Dive Brief:
- On Tuesday, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf said that struggling Chester Upland School District will have to make cuts to the funding it provides to charter schools for special education and to virtual charter operators.
- The suburban Philadelphia-area district has been in a financial crisis for years and faces a nearly $25 million budget shortfall this year.
- Earlier this year, the district's court-mandated receiver urged the governor to find some flexibility in how much the state reimburses districts for charter school costs; currently the district's payments to local charter schools eat up a substantial portion of its budget.
Dive Insight:
Some states are currently facing a backlash against charter school operators, who have been accused of siphoning of students and funds from traditional public schools and leaving the older schools with the fixed costs of educating students. In Michigan, for example, schools have had to make big cuts thanks to enrollment decline. Educators and administrators have attributed the crunch in large part to the state's growing charter sector. That may be the case in Chester Upland, as well.
"The governor and his lieutenants said chronic mismanagement and poor spending decisions had also played a critical role in the district's financial problems, dating to the first state takeover in 1994," the Philadelphia Inquirer reports. "However, the pace of emergency state bailouts has increased since the start of the decade, coinciding with a mass exodus of students into charter schools."
Meanwhile, Chicago's decision to continue funding its charter schools, albeit at lower levels, during its budget crisis has drawn jeers from community members. At a recent public hearing, parents said the district was favoring the schools over special education services, which will see cuts this year as the district tries to resolve its financial tangle.