Victory for Maryland Charter Schools
By streiff Posted in Liberals — Comments (2) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
From the Examiner:
Local school boards must give charter schools the same amount of money as traditional public schools, Maryland’s highest court decided Monday.
“Public charter schools are public schools, not prep schools or parochial schools,” said attorney Richard Daniels, who represented two of the charter schools. “They cannot force charter schools to take funding in services, instead of funds.”
This is great news for the charter school movement and for all parent with children in public schools. The case involved, suprise, surprise, the City of Baltimore trying to screw several charter schools (complete decision here) out of funding the State Board of Education had decreed they were entitled to. Baltimore attempted to do this by decreasing the per student payment for all manner of things. As the court noted:
Under that funding model, the city board advised that the per pupil funding for FY 2006 would consist of $5,011 in cash and $2,943 in s ervices, some of which City Neighbors did not seek, did not need, and did not desire. In calculating the per pupil allocation, the city board excluded Federal entitlement funds, system administrative costs, fun ds for special education, transportation expenses, expenses for health services, expenses for utility services, and the cost of food
services.
Monopolies are an inherently bad thing. We see the outcome with utilities and we see it with public school system, both tend to respond to inefficiency and ineptness with a demand for more taxpayer money. This case should be cheered by everyone.
Cross-posted at Maryland Politics.
a charter school here in Chicago. I think the concept is great. The classes are smaller. All the kids take two weeks to go visit a whole bunch of universities every year. They all wear uniforms which the kids hate, and of course my personal favorite, the teachers are non union. I volunteer as a mentor. The kids follow me around at work every two weeks for ten classes. This kind of experience is invaluable. There is no doubt in my mind that charter schools provide an education far superior to traditional public schools and only cynical politicians would ever try and stand in the way of their ever growing success.
"The nine most dangerous words in the English language are 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help'"
Ronald Reagan
...a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right...
---Thomas Paine---