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.
