5 Charters are expected to enter the Delaware market.  If full expectations are met, they will cumulatively be filled with 1025, students… As they grow to expansion over 5 years, these charters will ultimately, if full, take 2775 students out of the public school system.

Currently there are 4 school districts, each with a toe in Wilmington….

  • Brandywine School District..10802 students
  • Christina School District…   16721  students
  • Colonial School District………. 9976 students
  • Red Clay District……………… 18295 students

Let us make the assumption that these schools will take equally from these districts ( excluding the Middletown school for now).  The first year that will be 256 students out of each district….

  • Brandywine School District..10802 students – 256 =  10,544
  • Christina School District…   16721  students – 256 =  16,465
  • Colonial School District………. 9976 students – 256 =    9,720
  • Red Clay District……………… 18295 students  – 256 =  18,039

If we take the current cost per student that is transferred under choice,  about $3800 per person,  each district would lose funding amounting to 256 X $3800 or $972,800 dollars….

If spread equally, with Charters emerging, each district will lose close to a million dollars…. That is just for the first year… as new grades peel off into the charter schools, eventually the cost will be higher.

(2775 / 4) X $3800  =  $2.6 million lost to each of the four districts.  The number of students lost to each district would be the equivalent of closing down one large elementary school in each of the four districts….  The dollar amounts lost would equal a districts entire energy budget.  it would also equal an entire districts building budget for a year….. it would be one half the cost of a districts debt service.  It would be six times a districts equipment cost.  It would be one fifth of a districts entire supply budget…..

Each district will lose $2.6 million provide that all matriculate to charters equally from all four districts….

Red Clay is listed with 29 schools.  If all its students going to charter schools were spread evenly across it’s system, the average would fall between 8 or 9 children per school…  Here is the dilemma.  The district is losing the equivalent of its entire energy budget, but at 8 or 9 children per school, it can’t cut.  You can’t run a temperature in the high 50’s to save money, just because you have 8 children less in your school… You can’t cancel a bus run into Wilmington because some children are going to charter schools.  Even if there is one left, not going to charter school, you still have to send that bus for that one child…  How else is he going to get to school?

What happens is that all those required extras that benefit our children, have to get cut.   The discretionaries.   You have to chince on toilet paper, on soap, on mop buckets, on new mop heads. on quality food ingredients, on window washing, on wall washings, on janitorials, on teacher’s aides, on replacement light bulbs..  You run a crap school because you can’t cut your transportation, you can’t cut your heat, you can’t have classes with no teachers, you can’t have classes with no instructional materials, you can’t have classes with no utilities;  all those costs are fixed and don’t change with 8 students per school no longer paying for everyones expenses…

At the very same time you are trying to increase the education of your students by holding teachers accountable, you are taking away the resources necessary for accomplishing that and giving it to charter schools, which teach worse than public schools can…

If you want to pursue charters, there is only one way it is viable.  That is that someone else pays for the cost of those students who leave public school and go to charters…  If you want better education, then you must pursue this course of action or abandon Charters completely as an option….

For this to work,  the state would tack these amounts on to what they already give to the districts….

  • Brandywine   (3,038,639)
  • Christina     (17,745,600)
  • Colonial         (3,524,264)
  • Red Clay        (8,461,437)

The cost by the state in northern New Castle County would be the sum of all four or…. $32,769,940  if you want to indulge in charter schools, well, you’ve got to pay for it, right?  The cost for these five charters will be $32,769,940 dollars please…  If you can’t afford the price tag, we, the citizens of New Castle County, can’t afford your charters….

If this sound like a lot of money, it isn’t.  It is only one half of what we would generate if we raised the top marginal percent on income taxes by 2% for all those whose income is OVER a million dollars…   And if one doesn’t want to tax the wealthy for the privilege of building new charter schools, then the cost is only .8 of one percent of our budget….

For $33 million we could  have the best education in America….   But without that additional funding from the General Assembly, every time we build a charter school for the 8% who elect to go to charters, we are penalizing he 92% remaining in public education…. 

When you take money out of public education to feed charters, you are saying screw you, you (*&@#^&*^#&*~(&* (^%$^^%^&&^)  no good public school kids!… You lose because you couldn’t get into a charter… Na, na, na, na,…  you don’t matter, you animals… Suffer, b/tc%es…

Seems like an odd way to bring up test scores, doesn’t it…..

Pretty scary. Now. imagine the same scenario, but instead of being spread out equally among four districts, most of the charters drew from only one district….  One district losing $10.4 million?  Now can you finally see why Charters must receive independent funding or be stopped from growing?