Commissioners vote to support increasing the number of charter schools in the state | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publishers Note: We have already covered this issue, but it is nice to get the Beaufort Observer's take.

    It was a 5-2 vote again, but not the usual 5-2 vote. That is, it was a vote to support more charter schools in North Carolina. Stan Deatherage introduced a resolution at Monday's (4-4-11) Beaufort County Board of Commissioners meeting calling for the General Assembly to increase the number of charter schools, which is now capped at 100. The bill has passed the Senate and is now being considered by the House.

    Brandia Deatherage was at the Commissioners' meeting and posted this report on Beaufort County Now.

    Here is the video of the discussion at the Commissioners' meeting:

    Commentary

    For anyone, including the Commissioners, who wanted to see Senate Bill 8, we are providing a link here to allow them to track the bill. As you will see at that link, the bill is currently in the House Finance committee and has been revised five times since introduction. Thus, all the talk at the Commissioners' meeting about "what's in the bill" was rather irrelevant because it is constantly changing.

    In a brief interview before the meeting Stan Deatherage told the Observer that his resolution was intended to focus on the concept of more choice in public education by allowing more charter schools and letting the public demand determine when, where and how many.

    But as you see in the video, some commissioners, notably Ed Booth, wanted to obfuscate the issue dealing with details not included in the resolution. And we would caution the readers to take Commissioner Klemm's information with a grain of salt. The numbers he threw out do not seem at all to be realistic.

    A reading of the bill would have also put another large part of the discussion to rest. Simply stated, the bill requires that money allocated to the local school system's current expense be distributed to the charter school on an equal per-pupil basis and that the board of commissioners "may" (but are not required to) allocate capital-outlay funds to charter schools within their county.

    As for Mr. Cayton's concern about racial balance, the bill prohibits racial discrimination and makes the charter school in any local district subject to any court-ordered desegregation plan that the district may be operating under. Moreover, if more students apply to the charter school than there are seats available, then applicants are selected by drawing names out of the hat.

    The bill also addresses the issue of low-income students' being barred from attending a charter school because they do not have transportation and must be provided lunch if they qualify for free or reduced lunch.

    Finally, on the issue that many public-school people are making about "siphoning off money from the traditional public schools", a simple reading of the bill makes it very clear that the money allocated by the state simply follows the child. Even though the public-school system may be required to transfer a pro-rata share to the charter school, the school system does not have to provide services to those students. Thus, if a child generates state or local funds, then the theory is that the money generated by a child should follow that child to wherever the services are provided.