NEWS MAX / REUTERS: A new school year begins on Monday for about 134,000 Philadelphia students even though the school district – one of the largest in the United States – has no guarantees on how the city and state will deliver nearly $100 million it needs to keep operating.
Mayor Michael Nutter and the city council remain at odds over his proposal for the city to borrow $50 million from capital markets and loan the proceeds to the district…
The school district is also counting on a $45 million state grant that Governor Tom Corbett’s administration won’t release unless unionized teachers make concessions in a new labor pact. Their old contract expired on Aug. 31, and talks are under way… (more)
EDITOR: Will the only proper way out of the fiscal difficulties that many cities and school districts face be the Federal Bankruptcy Courts?
Every single charter school takes the equivalent amount of taxpayer funding of one public school away from the local school district. This means that to maintain the same level of services, one public school must be closed to offset the money given to each charter school that opens.
Obviously it doesn’t seem to work like that in real life, since each charter school draws students from a number of public schools. But the reason that Philadelphia and Chester-Upland and other districts are in such financial straits is that an increasing number of charter schools leaves less and less funding for all of the other public schools.
Trying to spread the taxpayer funds lost to charter schools across more and more public schools can significantly reduce the quality of public education. The only way for a district to avoid harming their own students is by closing one public school to pay for each charter school that opens.