase or loan. Ultimately, taxpayers and the state win, financially, when charter schools extract enough students so that new school buildings projects are not required.
Wording suggested: “The state may offer a facility stipend per child in addition to any amount of state aid provided to a charter school.” Providing an actual facility stipend per student to qualifying charter schools would, of course, be better.
The 1995 law made clear that public charter school employees “could” (option of the board of trustees) participate in the public school retirement system. But the wording used was “teacher retirement system.” And so there is confusion because not all public school personnel are “teachers.” Correction: …add “or public employee…” Still an option, but clarifies.
The anticipation note funding option in the charter school law seems disconnected from how banks issue and manage anticipation notes. Will banks issue anticipation notes? Who incurs the debt? How long does this take to process, if any bank will issue anticipation notes around ever-changing state funding schemes? Where does the money come from to repay? Finally, why go through extensive machinations if a public school district can just borrow money under regular circumstances? If the total amount of funding for all state-authorized charter schools is small, why not just set up the delayed payment of state funds through the state instead of asking dozens of local school districts to become embroiled in an anticipation note scheme that keeps everyone talking to banks and finding out the procedure doesn’t work as once thought.
The anticipation note model should be replaced by a simple funding formula for state-authorized charter schools (e.g. 80% of the state’s calculation for total per pupil cost). But if the anticipation note wording stays, at the least the wording must be clarified as to who has responsibility for what. It should be clear that the charter school is not responsible for transferring funds to itself.
Suggested wording “Responsibility for transfer of funds to a charter school shall be with the state or school district, as may be appropriate.”
Teachers in public schools are now talking about small charter schools. The current law requires teachers with “withdraw” from their union to teach in a charter school. There is confusion between “withdraw” and “take a leave of absence”.
Several states have charter school law provisions for long-term leaves of absence for teachers who go to work in charter schools. Some states clarify that the leave is for working in charter schools that serves students from the teacher’s district. The correction is purely to clarify that taking a leave of absence is a form of withdrawal.
When authorized to open, the charter school is an independent public school, a public instrumentality, a creature of the legislature (like the SAU), a public corporation, tax exempt by the IRS as a public instrumentality because it is a public school, and subject to the same financial, open meeting, and board management guidelines as a public school.
Wording added to statute last year required the public charter school to simultaneously form itself as a voluntary non-public school corporation. This is terribly confusing. The Secretary of State has no jurisdiction over public schools. The charter school law prohibits non-public schools from becoming public charter schools. Auditor consultants say the charter schools must be one or the other, but cannot simultaneously follow accounting provisions and reports for public schools and also voluntary not-for-profit corporations. The requirements are different.
Original 1995 charter school legislation seems sufficient. Last year’s revision created ongoing confusions and time and resource obligations. Charter school financial reporting needs to proceed as is required for public schools and the charter board needs to function fully and openly as a public school.
The continuing confusion here seems to be that to be eligible to submit a charter, a group must be a not-for-profit organization registered wit the secretary of state. This forward-moving group is NOT a public school. And when the charter school is authorized as a public school, the board of the forwarding-moving group is NOT the board of the charter school. The charter application says how many trustees will govern the charter school and the law outlines their duties and authority and public status. Two different bodies--one public; one non-public.
|
|||
Home | Schools | News | Q&A | Applications | Contact Us
This page was designed by Riverbank Communications, LLC
|