This year's School Finance Act bill, HB 1388, has been introduced. The bill has $5 million designated for charter school capital construction, but this amount makes me wonder what happened to the $10 million folks were saying would be included this year.
If you remember, last year legislators cut more than $3 million from this fund to create the new Division of Online Learning within CDE in response to an online education audit report. The base amount, created with Amendment 23 funds and supplemented numerous times during the Owens administration, was cut without reason or explanation. See this post for historical funding levels. You'll see that even if this line item stays at $5 million this year, it'll be half of what it was last year.
At last fall's state charter school conference Gov. Bill Ritter was asked why he allowed the $3 million cut in capital construction. He stated that legislators intended to cut the entire $8 million, but he supported keeping the base $5 million.
The League of Charter Schools is asking for charter school parents to contact their legislator about this bill. Given last year's attack on this budget line item, it's a good time for parents to get involved!
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