Democrats are calling Republicans’ bill to lift the cap on charter schools racist, elitist, undemocratic, and “a direct assault” on traditional public schools. Senate Bill 8 will “create two separate and unequal school systems,” Rep. Tricia Cotham, D-Mecklenburg, said at a press conference March 3. She also claimed that increasing funding to charter schools would “bankrupt” traditional schools.

Nonsense, say Republican lawmakers and charter school advocates, who argue the opponents of S.B. 8 are engaging in a disinformation campaign. Backers of the bill say public charters schools operate successfully with less taxpayer funding than their district counterparts and that most charter schools have student bodies that largely reflect the racial backgrounds of their traditional district counterparts.

The debate is likely to intensify as S.B. 8 moves from the Senate, where it passed by a 33-17 margin, to the House.

Rep. Rick Glazier, D-Cumberland, said the bill would “siphon tens of millions of dollars from traditional public schools” by transferring money from early childhood education programs, nutrition programs, and transportation to charter schools, which he complains “won’t be providing lunch” or “a bus.”

House Majority Leader Paul “Skip” Stam, R-Wake, said the bill only reverses the “defunding” of charter schools undertaken in previous sessions. Last year, he said, Glazier championed a provision denying charters an increased budget allocation for teachers. “Even with this bill,” Stam said, “the charters are getting way less per student than traditional public schools.”

Darrell Allison, president of Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina, said a “significant” number of charter schools provide food and transportation. Many have decided not to partner with the federal free and reduced lunch program because it comes with strings attached — facility requirements — that they simply “cannot afford,” he said.

“But that does not mean food is not being provided,” Allison said. “The vast majority of our charter schools do provide food.”

Stam said Democrats were being hypocritical to “rip the funding [from charters] and then complain they’re not providing the services.”

In addition to early childhood education, nutrition, and transportation funds, the Durham school board is upset that it will have to share ROTC funds with charter schools. The board voted 5-0 Wednesday on a resolution asking Gov. Bev Perdue to veto S.B. 8 unless it’s changed significantly before reaching her desk.

Terry Stoops, director of education studies at the John Locke Foundation, said it’s true that charter schools are entitled to funds from school districts for programs the charters don’t offer, but the N.C. Court of Appeals settled that matter two years ago.

Sugar Creek Charter School sued the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district for withholding funds owed to it and four other charter schools. The Court of Appeals set the precedent for transferring funds from certain programs (such as sales tax reimbursements or reserve fund balances) to charter schools’ general operating budgets. S.B. 8 merely reinforces the court’s decision, Stoops said.

Charter schools are willing to compromise on the source of the funding, he said. “They just want to receive an even amount; they don’t necessarily care where it comes from.”

Capital spending

School administrators and teachers unions fear traditional public schools will lose money if more charter schools are built.

The bill “gives privately operated charter schools the right to use taxpayer money for capital expenses even when there is a $10 billion-dollar backlog on the construction of traditional public schools,” Glazier said.

Stoops said the bill does not give charters “the right” to capital money. Instead, it gives counties “the option” to provide capital funding in the form of bond debt. “It would be subject to a vote of the county commissioners and the people like any bond for school construction,” he said.

Until now, charter schools have had to come up with their own start-up money because the law prohibited counties from assuming bond debt for them.

Because charter schools use private dollars on low-cost facilities, when students transfer to them, it actually relieves overcrowded school systems and saves them from the cost of building new schools, Stoops said.

Wake and Mecklenburg counties each have about 6,000 students in charter schools, he said. “If all of a sudden those charter schools closed, the school system would have to provide classrooms for 6,000 students.”

Stoops said it costs about $25 million to build a new elementary school, $35 million for a middle school, and $70 million to $80 million to build a high school.

“The fact that the school system won’t receive the operating funds for these students is more than compensated by the fact that they don’t have to provide facilities for them,” he added. “On average, the savings is $1,100 a student.”

Oversight

Glazier also criticized the bill for allowing charter schools “to operate largely outside of the purview of the state board of education.”

Stam said that’s not exactly true and Allison said to the degree it is, it’s not a bad thing.

The bill establishes a Charter School Commission that falls under the administration of the State Board of Education, but exercises many of its powers and functions independently of the State Board of Education and the Department of Instruction.

But the board still has veto power, Stam said. In can veto any decision by the commission by a three-fourths vote.

“Almost all votes by the State Board of Education are unanimous, so they will never have a problem getting a three-fourths vote,” Stoops added.

Allison said establishing a new oversight body for charter schools is one of the most essential parts of the bill. Charters historically have faced outright hostility from the State Board of Education, he said, and have had little freedom to try new things.

To be successful charter schools need two things, Allison said: funding and the ability to self-govern.

Racism?

In a “call to action” letter sent to its members, the North Carolina Association of School Administrators said the bill is likely to resegregate schools.

When Allison, who is black, saw the letter in an e-mail, he said he couldn’t believe his eyes. “I was like do I need to get some coffee?” he said.

Allison acknowledges the majority of charter schools have high concentrations of one ethnic group or another. “For me, that’s not a big deal,” he said. Just because a classroom has black and white students in it, he added, does not make it integrated.

“If you were going to give me a million dollars to identify the three children in that classroom with the lowest reading and math scores, I am going to point to minority children,” Allison said.

Black children in traditional public schools are in the 40th percentile or lower when it comes to end-of-grade test scores, he said.

In contrast, Allison has visited several charter schools — like Sugar Creek and Gaston College Preparatory — where student populations are almost entirely black, “and these kids — despite the fact they are below the federal poverty level and come from some of the most dire communities you can imagine — are outperforming their traditional public school counterparts by 30 to 40 percent.”

Rather than focus on the aesthetics of diversity in the classroom, North Carolina needs to focus on diversity of the types of schools it allows, Allison said.

Stam said opponents of the charter bill want to limit options for students and parents. “It’s a threat to the control of the bureaucrats, and bureaucrats do not like to lose control,” he said.

Sara Burrows is an associate editor of Carolina Journal.