Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
CASD, CHARTER SCHOOLS SPAR IN FUNDING DISPUTE
CALN >> The Coatesville Area School District (CASD) is facing a potential deficit of $14.1 million in its budget for the 202021 school year.
Interim Superintendent Dr. Richard Dunlap said during a school board meeting Tuesday evening that there are several variables affecting the district’s budget, but currently the two highest costs for the district are special education and payments to charter schools.
He said there are currently 5,453 students enrolled in CASD, and 3,054 students attending charter schools.
State law requires school districts to make tuition payments to charter schools based on the number of students from the district who opt to attend charter schools.
Charter school payments have long been a contentious issue in the district, and tensions have recently flared up even more as district residents have been told conflicting stories in emails and on social media regarding a funding dispute between the district and two charter schools: Avon Grove Charter School (AGCS) and Collegium Charter School (CCS).
Each side in the dispute has been accused of spreading misinformation.
‘Charter Dispute’
According to budget presentations, which can be viewed on CASD’s website – casdschools.org – and were also cited by Dunlap at Tuesday night’s school board meeting, AGCS and CCS requested additional payments in September 2019 totaling about $4 million, referred to as “reconciliation” after CASD had already payed the required tuition fees for the year.
“In September, the charter schools, in what can only be seen as a money grab, sent the district a ‘revised’ reconciliation using numbers that are not in accordance with the spirit of the law and calculation of the tuition rate, along with a new bill saying ‘oh by the way you owe us almost $4 million,’” the presentation states.
According to the presentations, CCS requested an additional $3,233,355 after CASD had already paid it $34,664,648; and AGCS requested an additional $644,178 after CASD had already paid it $6,854,192.
On Jan. 5, Kristen Bishop, Head of School at AGCS, emailed district residents a letter and video titled “Correcting misinformation circulating in the Coatesville Area School District.” The letter and video were also posted on AGCS’s Facebook and YouTube accounts.
In the letter and video, Bishop refers to Dunlap’s claim of a “money grab” by the charter schools as “disingenuous at best” and she also alleges that CASD broke the law in its budgeting practices.
“For the 2017-2018 school year, the budgeting year at issue, the district underbudgeted its actual expenditures by twenty-percent, and went on to spend millions of dollars in off-budget expenses,” Bishop said. “This was not the result of a sudden emergency but, instead, appears to have been either a deliberate attempt to defund charter schools or extreme negligence in its budgeting practice; regardless of the district’s actual motivation, defunding the charter schools was certainly the effect of its actions.
“This conduct is against the law. Section 6-609 of the Public School Code prohibits school districts from exceeding their budgets.”
Dunlap said in a letter dated Jan. 6 titled ‘Charter Dispute Repsonse’ which can be viewed on the district’s website, that “Coatesville Area School District
stands firm in its belief that payment is simply not owed and that we are following the letter of the law. We have been unfairly accused of purposely under-budgeting and attempting to take money from the charters. The dispute centers around whether the tuition rates are calculated based on the district’s actual expenses or budgeted expenses.”
In a Facebook post on CCS’s website, CEO Marita K. Barber said that when parents select a charter school, such as CCS, for their children’s education, they make an important legislative stand in support of educational choice.
“Unfortunately, many Pennsylvania families don’t understand school choice or even know that it exists,” Barber said. “School choice challengers are taking advantage of this lack of knowledge to wage campaigns against education options like CCS.
“Public charter schools, especially, are blamed by challengers for the financial and academic issues traditional school districts face. Some challengers even go so far as to equate families choosing charter schools for their children with charters attempting to ‘money grab’ away from surrounding school districts.”
Barber encouraged supporters of CCS to get involved in National School Choice Week, a series of events highlighting the legal right families have to choose their children’s education options for grades K-12, which is coming up in two weeks.
“There is no better time than now to spread the word about CCS and the importance of charter schools,” she added.
Dunlap said CASD has made an appeal to the Pennsylvania Department of Education, after filing a lawsuit against the charter schools in regard to the funding dispute, but a hearing date has not yet been determined.
Public Weighs In
At the school board meeting Tuesday evening, several district residents spoke in favor of charter schools and questioned the nature of the language being used in the dispute between CASD and the charter schools.
One speaker said parents are ultimately responsible for the education of their children, but he is thankful for the school system in general. He mentioned that his children have attended various types of schools, but currently his son and daughter are enrolled at CCS.
He said school choice is at issue in this dispute, and he disagreed with the claim that charter schools are doing a “money grab” or draining CASD. He said the taxpayers are the ones being drained, and the money at stake belongs to the taxpayers and the students, not CASD.
Another speaker said CASD is blaming charter schools for its own mismanagement of funds.
A speaker who mentioned he’s a Coatesville graduate and now has a son who attends AGCS said he would love to send his son to CASD, but the district needs to make improvements first. He also said district residents need to come together instead of having this fighting between CASD and charter schools.
Another speaker agreed that CASD and charter schools shouldn’t be fighting each other because it only hurts public education in general and benefits politicians and elite investors. She said the policies from the state are draining public education and not putting students first.
State Government
One thing all sides in this dispute seemed to agree on is that district residents should contact their state legislators and Gov. Tom Wolf to voice their concerns about school funding issues.
School Board Vice President Tom Keech said during closing comments that over the last five years the number of students in the district opting for charter schools has increased by 77 percent, but the funding going to charter schools has gone up by 176 percent.
He said parents have every right to choose the best school available for their children, but the funding formula is the problem.
“We as a taxpaying group cannot afford the formulas that the state has put into place,” Keech said.
“We need to do better, and we can’t fight among ourselves,” Keech added. “We’ve got to let our legislators know that formula has to change. If it doesn’t, it’s going to hurt every single child, whether they’re in this district or whether they’re going to a charter school, because the funding simply won’t be there for any of them.”
The state legislators who represent the nine municipalities in CASD are: state Sens. Andy Dinniman, D-19, and Katie Muth, D-44; and state Reps. Dan Williams, D-74, Tim Hennessey, R-26, and Danielle Friel Otten, D-155.