Educational choice does not make a child worth less

Last week, 15 charter schools and four parents filed a lawsuit against the Christina School District and the Department of Education (DOE) claiming that for years, millions of local dollars meant to follow a child to the school of their parents' choice has been withheld.

Every school district has the ability to request that some costs be excluded each year from its local funds that are meant to follow students who attend charter or choice schools. Most exclusions make perfect sense. Districts are allowed to take out costs for breakfast and lunch programs, bond payments for schools, other building costs, and special requests that fall outside of normal operating costs.

In 2010, several charter school administrators noted that Christina’s annual exclusion requests had been climbing at a rate greater than other districts and asked DOE for more transparency around district exclusion requests. Specifically, they asked what made Christina’s exclusion requests so very different from other districts. They received no answer, and Christina’s exclusions continued to climb.

In 2013, the Brandywine School District requested (and received) $134,795 in “district-specific exclusions.” Red Clay requested $480,050. Colonial requested $201,082.

Christina School District requested $7.9 million.

Every year since, other districts have made requests that usually range from $50,000 to $500,000. Christina topped out at $9.3 million, with no explanation as to why.

We were pleased when we heard the DOE announce plans to address the issue last April, with a desire to make exclusion request approvals more consistent. When schools received their funding notifications in August, Christina’s approved exclusions were in line with other districts, in what DOE Secretary Steven Godowsky called a “fair and consistent application of exclusions under Delaware Code.”

But then, in a Sept. 9 email to school administrators from DOE Director of Finance Kim Wheatley, Dr. Godowsky reversed DOE’s earlier decision citing “legislative interest” and reverted Christina’s 2016-17 exclusion amounts to their original request of $6.68 million – in a year when the average exclusion requests from other New Castle County school districts was $104,000.

Why does Christina need to request exclusions that are 60 times greater than other districts? This is the question we continue to ask.

This lawsuit was filed because charter schools cannot continue to sit by, knowing that millions of dollars that should follow students to the schools of their parents’ choice will not in the 2016-17 school year. We must go back to the DOE’s initial fair-and-consistent decision.

It is equally important to understand what this lawsuit is NOT about. The lawsuit does not ask for any changes to the formula that dictates district or charter funding. The formula, which is set out in Delaware Code, gives the Secretary of Education discretion to accept or reject district requests for exclusions on an annual basis. That discretion is built into the formula, and that decision was made this year, before it was reversed after the Sept. 1 deadline.

In the ongoing dialogue this past month, no one has stepped forward to argue that Christina’s requested exclusion of $6.68 million for 2016-17 is “fair and consistent” with other districts. In fact, the DOE, in their statement about the lawsuit, said that “this funding is essential to having a school funding system that is fair to all students, but we have found that the calculations for the funding owed by the various home districts are inconsistent.”

Now DOE says they plan to take up this issue again before the 2017-18 school year. We cannot ask parents to wait an entire year for their children’s school to receive the funding the state’s own formula says they are supposed to have.

Providing every child with the best education possible is what drives parents, educators, administrators, public officials and citizens to support ongoing efforts to create better schools and better educational outcomes in Delaware.

However, the best education possible for every child in Delaware is achievable only if the money that supports students and schools continues to flow to every child through a fair, consistent and legal process that is practiced throughout our state.

When a parent makes an educational choice for their child, they do so with the trust that the resources to support their child will flow with that choice. The DOE and Christina have broken that trust. We are seeking to right this wrong and restore fair and consistent funding for every child.

Kendall Massett is the executive director of the Delaware Charter Schools Network.