Charter funding may get shake-up

Charter schools and traditional district schools alike may not be pleased with draft legislation that would shake up how charters are funded, but lawmakers say it's a necessary change.

And while a few education leaders say it would be reasonable, charter leaders say throwing the burden of funding charter schools back onto the districts is bad news.

"This is going to hurt all the way around and probably going to cause some feelings to come up again that had probably gone away for a little while," said Marlies Burns, state director of charter schools. "Everybody is frustrated with the whole thing because this puts (charters) in a position of taking money from districts."

A 2006 audit of Utah charter schools recommended state leaders use the interim to take a look at how to improve charter funding while addressing a funding disparity between charter schools and traditional public schools.

In the 2007 legislative session that recommendation was made, and a committee, made up of charter school leaders, legislators and district chiefs, has been meeting for about seven months.

But what came out of the talks is a bill that is not endorsed by either charter leaders or public education leaders, but one lawmaker said this is the most reasonable proposal.

"You know, I actually never asked" if charter and district leaders support the measure, said Rep. Ron Bigelow, R-West Valley, who drafted the bill.

"The charge I had received was to go and find the financial solution and come back with a reasonable proposal, and I'm going to do that," said Bigelow, who is chairman of the Executive Appropriations Committee.

In its present form, the draft bill would require school districts to provide an allocation of property tax revenues for each resident student attending a charter school — meaning the student's home-district funding would follow him to whatever school he chose to attend, even if it is located outside the district.

Since 2004 charters have received local replacement money from the state in lieu of property taxes because, unlike school districts, charters do not have taxing authority. So the state kicks in that additional funding.

However, the new bill would require charter schools to go back to receiving their funding from school districts, something they were required to do before 2004. Charter leaders say the old process had a tendency to create adversarial relationships between charters and school districts, and they fear those feelings could resurface.

"It's kind of like they are backtracking a little bit — I think the state realized that as charters are growing it's becoming a pretty big bill and think they would like to spend money elsewhere," said Burns.