HERE'S HOW IT WORKS:
•The Governor and the Legislature intended to freeze 2010 aid payment to charter schools at 2008 levels, and such a freeze was actually in the Governor’s budget and in the relevant Assembly and Senate bills (that seems eminently fair and just, given what they've done to "regular" public schools in the same period).
•Somehow, those provisions were not enacted into law.
•Therefore, charter schools now will now get increased funding by operation of law (a statutory formula found in §2856 of the Education Law, according to the White Osterman memo and I’ll take their word for it)
•Charter schools have a mechanism, kindly provided by the State Education Department on a handy form, for “intercepting” from school districts money due to them under the funding formula, which apparently inexorably “mov
forward” to ever increasing levels of funding unless stopped by vigilant legislators...
http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2010/09/charter-schools-mysteriously-survive.html