Baton Rouge judges rules it is ok to give taxpayer money to charter schools.

[madfloridian]

Judge: Union Parish charter school funded properly

FARMERVILLE, La. (AP) - A state judge in Baton Rouge has ruled that the board of Elementary and Secondary Education can take money from local school boards to pay for charter schools in the district.

Union Parish Superintendent Steve Dozier says he'd like a more detailed explanation of Monday's ruling by District Judge Todd Hernandez.

The judge's ruling rejected a request for a preliminary order to stop local money from going to D'Arbonne Woods Charter School. Hernandez ruled that it is properly funded, and that the parish school system failed to prove that it has been hurt by using money for the school.

Dozier says the school system will lose $1.2 million.

That is public money going to privately run charter schools.

Looks like the public school board may not be able to get new roofs for their public schools since they are losing over a million to D’Arbonne Woods Charter School.

Brown pleads to Board for help with roofs

As the Union Parish School Board works to decide whether to go ahead with a millage proposal for new roofs at all seven schools in the district, maintence supervisor Howard Brown says something needs to be done soon. With all schools experiencing leaky roofs, two major concerns at the moment are Marion High School and Spearsville High School. Both schools have seen a significant impact from the freezing temperatures which have further exacerbated the problems with the flimsy roofs.

“At Marion we have a classroom with a mold problem caused by the water coming in from the leaky roof,” Brown said.
“The longer we wait, the worse it’s going to get.”

Superintendent Steve Dozier said he sympathizes with Brown, but sees a millage as his only funding choice to remedy the problems with roofs at all of the schools.

“Right now our general fund balance is just shy of $900,000,” he said. “That’s not even a month’s operating expenses. As much as we may try we just cannot afford to fix the roofs where we are standing financially.”

One issue the Board must consider is the funding loss from the creation of D’Arbonne Woods Charter School. Dozier said the district stands to lose $1 million next year and can simply not afford to invest in roofs with the funding decline.

I tried to find who founded this school and what company would be getting the public money. I went to their website but could not find anything about the company.

Planned deterioration, planned dismantling of public schools...lots of that going on now.

[madfloridian]

1. No roofs for public schools. 1.2 million for charters.

That's just a shame.

[jody]

2. Charter schools in NO are funded with taxpayer money, why should Union Parish be different?

Question: one source says LA charter schools receive $6,926 per student but LA district schools receive $10,456 per student.

Are those stats correct?

[madfloridian]

3. Schools don't need roofs.

Charter schools need the money more.

[madfloridian]

4. That 6,926 is public taxpayer money going to a private management company.

When did that become okay? To give our taxes to private companies while taking it away from public education?

[jody]

5. My opinion about OK doesn't matter when Obama pushes charter schools. n/t

[JitterbugPerfume]

6. The commons are disappearing

The public schools, post office,banking, and more are being taken over by corporations and distroying common use.

Unrestrained capitalism is distroying our country and our freedoms.

[upi402]

18. +1 ^ n/t

[Mithreal]

33. +1 If you can privatize wars, you can privatize anything.

[KamaAina]

7. In La. the principals are as likely to be well-connected locals as outside educorps

Louisianians long ago raised the paractice of skimming government $$$ to an art form. :eyes:

[jtrockville]

8. Do these charter schools share the profit with taxpayers?

Or do they just the costs with taxpayers and keep the profit for themselves?

[jody]

9. I believe charter schools are non-profit schools and state laws classify them as public schools. nt

ON EDIT ADD

"Except as otherwise provided by this Subsection, for the purpose of funding, a Type 1, Type 3, and Type 4 charter school shall be considered an approved public school of the local school board entering into the charter agreement and shall receive a per pupil amount each year from the local school board based on the October first membership count of the charter school. Except as otherwise provided by this Subsection, Type 2 charter schools shall receive a per pupil amount each year from the state Department of Education using state funds specifically provided for this purpose."

[madfloridian]

11. No, they are not public schools, they are private schools run with public money.

Great quote from Ravitch, Bush I's former asst. Sec. of Education, who saw the light.

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/5754

"I was originally a supporter of charter schools because I had the same vision for them as the one enunciated in the late 1980s by Ray Budde and Albert Shanker. They saw charters as laboratories for public education, places where teachers could try to discover ways to reach unmotivated students. What was learned in charters, they believed, would then be transferred back to the regular public schools, to help them do a better job with the students who were hardest to educate.

Good ideas, as we know, go oft awry. As soon as the charter concept got well established, it became the leading edge of the privatization movement, and its goal was not to help public schools, but to supplant them.

For-profit firms saw them as a great business opportunity. Right-wing ideologues saw them as a chance to bust teachers' unions. Voucher supporters saw them as a replacement strategy that had fewer political problems than vouchers. So, the mantra arose that charter schools are really "public" schools, when in fact they are private schools that receive public funding. If the receipt of public funding means that an institution is no longer private, then there are no private colleges or universities in the U.S., except for the few that refuse federal aid of any kind (like Grove City College and Hillsdale College). Harvard, Princeton, and Yale are still private universities even though many of their students are funded by the government. The charter school movement, in its current incarnation, is intended to privatize a large chunk of American public education.

I think that is a very bad idea. It will harm American education and our nation. We need a strong and successful public education system. Charters should collaborate with public schools, rather than seek to replace them. It should be their unique mission to help the students who need help the most. Dog-eat-dog competition makes no sense in the educational sphere."

[jody]

13. I agree with you however state laws define them as "public schools" and that's how courts view them.

[Catshrink]

17. Looks like we've got another shill..

:crazy:

[jtrockville]

22. From Ravitch's comments, there's profit involved. My question stands.

Does the public share the profit, or just the costs of these charter schools?

[madfloridian]

23. I don't think the public shares any financial profit at all.

It is just public money funding private enterprise...CMOs EMOs...running schools and funded by us. The profit is theirs.

[jmowreader]

31. If they were required to be nonprofit no one would open one

There is ALWAYS a profit motive.

When they first started fucking around with charters in North Carolina, it was legal to hire non-certified teachers for them. You only needed a subset of your teaching staff to be certified; don't hold me to this but I think you needed only one. The justification was non-certified teachers would bring new and exciting viewpoints to class--if you had a political science class, you could hire a retired congressman to teach in it or you could hire someone who had worked at Fermilab to teach physics. (How they were planning to use this guy's talents I have NO idea; they don't put used particle accelerators on eBay.) The reality was non-certified "teachers" worked for next to nothing. I think (okay, I hope like hell) this law has been changed,

[izzybeans]

10. This is why if charters are to be allowed it must up to the District

operating the schools which schools will be run by charters and how much money they will get.

Very sad.

[mmonk]

12. Thanks. I plan to fight for public schools

[jody]

14. By state laws "charter schools" are "public schools". n/t

[madfloridian]

15. If the people of Louisiana want their schools without roofs...

then they allow their elected officials to make the laws like that.

People in FL are much the same way.. They are so enamored of the words charter or academy, they don't even care that public education is being destroyed.

[jody]

16. I agree with you but with first Bush and now Obama using the power of the presidency to push charter

schools I don't see how to curb their growth.

I understand that traditional public schools have an opportunity to establish "Innovative, autonomous public schools" but I have no idea what that means in practice.

Whether I like it or not, charter schools are here to stay simply because they have federal funds and Obama's "Race to the Top" awards a state 40 points for meeting federal goals for charter school programs.

I'm old enough to know "he who has the gold makes the rules" and Obama controls the gold to fund K-12 education.

[madfloridian]

19. It's too late to save public education, but I will keep writing about it.

Because the media is not doing their job.

[pattmarty]

25. Thx again. You are one of the very few and I (and a lot of others..........

..........here at DU) appreciate what you are doing. Maybe in 10 or 20 yrs after the system is in a real shambles, people will realize but by then you're right it will definitely be too late.

[mmonk]

20. Traditional public schools (real ones).

[madfloridian]

21. So who owns and runs D'Arbonne Woods Charter Schools?

I can't find the answer to that.

[Flora]

26. Assessor's records?

I went to the Union Parish Assessors site and thought I could at least find a corporation listed as owner, but I'm ashamed to say I couldn't navigate the site. I know in my parish, we can do a property search with just an address.

Maybe you will have better luck? here is the website.. http://unionparishassessor.com/

[madfloridian]

28. There are several D'Arbonnes there, no school.

I have searched everywhere for the founder or owner. Just for my own curiosity. Most schools I can find a founder for, but not this one. Thanks for the link.

[ibegurpard]

24. outrageous

[Jakes Progress]

27. grover norquist is in ecstasy.

DUers who support this kind of thing are just icing on the cake to the neocons.

[Starry Messenger]

32. Yup.

It's tragic.

[OneTenthofOnePercent]

29. IMO, that tax money was collected to educate children.

If it goes to a charter school... then it is educating children.

I do think that a charter school should be run as a non-profit - even if it's a private enterprise.
Any and all "profit" a charter school makes should come from other sources, not from tax dollars.

[madfloridian]

30. No public money should be given to private companies for education.

It is NOT going for education it is going to profit an EMO or CMO who run charters.

Sorry, but that is taking public money and building private coffers.

It is dead wrong. It should be called illegal.