Is your school district losing funds to charter schools that it did not authorize? If so, you might find this information useful.
A few months ago, the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a lawsuit in Mississippi to block the state from removing tax revenues from local school districts to pay for charter schools. The district in question is Jackson, Mississippi. SPLC argued that the state constitution requires that the funds of each district are to be spent solely for its own public schools, under local control.
The SPLC brief is linked in the original post.
SPLC shared with me the amicus briefs, which are excellent. If your state or district is being drained by charters, you may find these legal briefs to be useful.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Though the SPLC lost the first round of arguments on the definition of a “common school” in Mississippi, they are back at it to address the funding issue of charter schools. Funding is at the core of charter schools as they reduce the amount of tax dollars available to educate public school students. Public schools often have no control over how much money leaves their systems when students transfer to charter schools. Taxpayers are left with less revenue to provide an adequate public education. Districts must cuts programs, teachers and services when students transfer to charters. Taxpayers have no say over their tax dollars in such a transaction, and schools and students left with stranded costs suffer harm from the loss of funding. In some cases school districts ask taxpayers for more money which is like an additional tax. This lawsuit is important because it questions the movement of money out of the public system and its impact on schools, students and communities. Should school districts be required to harm their students’ education to fund a duplicate system that is less efficient and often less effective than the common schools available to all? I hope the SPLC prevails as this lawsuit could set an important precedent.
California charter schools the local school board authorizes are in some measure under the control of the local school board. If the authorized charter school violates the law the Board has responsibility and a method of addressing the violation up to loss of a school’s charter.
In addition, authorizing body whether local school board, county board or State Board of Education have control over whether to make a case that can be appealed to deny request for charter renewal. Control over appeals is limited as in California adverse decisions of a local school board can be appealed twice, first to the county board, and then to California State Board of Education. And, in practice, since education code compliance is involved, courts have intervened and reversed a decision of a school district to revoke a charter before appeals process had been exhausted.
“Control” in California does not include a school board able to control attacks on the school board’s budget. California charter law clearly does not allow an authorizing school board to protect a district’s budget from various assaults on a school district’s finances when growth of charter schools is stressing a local school board’s budget and cuts in programs is making the district less competitive.
A big drain on a district’s budget from charter school growth is loss of enrollment to charter schools. And there are numerous assaults on a district finances, including having to finance defense in hearings of decision by an authorizing school board and also being force to defend its decisions in court over interpretations of the rights of charters to the finances of a district or a claim that an authorizing district isn’t following charter law. California allows charter school to keep its funding for a student that returns to a public school and the public school has to eat the cost of the student mid-year returned to a district school. There are many other examples of charter schools directly or indirectly attacking the budget of a local school district.
My point is that some control is not complete control. And, in California public school districts are not allowed to reject a charter school on the grounds it will cause financial harm nor once the charter is granted can documented finance harm be addressed.
It is the model of a charter school competing with the local charter school that is advertised as a competition based on student performance. The competition is not in practice limited to student test scores. Winning in the court by expanding rights of a charter school in a zero sum relationship often cost a school district not just court cost but additional expenses. An example was the California Charter School Association in West Contra Costa winning an out of court settlement to the right for charter schools in the District to have based on their enrollment a share of parcel tax the school board passed. This court settlement weakened the District and made the charter school sector of the District stronger.
There is a competition for education dollars at the state and Federal level for education dollars between public school lobbies and privately managed charter school lobbies that impact advantage to one side and a loss to the other side. The reality is that charter public school competition is not only about student test scores but a total competition in a zero sum relationship.
Unfortunately many school boards are guilt of not recognizing that charter schools are destructive of public schools and forge positive relationships with privately managed charter charter school folks ignoring public schools are the prey and the charter school supporters the quarry. And, a prey/quarry relationship an explicit requirement of California’s charter law.
Wherever charters gain ground, public schools lose. Supported by the charter lobby, they will continue to manipulate to expand and open additional markets and figure out new ways to gain access to more public money. Charters are supposed to be a gain for students, not corporations, but they have morphed into a political monster that smashes and grabs money from public school children while they suppress democratic input.