The school district of Oakland, California, has been struggling to right its finances for years. One reason that it can’t right it’s Books is that charter schools are a drain in the district. Recently the district learned what the charters cost, by reading the report from “In the Public Interest.” The annual cost: $57.4 Million.
https://www.sfgate.com/education/article/Study-says-Oakland-school-district-lost-57-4-12898930.php
“Oakland has more charter schools per capita than any other district in California and has struggled to balance its budget in recent years, with schools forced to make $9 million in mid-year cuts this year.
“The report, called a first-of-its-kind analysis of such costs, also included net-loss analysis for East Side Union High School District in Santa Clara County and San Diego Unified.
“The high costs of charter schools have led to decreases in neighborhood public schools in counseling, libraries, music and art programs, lab sciences, field trips, reading tutors, special education funding, and even the most basic supplies like toilet paper,” said the researcher, political science Professor Gordon Lafer. “Unlimited charter school expansion is pushing some of California’s school districts toward a financial tipping point, from which they will be unable to return.”
Oakland may be an object lesson in the destructive effects of unlimited charter expansion. The continued financial drain may cause the school district to collapse.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The psychopathic, arrogant, hyper-greedy, corrupted autocratic Alt-Right extremist billionaires funding the privatization of public education don’t care.
Could they please come to Denver and do the same study? I’m pretty sure they would find similar results. Closed comprehensive high school Montbello, now home to five different schools, has no library among other things. Not a happy note for Mother’s Day. Happy Day to all mothers and all those who are providing motherly services.
Jeannie,
Send your suggestion to Gordon Lafer at University of Oregon. Or Donald Cohen at “In the Public Interest.”
It is clear that funding multiple parallel systems is impractical and inefficient. Instead of offering more options, it creates more under funded schools, and in the case of public school, the neediest students receiving the least amount of support. It is a system that is more likely to result in failure, not success.
BTW I saw Tom Perez on CNN last night talking about how Democrats are going to win by supporting public education the way Conor Lamb did in Pennsylvania. I would have to hear and see a lot more than this to believe him, especially after being betrayed by Obama who supposedly supported public schools. Can teachers trust the DNC?
No!
The California Charter Schools Association issued a statement saying districts would have to “crush” pensions and facilities to make way for their corporate product, charters. What a hare-brained scam by the radical right.
The consultants Education Resource Strategies have been (or were) working simultaneously for OUSD and Oakland Achieves, a charter friendly organization — https://www.erstrategies.org/news/do_charters_or_traditional_schools_have_it_worse_a_new_study_says_both
It’s important to explain this to people – NET loss. That means the district is funding costs that charters don’t cover OR the charter student is taking more $ with them to the charter than they were allocated (per pupil) in the public system.
Two systems will cost more. Now maybe that’s worthwhile to people and we should have two systems but this needs to be discussed.
Because the “magic choice fairy” plan that says we can run two (even three) school systems with the same or lower overhead and fixed costs is just nonsense.
Start counting, and count ALL the costs. So if charters are contracting out services that counts as a system cost.
I read ed reformers so I can tell you the response to this. The response is “public schools waste money!”
But charters school may “waste” money- no one knows, because we don’t have any system cost numbers for charters.
It’s just interesting that the ed reform response is IMMEDIATELY to call for cuts in the public sector schools. No sacrifices for the charter schools! They’re exempt.
Charters just get a presumed superior value with more rights to public money than public schools. Crazy!
AMERI-DUH.
I think what will end up happening is they have to go to a voucher system. It’s the only way they’ll be able to distribute funding thru a fragmented system equitably.
So it will end up looking like Obamacare- where there’s a publicly-subsidized purchase of a private service. People will be allotted some per pupil amount and they can “spend” that anywhere they want. Better off people, of course, will add their own funds to the public subsidy so it will remain inequitable.
Ed reformers won’t mind this result- universal vouchers are the dream, after all. But they have no earthly idea whether it will work any better than the public system- it could easily end up like the US health care system, which is an expensive, inequitable disaster.
I wonder if we’ve seen ed reformers embrace vouchers over the last decade because they know this- they know they can’t run this without per student vouchers.
Obamacare is a term that is so misleading.
“If there’s one thing conservatives might hate more than Obamacare, it’s hearing that Obamacare springs from Republican ideas. The Heritage Foundation, the granddaddy of the right-wing think tanks, fumed when President Barack Obama said it was the source of the concept of the health insurance marketplaces where people could shop for the best deal. (We rated Obama’s claim Mostly True.)”
http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2013/nov/15/ellen-qualls/aca-gop-health-care-plan-1993/
I suggest we change the term “Obamacare” to Right-Wing-Obamacare or something else closer to the truth.
Amazing, eh Lloyd, how many people don’t know the history of Romneycare.
Maybe this will help teach a few of those that don’t know where “Obamacare” originated.
“Mitt Romney Finally Takes Credit For Obamacare”
“Without Romneycare, I don’t think we would have Obamacare. So, without Tom a lot of people wouldn’t have health insurance.” …
“Trying to bill his plan as conservative, President Obama has repeatedly made the case, including in the run-up to his 2012 re-election, that the law was built off of Romney’s, even borrowing advisers who helped conceive the Massachusetts program.”
https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/10/23/451200436/mitt-romney-finally-takes-credit-for-obamacare
THANK YOU, Lloyd.
“Recently the district learned what the charters cost, by reading the report from “In the Public Interest.” The annual cost: $57.4 Million.”
If the district administration didn’t know the cost way before “In The Public Interest”, well, let’s just say they are less than financially competent. As soon as the charters started sucking monies from the district’s coffers, the district should have been screaming the figures out loud at every opportunity showing how that loss of monies had negatively affected the district.
Do I expect public school adminimals to know how to do this sort of thing. . . ? NO!
Great idea! The public schools should list any services that were cut due to charter drain and disseminate it to the community.
Hell if I was the supe adminimal, I’d have a monthly report to the school board on the exact figures and which programs were cut back and/or cut.
But hey, what’s an older fart retired high school Spanish teacher know about these things. . . well. . . I was certified to be an adminimal in the Show Me State.