Earlier this month a wide variety of people met to discuss charter school capital construction. The group is to become a task force that will meet until 2010 in order to address the needs of charter schools to fund their facilities.
I thought the meeting was interesting because no one ever mentioned the elephant in the room: the fact that $3 million had been cut by the General Assembly this year. Here's the historical funding for charter schools, which was initially funded using Amendment 23 funds.
SY $ per fte Total Allocation
2001-02 322.40 $6,471,051
2002-03 327.38 $7,813,943
2003-04 301.35 $8,200,000
2004-05 171.06 $5,000,000
2005-06 145.09 $5,000,000
2006-07 201.17 $7,800,000
2007-08 110 (projected) $5,000,000
The total allocation is divided by the number of eligible charter school students each year. As the number of charter school students has increased exponentially in recent years, the amount per student has fallen significantly. In this discussion, it's also important to note that charter schools typically spend 15 to 25% of their general operating funds on capital construction needs.
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