Audit: About 30 percent of charter schools had deficits last year (Fla.)

[Judi Lynn]

Posted on Thu, Nov. 25, 2004

Audit: About 30 percent of charter schools had deficits last year
Associated Press


WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - Dozens of Florida charter schools have budget deficits, a lack of fiscal safeguards and problems with basic accounting, a state Auditor General's review found.

Nearly 30 percent of more than 200 charter schools ended the 2002-2003 school year with deficits, the review found. About 25 percent had problems with managing staff and 15 percent had trouble tracking spending, including not getting approval for purchases.

State Education Department spokesman MacKay Jimeson downplayed the report's findings, saying they were old and changes have already been made to increase accountability.
(snip)

Charter schools were created in 1996 to let private groups and corporations get public money to run public schools free from many state and school district regulations. Florida has 345 charter schools.
(snip/...)

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/state/10272342.htm
(Free registration is required)

[talk hard]

1. Public schools will feel the pinch too.

This is such a bogus proposition. They go into black communities and convince them this is a good idea. But the only schools that can be had for the money are parochial schools. I am a product of a Catholic school and I wouldn't wish it on anyone. But the worse part is that it further debilitates our already anemic pubic school budget. A bad idea all the way around.

[DebJ]

2. I am a product of a Catholic school...from the 60's though...and it

was an absolutely fantastic educational experience. But then again, we had nuns for teachers, with only 2 'lay' teachers. And the nuns had nothing to do but teach, and grade papers, and pray. They were simply fantastic.
They taught us how to THINK, how to ANALYZE, how to LEARN, to QUESTION (especially the media) and to RESEARCH.
Multiple choice tests were only used as 'fun quizzes'.
Everything else was always essays, which required good grammer as well as the facts.
Christmas vacation was an opportunity for big special projects.
Of the 60 students who finished that school in 8th grade, about 40 of us went to public high schools. And every one of us, except for one child with an LD, was in the top 5% of public high school classes.
I am no longer a Roman Catholic, but I would not trade my education for anything.

[clydefrand]

6. DebJ, did your education include spelling also?

Just pulling your leg a bit RE: grammer----grammar! :-)

I know how these keyboards just put in the wrong letters at times. Mine does it all the time lately.

:bounce:

[Massacure]

7. If the states would just model their public schools after charter schools

Then there would a vast improvement. Of course you would have to take out the praying / religious content of it.

The one thing private schools do is set a high bar.

[Trillo]

8. Critical versus non-critical educational experience pattern:

When someone posts a critical experience of the school systems, here on DU, another poster often counters with a cheerleading post extolling the excellence of their own education at similar schools.

Poor educational experience is perhaps one of the reasons so many people look to religion for friendship and hope in their lives, and justice in their afterlives.

An ironic paradox?

[DoYouEverWonder]

3. And how many public schools had deficits?

Who knows because they can go to their school board and get more money and most people would never even know.

The charter school program, at least in my area, has been a very successful alternative to regular public schools and are free for anyone who qualifies and wants to attend.

If an individual school has serious problems, then they should be shut down. But it is very unfair to paint them all with the same broad brush, even if they are having financial problems, which is no surprise to me, since other than the set amount per student that they receive, they really get very little help from the state or local governments. It is the parents who end up making up the difference.

[Moderator]

4. Might be a duplicate

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=1017838

or is this a different report just about Florida?

[Judi Lynn]

5. Yup, it only concerns Florida, and focuses on the huge financial failures

of this disrespectful taxpayer rip-off. Also, it's interesting because it's going to be a royal pain to Jeb Bush.

[vinny9698]

9. Can't even perform just a money making scheme

However, because many charter schools tend to target students with educational disadvantages, some studies have shown that charter school students typically do not perform as well in school as students in other public schools. Charter schools in all five case study states were less likely than traditional public schools to meet performance standards even after controlling for several school characteristics.

http://www.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/choice/pcsp-final/index.html

I am a retired teacher and these charter schools are run to make a profit and to dump kids that are trouble makers. Houston ISD and Mission ISD in Texas use these charter schools to get rid of troubled kids so that the school district is not penalized for low scores. These are two that I know of personally, there are probably more. There was an investigation in Houston about the quality of the charter school but Houston ISD continues to dump kids in those schools.