Hawaii’s charter schools are about to receive a smaller slice of the state’s budget pie, and they’re not happy about it.
Who could blame them.
Governor Lingle’s budget, approved by legislators, cuts funding of Charter School students by an estimated $400 to $900 per student, per year. Before you stand up and yell out, ‘Cry havoc and let loose the dogs of war‘ and scurry toward the state capitol building to protest, or click to another site with more photos of Paris and news of Britney, hear me out. I have some questions.
Is that a lot of money?
Some estimates put the state’s Department of Education spending at over $11,000 a year per student in public education. I read it in the paper so it must be true. Assume that Charter Schools spend a comparable amount on each student. The cut represents a drop of about 4-percent to 8-percent. In a classroom of 20 students, that’s not even one additional student.
A better question to ask is, ‘What’s happening to all that money?’ At $11,000 (or, $8,000; estimates vary) per student, and 20 to 30 students per classroom, that’s $220,000 to $330,000 per classroom each year.
Assume the teacher gets an $80,000 cut of that total (salary, benefits, insurance, etc.). What happened to the other $140,000 per classroom? It can’t be the annual cost of the classroom itself, can it? Have you seen a classroom recently?
It appears that the state’s education pie has an awful lot of slicers, and the slices are getting thin.
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