Critics say charter schools draining vital dollars
Financially strapped school districts in Baton Rouge, Lafayette and elsewhere are being hurt by rising amounts of dollars being moved from districts to charter schools, the executive director of the Louisiana School Boards Association and others said Thursday.
In the past three years, local education dollars rerouted from traditional public schools to charter schools rose by 39 percent in the East Baton Rouge Parish school district — to $28.3 million — and 73 percent in the Jefferson Parish school system — to $4.5 million, according to state figures.
Local dollars redirected from the Lafayette Parish school system to charter schools rose from nearly $460,000 two years ago to $9.6 million during the past school year.
Scott Richard, who leads the LSBA, said the trend points up the need to ban the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education from overriding local decisions on charter schools.
“BESE is overriding local school board decisions in the name of choice, and the local district is left holding the bag,” Richard said.
Gov. John Bel Edwards pushed legislation to impose just such a ban when he was a member of the state House.
Charter schools are public schools run by nongovernmental boards, and their advocates often clash with the LSBA and other traditional public school groups.
The schools are supposed to offer innovative alternatives to traditional classrooms and give families more options when faced with troubled schools.
The state has 144 charter schools, according to the state Department of Education.
That includes 35 known as Type 2, which are authorized by BESE.
Richard said those schools are a big reason dollars are increasingly being diverted from school districts, often against the wishes of local educators.
“How far do you go in the name of choice?” he asked. “Do you break a local school system to offer duplicative choices that Critics say charter schools draining vital dollars | The Advocate — Baton Rouge, Louisiana: