MNPS Board Member Mary Pierce tried to reframe the charter debate in a recent editorial in the Tennessean. While many people believe closing all charter schools would save the district millions, it would actually cost the district millions.
Here’s what Pierce had to say:
As a new school board member, I sought to understand this claim and thus asked Metro Nashville Public Schools leadership, “What would happen to the budget if all charter schools closed and these students returned to their zoned schools?”
This hypothetical exercise, completed by the MNPS Finance Office this summer, showed that if every student attending a charter school in 2014-15 had attended his or her zoned school, MNPS would have spent roughly $3.5 million more to educate them in district-managed schools.
Hold up! If you are calling to close charters because it’s the fiscally responsible thing to do, I guess you need to stop that call. Let’s not waste millions of MNPS dollars by closing all the charter schools.
Charter schools actually get fewer dollars per pupil than a traditional school. Fiscally responsible!
On average MNPS spends $9,436 per pupil — $5,666 for direct classroom costs plus an additional $3,770 for indirect expenses such as transportation, central office and technology.
Each student enrolled in a charter school is allocated roughly $9,200, which often includes rent payments back to the district for building use.
Oh, look below! Mary Pierce puts it on the record that she does not want to charterize the district. MNPS rejects a huge majority of charter applicants, anyways.
We should not “charterize” the district, but should insist on the highest quality from all of our schools. Our charter review committees and our board have done an excellent job in recommending and approving charter schools. Anyone claiming that the MNPS Charter School Office is promoting unabated charter growth is not paying attention. This summer, the charter review committees recommended that the board deny 86 percent of the applications.
And finally, it’s not just charter schools that are taking students away from their zoned schools.
We should not ignore the realities of fixed costs. When students leave any school the result can be buildings operating under capacity, and that adds to indirect expenses. But, we won’t address the bulk of this fiscal challenge unless we include all our choice schools in the analysis. For example, Hillwood High School operates under 70 percent capacity while over 200 students zoned for Hillwood choose to attend another district school like Hume-Fogg or Hillsboro.
Go ahead and read the rest of the editorial here.
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