No one is a stronger advocate for the state’s public school students than the UFT and NYSUT. No one has fought harder to ensure that schools have adequate funding. The UFT and NYSUT, working with many of our friends, won the Campaign for Fiscal Equity to provide public schools with hundreds of millions of dollars in additional support. Just last year, the UFT, parents, community groups, activists and elected officials formed the Keep the Promises Coalition and warded off most of the proposed budget cuts. For months, our members and coalition partners staged demonstrations, spoke at hearings and lobbied their representatives to protect schools from the fiscal axe. It was an impressive, sustained and broad-based display of solidarity on behalf of our children.
In all of this work, we made no distinction between district and charter public schools. All students have benefited from our advocacy. As district funding increased, so did charter funding.
Yet noticeably absent from our coalition was the state’s charter school mouthpiece: the anti-union, in-the-pocket-of pro-voucher conservatives New York Charter Schools Association (NYCSA). It seems that the Association was more than happy to let us do the heavy lifting — then reap the benefit.
Given their absence, it takes a lot of chutzpah for the Charter Association to now attack NYSUT, calling our state-wide affiliate a “schoolyard bully,” and misrepresenting NYSUT’s position on charter school funding.
So let’s set the record straight: it’s true that in his recent testimony to Albany’s joint legislative budget committee, NYSUT’s Executive Vice President Alan Lubin recommended that charter school funding be reduced by the same percentage that a public school district’s state aid is reduced — should a reduction become enacted (emphasis added).
Lubin’s comment was part of a comprehensive statement on the state’s budget and a frank acknowledgment of the dire fiscal condition facing our schools. Lubin implored elected officials to maintain the state’s commitment to public education and suggests ways to protect schools from the budget ax.
But given the depth of the economic recession, cuts may be unavoidable. If cuts are enacted, we believe that they must affect all public schools—district and charter — evenly and fairly. Any cuts would impact the UFT’s own charter school, but we must have shared sacrifice. Otherwise, we’re just taking money away from some students to the privilege of others.
The Charter Association maintains that such a reduction in funds would amount to a “double cut” for charters, claiming that charters already receive less operating dollars than district schools. But because of the unique way that charter schools are funded, charters are scheduled to see their funding go up next year (thanks to our success with the CFE and Keep the Promises) while district budgets might shrink. It’s even possible that without some kind of legislative fix, next year’s charter operating funding could be higher than that which is spent on a student in a comparable district school.
What’s really happening here is that charter advocates are pursuing their parochial interests at the expense of district schools. Since its inception in New York State, the charter movement was fueled by private philanthropy with an anti-district and anti-union agenda. With millions of dollars from hedge funds, industrialists, and Wal-Mart, the charter movement relentlessly aims to drive district schools and teacher unions out of entire neighborhoods.
When their funders were flush with cash, charter schools rarely had to consider the consequences of their actions or the state’s overall support of public education. Then the world fell apart. Foundation endowments have shrunk and charter advocates now want to reach into public coffers to close their anticipated deficits. That’s to be expected, but not when it’s at the expense of other kids.
Bottom line, it may be easy for the Charter Association to take NYSUT’s statements out of context to pursue their narrow agenda, but it’s wrong. It’s harder to consider the big picture, balance competing interests, and pursue what’s fair for all schools and students. And it’s time for some hard work.
1 Comment:
1 Gideon
· Feb 7, 2009 at 12:59 pm
Talk about taking facts out of context. How about explaining how charter financing works: it’s based on three year average of district operating expenses, thus there’s a lag in when district spending affects the amount charter schools get. So you are correct that charter school funding may not immediately decrease at the same time as the district, but eventually it will go down. The same is true, however, when district spending goes up: charter schools will have to wait three years for that to show up in their funding. So if you want to complain about the formula, fine, but don’t act like charter schools are somehow unfairly screwing districts. Also, let’s not forget that charter schools only get the per-pupil amount the district spends on operating expenses, but not capital expenses. On average, charter schools get about one-third less than districts spend when you factor in capital spending. Finally, districts get state transition aid for three years after students leave to attend a charter school; in essence, the state pays districts not to educate kids for three years. Given that the union runs charter schools, it should be fighting for equal funding for them, not spreading myths about unequal funding.