Charter schools are under attack again.
Not directly — these legislative assaults are rarely frontal attacks. But the goal is the same.
If the latest version of education reform, signed last February by Gov. Deval Patrick, was designed in part to encourage the growth and expansion of charter schools, a provision in the state Senate's version of the budget is designed to undermine all of that. It ought to be removed.
At present, charters are funded under the same formula covering other public schools — if funding for the district schools rises, it does for the charters as well. If it is cut, charters are cut by the same amount.
But a change proposed by Sen. Robert O'Leary, D-Cummaquid, would separate charter school state funding from that of other public schools, into separate line items.
And that, say charter advocates, would leave it open to various forms of mischief. Legislators could change the funding formula for charters, or cut their budgets individually, no matter what was happening with funding of district schools. It has been said numerous times that charter schools are public schools, but it bears plenty of repetition because of the continuing efforts to marginalize them or portray them as private schools that "steal" money from the public schools. They don't steal anything, of course, any more than building a new school "steals" from the other schools in a community. The major reason charters are hated so much is that most of them are not unionized.
But if legislators really care about "the children," as they claim they do, they will maintain the current funding formula. The parents of those children are overwhelmingly in favor of charters. The Lawrence Family Development Charter School has an enrollment of nearly 600, but a waiting list of 800. The Community Day Charter School, also in Lawrence, enrolls 306, and has a waiting list of 1,000. Those waiting lists are similar across the state.
Public education ought to be about what is best for the children. The vast majority of charters are doing the job as well or better than the district schools. The proposed change, which is part of the state budget, is now being negotiated between the House and Senate in a conference committee. The conferees should eliminate it — for the children.
