Governor Paterson's proposed Executive Budget for 2010-11 not only continues the charter school funding freeze at 2008-09 formula levels, but continues untouched the formula for "transition aid" to school districts outside of New York City for their charter school payments.

It's bad enough that charter schools get their funding frozen. But school districts meanwhile will next year receive nearly $22 million in transition aid for students that departed the district for a charter school, an increase of $3 million over the current-year amount of nearly $19 million.

The Governor should leave both funding formulas alone. Instead, he continues to freeze the charter funding formula and continues to pay districts for losing students to charters. (Reminder: transition aid to school districts is icing on the cake since they already count charter enrollment in the district-wide enrollment to generate state school aid to districts.)

Charter Funding Doesn't Impact State Budget; Transition Aid Does
The added irony to all of this is that from a state financial standpoint, freezing the charter formula does not impact the state budget since school districts actually pay the charter schools from state and federal aid and local sources. In other words, the state reaps no savings to lower its deficit by freezing charter spending.

By contrast, the transition payments to school districts for losing students is a state expenditure, and impacts the budget by widening the deficit another $22 million.

This is a funding injustice for charters - with an added twist of the knife.

Peter Murphy
for The Chalkboard
(see me Twitter @ PeterMurphy26)