This is unprecedented. $21 million… Remember the casinos who were $12 million in the hole? Oh, its a tragedy they whined; we’ll lose jobs, we have no choice but to reimburse the profits being lost by the casino owners…. Remember when they asked for $37 million the next year? Again…. We have to do it…
Well, guess what… Jobs are being lost at Christina too. And it is solely because of Charters…. Minus $21 million!
We pay tax money to fund our public schools. Privateers bribed our legislature (piloted by Sokola (see Exceptional Delaware) into allowing charter schools steal money from public schools…
If we paid taxes to New Castle County and as an example, one fifth of then were being sent to Sussex County because Sam Wilson was a friend of Charlie Copeland and needed a welfare hand-out… we would have a legal case on hand. Our money is collected for our district. If we paid the state that same money then such would be legal; it would be in their jurisdiction.. But we don’t pay the state… We pay our district….
From the 2015 Budget conveniently provided by Those In Favor, we see that Current Expense Tax Receipts for the Christina District is pegged at $76,856,000 out of which is immediately stolen by Charters: $20,146,672…. So the Charters take (20,146,672/76,856,000) or 26.21% of every tax dollar you give.…
For every $500 you are assessed in Christina……. $131 IS NOT GOING TO PUBLIC SCHOOLS… It is going to Charters…..
Which means that for every $12,000 required to teach each child in your school…. there is only $8854 dollars going to your child’s education….
This is Dave Sokola’s fault (again, see Exceptional Delaware)……
Now, compounded to this dilemma is the fact that with the absence of any Race To The Top money those programs pushing Common Core are still costing the district close to $14 million per year… (which incidentally is close to its shortfall… Getting rid of both Common Core and the Smarter Balanced Assessment could make the Christina District financially solvent as is…
But adding the Common Core costs upon to the Charter School costs compounds the problem yielding a loss of $35,000,000 dollars or 45.45% of your local tax dollars…
So those who complain that they aren’t getting the bang for their buck are correct… they are getting exactly 55% of the bang for their buck…
If we simply cut charters off of district funding… and if we simply dropped the Smarter Balanced Assessment, this District would instantly have back $35,000,000 of its lost money to plump down into making its school system one of the best in the state….
The problem is not teachers. The problem is not schools. The problem is not poverty. …. .The problem is not the district…. The problem with education in Delaware all comes from the Corporate Reform movement which is trying hard to bankrupt public schools so they can put in charters and be paid royally for doing so….
The even bigger problem with that, is that only 17% of charters are better off than the schools they replace. 37% are actually worse!!!!! And the balance sort of muddle as the same…. Building charters only gives you a one in six shot at improving the education of those children, while guaranteeing the demise of every one of the 79% remaining in public schools because of the local lack of funding which you can plainly see here in Delaware
We need a class action lawsuit that seeks an injunction of continuing any charter school in 2017… Next it needs to be up to the individual legislators to throw out the lobbyists and listen to real people for a change, and remove all charters from district funding… All the tax base goes to the feeder school’s district And we need to remove the Smarter Balanced Assessment as our state albatross…. (Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner reference)
We can fix Christina’s problems without more taxes….. if we unite to rid ourselves of all charter schools and the Smarter Balanced Assessments…
But you see… the problem of the shortfall is plainly not that of Christina’s District… it is all Dave Sokola’s (see Exceptional Delaware)
kavips 
12 comments
Comments feed for this article
August 10, 2015 at 8:25 pm
john kowalko
Did you add in the $1 million Charter Performance/Slush Fund allocated by the Joint Finance Committee (I guess less, therefore more acceptable than the $3 million last year), taxpayer money only accessible by charter schools (regardless of their own wealth). How about the $1.3 million in excess transportation money that they will keep thanks to the generosity of the Joint Finance Committee. There are many other little pockets of taxpayer money that charters via HB 165 are able to dip their fingers into not the least of which is the multi-million dollar “Minor Cap Improvement” fund accessible to corporate, non-profit, and for profit charter buildings that are not owned in any way shape or form by you taxpayers who are supplying this money. Not to worry, when the buildings go away the taxpayer monies invested will make a handsome profit for resale of those buildings by Bank of America, Rodel (Herdman $250,00 per annum), Nemours or any of the other investors who so willingly invest your money. Scandalous is too kind a word, political and criminal corruption is more appropriate. Ask your JFC members to enunciate specifically how much and why they are giving away your money with total disregard for you (the taxpayer)
Representative John Kowalko
August 10, 2015 at 8:32 pm
kavips
No John, (fyi) I didn’t, I was specifically focusing on the local tax base in order to point out the unconstitutionality of the charter arrangement. But your are correct, sir.
The point I may have failed to make is that this nation was originally founded because we were being taxed and the money was being sent to pay England’s bills… There is no difference between that arrangement and today’s citizenry being taxed to cover expense for our public schools, yet the money is being sent to pay private investor’s personal bills…
That is an outrage, I don’t think has yet been uncovered in full… Of course, you speak of similar outrages too…
August 11, 2015 at 11:05 am
Kevin Ohlandt
Reblogged this on Exceptional Delaware and commented:
Those In Favor brilliantly put together charts showing the true financial impact of charters on Christina School District. Kavips then put it all together. This is insane. And our state has allowed this to happen. It’s no wonder Christina is in disarray. The “choice” crowd will do the whole chicken and the egg thing, but it is immaterial to the crisis at hand currently going on.
August 11, 2015 at 12:23 pm
chartermum
Kavips, why returning that $21 million back to CSD is well and good, what would you like done with the children that attend those public schools that have been deemed “charters.”
And, by what measure have you used when you say that “only 17% are better off than the schools they replace?” Certainly, not the data supplied by the high stakes testing regime, I hope.
August 11, 2015 at 1:33 pm
Kevin Ohlandt
Chartermum, this is the dangerous, slippery slope in Delaware. All accountability results for Del. schools are based on those damn tests. We really have no idea how students are doing and this is truly frightening.
August 11, 2015 at 6:06 pm
chartermum
That’s the point, dear. All accountability ratings are based on the tests. But, the traditional schools cry that the tests are unreliable and then their advocates run and say only 17 % of charters are any better, based on those same tests. I’d say that if this is your sticking point on the effectiveness of charter, one or both of your pails have holes.
August 11, 2015 at 7:26 pm
kavips
Chartermum… Thanks for engaging.
Two quasi-experimental methods – fixed effects (FE) and virtual control records (VCR) – were used to measure charter schooling in 14 states and two districts. The new VCR method uses all available observable charter student characteristics and prior performance to create a composite comparison record. A head-to-head comparison of the FE and VCR methods used the same charter students to test the FE control (e.g., the charter student's own traditional public school experience) and the VCR for equivalence. The comparison produced highly similar estimates; charter coefficients were identical in sign and significance and of the same general magnitudes. In an analysis of the sampling fractions included in each method using all available tested charter students, the VCR method was found to produce more generalizable results. In the policy analysis, charter school quality was found to be demographically and geographically uneven with only 19 percent of charter schools outperforming their local markets.
August 11, 2015 at 7:51 pm
kavips
Chartermum, sorry, I’m working uphill, You also asked a previous question.
Being new to this dialogue you are probably unfamiliar with the bill in the General Assembly which would remove charters from being funded by property taxes and instead fund them with line items outlayed in the state budget.
Just as we’d fund a museum, or a ball park, or golf course…
If Newark Charter School costs $13 million to run, there would be a line in the state budget that states: Newark Charter School: $13 million. Those students could stay there if they wished.
As you may or may not know, Charter Schools are a perk. We already have very fine public schools which turn out better students than anytime in their past history. And as you may or may not know, Charter Schools simply by existing, rob public schools of money they need to maintain their fine standards….
Charter Schools are experimental.. Yet their existence ruins the lives of children remaining in public schools by only giving them 50% of the property tax moneys to which they should be entitled to…. If there was a net learning gain, perhaps that might still might be worth it. However, again as you may or may not know, a comprehensive study of Philadelphia’s students meeting proficiency showed that across the entire area of the Philadelphia District, including both Charters, magnets, and neighborhood public schools, the number of proficient students dropped significantly from 64,000 before charters (2004), to 32,874 currently where there a too many charters (2014)…. The district’s overall student numbers stayed the same. The Charters performed worse than the public schools. The public schools performed worse than from when they were fully funded, and everybody lost. Only because Charters went from 12% up to 23%…
If you want to kill a public school district, evidence shows allowing Charters to enter it, will do it…
The only two ways that offering charters as a choice does not ruin an entire district, is a) if the district itself is the authorizer of all charters and can add or subtract as money rises and falls, OR b) if the money came to them independently from other sources..Just like private schools can co-exist with public and not cause starvation of public funds, charters if done the exact same way, could offer the choice of something different and experimental, without causing the majority of children to do 12 years of unlucky incarceration because they were fed into a district whose funds were robbed by charters….
Charters teach 20% of our students…. Meaning the remaining 80% suffer abysmally, making it kind of hard to raise standards when only 20% are adequately funded to pull the average up, and 80% are left fighting for crumbs and dragging it down…
Hope that answers your question of what happens to those children in Charters now… 🙂
August 12, 2015 at 8:52 am
Chartermum
If most charters are no better than traditional schools, why then do you say that only the “remaining 80 percent suffer abysmally”. The charter 20 percent get even less than the remaining 80 per the tuition formula.
The argument should be that all children are underfunded no matter what public school they attend, nes pas?
August 12, 2015 at 11:23 am
kavips
The quick answer is those 20% in Charters choose to be underfunded by joining a school who’s lion’s share of income goes straight to their shareholdeders….
The 80% who do not choose to get into charter schools, are underfunded by no choice of their own and are penalized by those 20% who do choose to be underfunded by choice… ..
N’est pas?
August 12, 2015 at 9:53 pm
minnehanh
Kevin,
Charters ARE public schools. They are governed and managed independently, each one as if it were an independent district, but public schools nonetheless. The money to support a child’s education, if a child resides within a public school district and attends a public school is distributed to that district by the state or local municipality. If the child attends a district school the district holds onto the money, if the child choices out to a public school in another district or choices to a charter school the money goes there because that money is the child’s education fund, so to speak. Pretty simple. Charters aren’t stealing money from public schools. If we could stem the flow of kids to charters we wouldn’t be sending so much money, but the kids would stay in our schools and we’d use the money to educate them.
August 12, 2015 at 11:42 pm
kavips
Semantics.
Let’s break it down… In a district where there are no charters… all the money goes to existing public schools.. You allow charters to take students and let the money follow those students, the money flows out of those public schools into the charters… The Charter just took money from the public schools.
So. What did you do?… You made up a definition stating that Charters are Public Schools. This is where the semantics come in. If we accept your definition, then there is still a huge distinction between regular public schools and your newly anointed public schools. Since I don’t like typing all those words as much as I write about them, I’ve resorted to the old method, of calling Charters ..charters; the public school system which existed long before charters arrived…. a public schools. They are completely different animals.
The only reason anyone can call charters “public schools” is because they take public money away from public schools. Charters are not run like public schools no matter how many times one says they are. I don’t know of any legislative bills expressly giving Public Schools a “Public School Performance Fund”. I do know of a bill (HB 165 Jacques) which gives Charters a “Charter School Performance Fund”. I know of no public school which is allowed to keep extra bus transportation money. I do know all charters are indeed allowed to keep extra bus transportation money for whatever they wish. Including Mercedes Benz. So unless one lives in a very warped universe I have yet to experience, I don’t see anyone can expect anyone else to believe charter Schools are public, JUST BECAUSE ONE SAYS SO?
So it is all about semantics. If you lower the bar low enough so you define any entity receiving public money as a public entity, then I guess every construction company receiving a winning bid is a public entity. I’m sure they will be surprised to hear it…. But to those of us, who keep bars high, calling charters out as public schools is flat out lying… Isn’t it? For the record, Charter School are not public schools by any rational comparison, …ever…. Even you say they have their own district? What public school has their own district? Obviously they are completely different. Their owners are private. Public schools need to be owned by the state to be public…
So it is entirely semantics. We are both saying the exact same thing, except you insist on calling them public schools and I insist on calling them charter schools and you insist that they are stealing students and I accept that and say they are stealing the money that follows those students and you agree that is true. So we are both on the same page once our semantics are translated…
But it is wise for all to understand, that only in a fake semantic world, are charters and public schools competing in a free marketplace to better education. The stark reality hitting anyone in the face when they step into a school in Chicago, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Washington DC, Philadelphia, and now, Christina School District in Delaware, is that charters took money that used to go to those schools, away…. And all children suffered. And the Charter Operators prospered…
Bottom line… EVERY…. SINGLE….. TIME…….