#ncpol: Drive-by media dumbness.
I know they’re all bleeding money and having to cut staff. But sometimes — sometimes — you deserve better than what they’re doling out.
Our local paper here in Moore County is a special case. They are owned by the people who made The N&O the biased unreadable mess that it is. (McClatchy is finishing off the job nicely.)
So, here in the heart of yellow-dog Republicanism — in arguably the most conservative county in the state — we’re stuck with a local paper that reads like the alternative student newspaper at some granola-and-patchouli small, private liberal arts commie-symp college.
Check out today’s piece of leftist propaganda — mouthing central office and teacher union talking points and attacking the very essence of charter schools:
Moore County needs to reckon with how it funds its students who attend charter schools. It might not be this year, but sometime soon, revision to the process is essential. Because failure to change is putting all our schoolchildren at a disadvantage.
Charter schools occupy an interstitial layer between Moore County Schools and truly private schools. While they are public schools, their operations and requirements vary in key areas.
Their funding is also somewhat of a hybrid. A charter school is eligible to receive the same per-pupil cost as a public school, but it gets no funding for things like meals, transportation and construction support from the state.
Like many other parts of North Carolina, charter schools have grown in popularity over the last several years. Moore County has three charter schools — The Academy of Moore in Aberdeen, STARS Charter in Vass, and the new Moore Montessori in Southern Pines — and their enrollments are growing.
About 850 students attend the three charters, up from 684 just last year. More than half of those children never attended Moore County Schools. That’s where the money problem begins. […]
Are these people seriously suggesting that — if you don’t send your kids to public school — you don’t finance the rathole that is public education?
It’s the exact opposite. A whole lot of your money gets confiscated and flushed down the rathole that is your county’s central office for its public school system. (A lot of PhD’s need to get paid BIG $$$$.)
MORE:
[…] Moore County Schools acts as a “pass through” agent to the charter schools for funding. It writes a check covering the per-pupil cost for each student — regardless if they’ve ever attended a traditional public school.
For a child who has attended a public school and then transferred enrollment to a charter, this is simply moving the funding from one to the other. But for children who have never attended a traditional public school, the school system is stroking a check to cover a cost it never incurred. […]
It is not Dr. Bob’s MONEY. It is OUR MONEY confiscated by the state. The charter money is run through his office as a reminder of how many families are fleeing his mess for something BETTER.
It might be good to actually find out WHY families are pulling their kids out of Moore County Public Schools — or forsaking them altogether — and heading for these charter schools.
MORE:
[…] This year, that local cost from Moore County is $2,153.11 per child, according to a presentation the Board of Education saw earlier this year. In total, MCS will pay $1.8 million to the charter schools this year to cover those 851 kids, a 15 percent increase from last year. The cost next year is projected to be more than $2 million.
Remember, more than half of this money is covering students who never spent a day in Moore County Schools, so when it writes a check for that expense, it is not merely transferring that expense. It’s a net loss that gets covered by other areas of the budget.
Yes, the net local budget for Moore County Schools this past year — $29.5 million — had $1.8 million come off the top for children not in Moore County Schools.
This is not sustainable. […]
(Wow. Hearing that word “sustainable” generates visions of hammers, sickles, gulags, firing squads ….)
Why should your per-pupil funding stay the same or grow when kids are fleeing your facilities?
Want to increase your per-pupil funding? Start offering something parents WANT their kids to be part of. More kids means more money. Gotta love that good ol’ American competition.
There’s nothing wrong with parents’ cash following their kids to where they’re getting educated.
This is really all about the bureaucrats at the central office trying to make excuses for blowing through their cash like drunken sailors on shore leave. We have a school board that shuns oversight and sits there like bumps-on-the-log aiding and abetting this travesty. And we have a local drive-by media that gladly contributes with some hearty, enthusiastic dictation.
Contrary to the crap these people are peddling, you ARE financing this travesty called public education even if you don’t have any kids attending public schools. If they want more of that per-pupil cash, they need to stop whining and lying and start producing a more attractive, competitive product.
A more attractive product could do wonders, as well, for a lot of the drive-by media.
It is stories like this which demonstrate how the schools are only out for the power and dollars. Plus it shows the ignorance of the “journalist” to ask questions rather than just taking a press release from the educrats.
For one, how can it be any kind of loss to the system when they just send the money through to any student when the school system still gets to keep all the construction and maintenance dollars? They have one less student to hire a teacher or other support people for. plus I assume they still get to keep a lot of the state funds sent to them as well. It also looks like they have a situation where at least one school is not having to be built now that there are 850 students not in their schools…this seems to be another bonus for taxpayers but not educrats.
Heck, the school system is getting a great deal by sending 6% of their funds to educate 13% of the students in the district. They ought to take that deal every day of the week…other than they do not get direct control over them which is what this is all about.
What difference does it make if the student ever attended a government school? The school board should just count all students in the various systems they fund. This has to be the stupidest argument of the whole piece. Why would not ever having been in the traditional system make a bit of difference?
More charters means fewer group thinkers. And those groups are being led (trained) by the red-shirted Democrats in teachers’ clothing. Creating more little socialists that will turn into mind numb AOCs. Bring on MORE charters!