Dive Brief:
- The Southern Poverty Law Center is suing the State of Mississippi over charter school funding, arguing any money that goes to the alternative schools is unconstitutional as it diverts education dollars from traditional public schools.
- The Clarion-Ledger Reports the lawsuit was filed this week and aims to get rid of the funding mechanism in the state’s charter school act because the schools are exempt from oversight of the state and local boards of education, as well as the state department of education.
- To get public funding under the current constitution, schools are supposed to be supervised by these entities, and oversight authority for the state’s two charter schools now rests with the Mississippi Charter School Authorizer Board, funded with 3% of the dollars that go toward charters.
Dive Insight:
A major complaint against charter schools across the country is that they divert dollars from traditional schools, leaving them without enough resources to serve students properly. Generally, state money follows a child so that if he or she leaves a traditional school for a charter school, the money that would have gone to the traditional school ends up in a charter. Charter school advocates argue that families are looking for better options when they leave traditional schools and state money should go to the place educating them. But in cities with large numbers of charters, the impact of reduced economies of scale in traditional schools because of the sheer number of students who choose charters can be significant.
The State of Tennessee is currently embroiled in a lawsuit over its own funding formula for public schools. The state’s largest school district filed the suit, arguing the state does not provide adequate funding or provide all the funding that would be necessary under the funding formula it created. Even if charter schools aren’t the source of the problem, school funding is a fight in many cities and states nationwide.