SYNOPSIS:
Under existing law, when a child applies to enter a charter school, the burden is placed upon that charter school to contact the previous school district of the child to determine if the child was subject to expulsion. There are also children who are placed in alternative schools programs for discipline reasons who were not expelled. It has become more common for parents of these children to apply for enrollment in charter schools in order to circumvent the expulsion or discipline program. This has been made possible because some school districts have not responded to the requests made by charter schools for these discipline or expulsion records. If the Charter school enrolls the student and later discovers this issue, the Charter school is not permitted to disenroll the student and is thereafter responsible for that child’s cost2. The previous school district thus benefits financially from its failure to respond as it is no longer responsible for the cost of that child3. The changes in this bill close this loophole for parents and remove the disincentive for school districts to respond to these requests. If the previous school district fails to respond to a request, they will now have to resume responsibility for the costs of the child. The loophole should be closed for many of these parents as the charter schools will have this information available to it when deciding whether to enroll a child, and they are required to disenroll the student upon discovery of this information.
SPONSOR: Rep. Ramone & Sen. Simpson;
Reps. D. Short, Wilson, M. Smith; Sens. Hocker, Richardson
Emphasis mine.
What is this buffoonery from Representative Ramone and Senator Simpson? And I did a double take, there’s a democrat co-sponsoring. I verified it: Rep. Melanie George Smith still has a D behind her name. Though maybe she doesn’t realize it’s there.
Let’s re-state this ground rule, as Rep. Ramone et al seems to have forgotten it or didn’t know about it at all: Charter schools ARE public schools. They are funded with the same tax money as district schools.
2 Mr. Ramone needs to read the regs pertaining to per student funding in public education. When a student moves from a District school to a Charter school, the tax money collected by the original district for spending on that student goes with the student to the charter. There is no fiscal “responsibility” borne by the Charter, the sending District is paying that child’s per-student expense. If Mr. Ramone doesn’t believe me, I have a $21 million charter bill Christina School District is paying this year for him to look at. Email me, Rep Ramone: brianstephan@gmail.com and I can help you understand how public schools are funded in this state.
3 Districts can’t benefit financially by sending a student to a charter. Why? See note 2 above. The district SENDS the money with the student wherever the student goes in the realm of public education in Delaware, yet still maintains the teacher, classroom, building the student left behind. I have absolutely no clue where he’s finding this information or who’s feeding it to him. Maybe he’s just completely making it up out of thin air.
As for the bolded portion above, there already is a law on the books that requires the sending district to provide a student’s file upon request. If the sending district is not complying with the law, this is a law enforcement problem. You don’t have to create financial disincentives for districts; they already exist: Charters. And it’s already against the law to not provide a district or charter with student records upon request.
If we really want to talk about disincentives for disenrolling students, how about penalizing charters when they expel students who then return to District schools without the Charter sending the remaining portion of the kid’s funding back with him/her? That actually happens.
So what’s this amendment actually for? Let’s hope it dies a quick death in committee.