In my initial post 2 weeks ago about the lawsuit brought by Charters against Christina School District and the Delaware DOE, I said that I would update. Well, here we go.
Rep. Kim Williams recently wrote a blog post in which she offers her thoughts on an opinion piece published by the News Journal and authored by Kendall Massett, executive director of the Delaware Charter Schools Network. Rep. Williams gets it right when she says
Charters want flexibility, the flexibility should not come at the expense of our children. There are Delaware charters that open their schools up to all students, anyone who wants to apply can apply and they will add them to their lottery. Then there are other charter schools that shut their doors, hang a sign “experience needed” – this needs to stop.
There’s much more to this than equitable access to charter schools though, as she also mentions. There must be equitable student funding as well, including a standardized per-student funding formula. Something difficult, if not impossible to achieve given the funding system in place right now. The fact that Delaware uses a public referendum system as a mechanism to increase local operating taxes for its school districts makes ‘standardization’ of any funding formula difficult. Take the ‘controversial’ district specific exclusions that Charters are suing Christina School District over.
When a charter receives local tax revenue from their students’ sending district, the amount is calculated based on the sending district’s local discretionary per-student expenses for the prior fiscal year. (i.e., Charters this year would be receiving funds calculated on the amounts spent by districts last year). Where this gets confusing is how much of the local operating expenses get included in the formula. In a typical year, the Delaware Department of Education determines specific “buckets” of funding for each District that are excluded from their total local operating expenses. Think of it like pre-tax deductions on your paycheck. Each pre-tax deduction reduces the amount you take home, which then lowers your income tax burden. Certain local operating expenses are excluded by State code, cafeteria expenses are one example. Other local operating expenses may also be excluded (or included) at the discretion of the Secretary of Education, the actual formula that calculates the amount to be sent to Charters to follow the students can only be changed by legislation.
So what do I mean by other excluded expenses?
When a Board of Education approves the request for an operating tax increase that specifies exactly what the new revenue will be used for within the District and voters approve it, that revenue shall only be used for the purposes described on the ballot as approved by the voters.
A specific example would be the operating tax increase request from Brandywine School District earlier this year to renovate 3 of their athletic fields with a new artificial turf surface. If it were approved, the revenue generated from the tax increase would only be used to renovate those 3 fields. No portion of the revenue would be included in the ‘local cost per student’ formula that determines the funding sent to charters for each student. Why? Because voters would have approved ballot language that stated an exact use for the money which, in this case, was for 3 of Brandywine School District’s athletic fields. This money, though local operating revenue, would have been a district specific exclusion, as mandated by voters.
Another example, About 13 years ago, Christina School District went to voters and asked for an operating tax increase. The increase had 2 sections. Section 1 was for general operations: salaries, benefits, supplies, inflation adjustments, etc. The general dollars that are used and factored in to the local cost per student formula that ultimately determines the monies that go to Charters.
Section 2, affectionately referred to the 10 cent referendum, asked voters to approve an additional 10 cent tax increase on top of Section 1 to be used exclusively for 4 District-specific initiatives:
- Phase-in of full day kindergarten for academically at-risk students.
- Expansion of services for Gifted and Talented Program.
- Expansion of services for Alternative Programs
- Technology Replacement Schedule
Section 2 was approved by voters 5,334 for, 2,431 against. My interpretation of this result is that voters approved the Section 2 10-cent tax increase to be used exclusively for what the District said it would be used for, and for nothing else. And starting July 1, 2004 the revenue generated from this increase was applied to these 4 initiatives within the Christina School District. For argument’s sake in 2004, the District had a assessed property value tax base of around $5 billion. (I don’t know the number for 2004, but in 2015 it was around $5.5 billion, so I’m rounding down). Remember that school tax rates are per $100 assessed value.
$5,000,000,000/100 = $50,000,000 taxable value. Assuming 100% collection, one year’s worth of the 10 cent referendum would generate $5 million in operating revenue for the District to use exclusively on those 4 restricted purposes. Do Charters get a cut of that $5 million? No. Why? Because voters didn’t approve that. If approved, would Charters have gotten a cut of the revenue for Brandywine’s turf fields? No. Why? Because voters wouldn’t have approved that either.
In the lawsuit, the Charters complain about “district specific exclusions” for Christina jumping from $700k to approximately $7 million in one year. Is the 10-cent referendum the cause of that? It is plausible. But I really have no idea. And I have no idea because the DOE is the entity that decides which buckets of revenue get excluded or included, and they (so far) have been entirely unwilling to share their methodology for defining ‘included’ and ‘excluded’ funds for each district. Does the total amount of Christina’s exclusions stick out like a sore thumb compared to neighboring districts? Yes. Why? I don’t know again because DOE is entirely unwilling to share their methodologies.
Elsewhere in the suit the Charters allege that Christina has been excluding funds without requesting formal DOE approval. Again note that DOE is the only entity that determines included or excluded funding. Can districts request specific funds to be considered excluded from local per-student funding calculations? Yes. Must they? No. Because, again, DOE determines exclusion and inclusion criteria on their own.
Ms. Massett also states that the Department of Education violated the law by ‘reversing’ their earlier ‘decision’ on recalculating the charter school bills. Legally, the DOE must certify the bills sent to Districts by Sept 1, every year. This year, Secretary Godowsky changed his mind on the new “recalculated” charter bills after September 1st. So yes, that appears to be in conflict with the law. But. Every year Districts up and down the state complete and approve their annual budgets for the coming fiscal year in January with educated guesstimates of how much they will be spending and on what/whom and where. Charter schools included. Those budgets take effect July 1. So when a budget is approved in January 2016 for fiscal year 2017 and the Department of Education issues surprise new bills in August 2016 that drastically inflate the amount of money that districts should be sending to charters without advanced notice or explanation, I’d say that’s a problem. A problem compounded by the fact that DOE also changed the amount of money Districts were to send to Charters for the previous fiscal year and even further compounded by not sharing any methodology for HOW the new bills were calculated, just that they “corrected inconsistencies among districts” and suddenly Districts were on the hook for millions in new expenditures they had not budgeted for this year or last year.
I do agree that equitable per-student funding must a major education reform goal in Delaware. I do not agree that funding changes should be done at the last minute behind closed doors. I also do not believe that students ‘deserve’ to have funds follow them from Districts that were not authorized by voters to send the funds with the students, no matter what the Charter Network says. If voters tell you what they want you to spend their tax money on, you spend it as they directed.
The conspiracy theorist in me finds it very interesting that this legal challenge comes about in a year that has Charters that educate Christina School District resident students facing potentially significant funding reductions as a result of the $9 million budget cut in Christina last year. And that this scheming and legal plotting seemed to have begun a mere 48 hours after the County certified the Christina March referendum results. And, if you believe the various whispers and rumors (which I do) that Secretary Godowsky had no knowledge of the recalculated charter bills until after they dropped (I’m looking at you Dave Blowman and Kim Wheatley). And that a certain charter-friendly State Senator from Western Newark facing a Republican challenger sent emails to constituents blathering on about how Christina now has millions of additional dollars to spend thanks to the referendum. And that similar language also appeared in a letter from the Newark Charter Board President to Newark Charter parents. Newsflash, there are no ‘additional millions’. The “new” revenue restores most of what was cut the year before. You know, like teachers, paras, school supplies, sports. Which you would know Senator Sokola if you attended a Citizen’s Budget Oversight Committee meeting at all, ever.
Anyway, this is, of course, an ongoing story. And I haven’t even touched on their joke of an argument over Match Tax funds. Or Debt Service funds. Or that the suit is attempting to have the Court of Chancery freeze the local funds portion of Christina’s budget, preventing them from spending any of it on students in the District, in Charters, or Choiced out to other districts’ schools.
Disclaimer, I’m not sure how other DL contributors manage to post so often. I’m barely cranking out 1 post per month it seems. Work. Kids. Work. Sleep. Work. Meh. Tips on helping me to blog more frequently pls.