Jersey Jazzman reviews the funding of Hoboken’s charters and finds that they have outside funders who give them additional aid, sometimes very substantial aid. Suburban schools, he acknowledges, raise money through their PTA and parent volunteers (but not many get large gifts from Goldman Sachs and Barclay’s, for example).
He writes:
– See more at: http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2015/01/in-hoboken-charter-schools-rule-part-ii.html#sthash.CRkQlgNL.dpufMy point here is that I would never say that what the parents of Hoboken’s charter schools are doing is in any way wrong; in fact, I would be shocked if these organizations didn’t exist. Of course parents hold fundraisers for their kids’ schools; of course they leverage their connections to benefit programs that serve their children. Any parent who loves their child and has the means does this. There is nothing wrong with this.
But here’s the thing:
I don’t see anyone rational making the claim that suburban schools “do more with less” when their communities spend so much on their children’s entire education — yet that is the precise claim of Hoboken’s charter sector.
One of the myths of charter school funding in New Jersey — often perpetuated by groups with little understanding of how school financing works — is that charters get less funding than they should because they are denied access to state aid and debt service available to public school districts.
Leaving aside the point that charters shouldn’t get much of this aid (why should a charter school get transportation aid if it doesn’t pay for transportation costs?), the truth is that charter school funding “gaps” are much more the product of differences in student population characteristics, which the state uses to calculate aid shares. This is a big topic and I’m working now on some pieces to bring this issue into focus.
If a school has fewer of the high-needs students, it gets less state aid. That’s elementary.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Many of the parents of the charter school students in Hoboken work on Wall St. They are masters at moving and hiding money. They know how to get the financial services corporations to donate money as a tax write off to the “non-profit.” As long as it is legal, it will continue. It has the opposite effect of the original intent of charter schools, to serve poor students that didn’t fit into traditional schools. Has anyone studied the impact the charters have had on the public schools.?
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I don’t think there’s any question that charter schools drain funds and resources from the real public schools.
Huffington Post has an article on poverty levels: For the first time, more than half of U.S. public school students live in low-income households, according to a new analysis from the Southern Education Foundation.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/16/southern-education-foundation-children-poverty_n_6489970.html
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Hey folks I have a real funny story. Now understand that I DO NOT know much – or really anything – about this “tweet” stuff. However, my wife does. Now she “tweeted” the stuff about “the dog is off the chain.” If you went to the link above you know that this commentary is NOT endorsing the activities of these choice folks. In fact, it is a strong critique. Now here is the funny part. At least “we” are laughing about this since it seems that the “choice” folks just read the “tweet” but did not follow the link.. What happened was that the “school choice week” folks “favorited” the tweet my wife “tweeted”!!!!
How does one go about assessing what they “favorited” when it is a critique of their efforts? So they just “did not read” properly? How’s that for close reading and the common core?
In any case, we thought this was funny. Maybe they need David Coleman to attend some of their “choice” sessions and give a lecture on close reading a text.
Keep the faith!
Tom
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