The latest undemocratic effort to dismantle public education
The formal budget fight may be over in the General Assembly but the battle over education funding and the crusade to dismantle traditional public schools continue in the session’s waning days.
Senate leaders unveiled a proposal in the Senate Finance Committee Monday afternoon that would divert more funding from the majority of local school districts across the state to charter schools, including federal support for transportation and school lunches that many charters don’t even provide.
The proposal appeared of out nowhere as a bill about school playgrounds was gutted and replaced with the controversial charter school funding provisions, a version of legislation that passed the Senate months ago but stalled in the House.
Very few people seemed to know the charter bill was coming, including public school officials and most of the committee members themselves.
A representative of the school administrators association, also blind-sided by the proposal, told the lawmakers that it would adversely affect their local schools and that their school officials would be strongly against it.
That didn’t deter supporters of the funding change, led by Senator Chad Barefoot, whose only answer to every question was that the “money should follow the child,” a talking point that is not only an oversimplification, but a statement that makes little sense if a charter school is receiving federal funding for services it doesn’t have to provide or if a student attends a school outside a special tax district.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Brown admitted he was confused by the effect of all the complicated provisions transferring money from school districts to charters and he wasn’t the only one.
Even Barefoot acknowledged that he wasn’t an expert on the legislation and was handling it because Senate The latest undemocratic effort to dismantle public education | NC Policy Watch:
