Charter schools fill a vital state need

Historically, our state has operated a separate and unequal system of public education based on a student’s zip code, race and economic status. Our state’s public charter schools overwhelmingly serve our state’s neediest children; 65 percent of whom come from low-income families and 80 percent of whom are Black and brown. But because of how Connecticut funds public education, nearly 11,000 mostly low-income, predominantly Black and brown public charter school students have been profoundly underfunded. In spite of this, charter school students have performed higher than their resident districts and have received numerous local, state and national recognition and awards. In short, our state’s charter schools are consistently closing Connecticut’s achievement gap, which has been identified as one of the worst in the country, with very few resources at their disposal.

The events of the last several months and weeks have magnified the existing inequality in our state’s public education system. Among many other preexisting conditions, COVID-19 has made clear that our schools are dangerously inequitably funded. As students in well-resourced communities transitioned to distance learning with school-funded devices in hand, students, parents and educators in disadvantaged neighborhoods scrambled to make this transition with few resources available to them. Moreover, public charter students have been deliberately excluded from critical aid and resources that were provided to other public school students by the state in response to this crisis, such as laptops, leaving those that have oftentimes been identified as our state’s most disadvantaged with yet another barrier to learning and success.

Charter schools in our state have always been forced to do much more with much less; they are denied crucial state aid, including additional funding for students with additional learning needs and school facilities, both of which are made available to their district counterparts. In Connecticut’s school funding formula, the Education Cost Sharing funding formula, the minimum amount to educate a child with no additional learning needs is set at $11,525. However, charter school students only receive a flat $11,250 and no additional state funding for any additional learning needs, funding that is provided to other public schools. In utter disregard for the fact that charter schools continue to close our state’s glaring achievement gaps, our charter students continue to be systematically disenfranchised as aid that has been dispensed to other public schools has strategically excluded our state’s neediest children.

Some have had the audacity to suggest that charter schools applying for federal Paycheck Protection Program funds have “double-dipped” and are taking advantage of the system — the same system, mind you, that has historically underfunded and undervalued the students that they serve. Charter schools do not receive the minimum funding as established by the Legislature. It is for this reason that charter schools are forced to compensate through fundraising efforts like grants, or in extreme cases such as these, loans, for which nonprofit organizations like those who run charter schools are legally eligible. These funds provided financial support that allowed our struggling schools to pay employee wages during the coronavirus pandemic, ensuring teachers were able to continue educating our children. For many charter schools, this program provided essential financial assistance.

Establishing true equity in our state’s public education sector for all students is more critical now than ever before. We must place our focus on dismantling the systems that have, for so long, oppressed our state’s neediest children, barring them from realizing their full potential. Rather than championing a false and discriminatory narrative that exacerbates these longstanding inequities, those that claim to be allies of these students and their communities should instead place their focus on tackling the systemic inequities that exist in Connecticut’s public school sector. These “allies” cannot in one breath claim to support these children while being complicit in denying them the same opportunities they get to enjoy. We cannot accept the status quo, which only further hinders the future successes of our state’s Black and brown children.