Charter Storm by Mary Searcy Bixby

Author:Mary Searcy Bixby
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group Press
Published: 2018-07-18T16:45:28+00:00

4. Strong Charter Law Provides Chartered Schools with Fiscal Flex­ib­ility

The Chartered School’s Per­spective

The chartered school model takes a busi­ness­like approach to budgeting. It is rev­enue neutral, relies on a bal­anced budget and good busi­ness prac­tices, and accom­mod­ates flex­ib­ility, the unique­ness of a learning com­munity, and long-range stra­tegic plan­ning.

The stra­tegic-plan­ning com­ponent means a budget can focus on the long term, which includes addressing entre­pren­eurial and cre­ative oppor­tun­ities for invest­ment into the organ­iz­a­tion. In the case of tra­di­tional public edu­ca­tion, its budgeting guidelines require school dis­tricts to spend the money they receive every year. The way in which they spend their money is highly reg­u­lated as well. This pre­vents school dis­tricts from effect­ively plan­ning for the long term.

The tra­di­tional public edu­ca­tion busi­ness pro­cess focuses on the fed­eral, state, and local gov­ern­ments con­trolling budgeting. This top-down model is inher­ently pater­nal­istic. It is as if the gov­ern­ment over­sight bodies are telling school dis­tricts, “We don’t trust you, so we’ll make rigid rules that engender same­ness for all school dis­tricts.”

In the chartered school model, each organ­iz­a­tion is in con­trol of its budgeting pro­cess. The cor­porate model is bottom-up. This arrange­ment requires legal com­pli­ance and fol­lowing standard accounting prac­tices. It entrusts each chartered school to develop a pro­cess that puts stu­dents’ needs first and allows schools to put together the best edu­ca­tional pro­gram pos­sible. Funds can be spent toward growing a school and long-term plans that may require years of steady invest­ment according to a school’s stra­tegic plan.

Chartered school fiscal flex­ib­ility is more sim­ilar to the cor­porate approach to budgeting than it is to the tra­di­tional public edu­ca­tion budgeting model. This makes sense because chartered schools are small cor­por­a­tions that are intended to func­tion in a market-driven public edu­ca­tion land­scape.

While the tra­di­tional public school’s fiscal account­ab­ility model is intended to engender eth­ical prac­tices and avoid mal­feas­ance, it can also pre­vent schools from acting in their best interests. The chartered school model gives schools the ability to cus­tomize their budgetary pro­cess to accom­modate their par­tic­ular needs. Many tra­di­tional school leaders envy this inherent flex­ib­ility.

Both tra­di­tional public school and chartered school budgets must follow the budget guidelines in their respective com­pli­ance frame­work. Most chartered schools operate under the cor­porate law for­mula. This allows chartered schools’ budgets to follow prin­ciples driven by pro­grams that result in pos­itive stu­dent out­comes. Chartered schools’ budgetary guidelines allow them to take a prag­matic approach to edu­ca­tion: When a chartered school iden­ti­fies a need, it can act quickly to fill it. Rather than be restricted by one-size-fits-all line-item budget guidelines that are part of a dis­trict’s com­pli­ance frame­work, chartered schools are able to imple­ment custom strategies to address their greatest chal­lenges and develop suc­cessful pro­grams. The fact that cor­porate law gives chartered schools freedom not afforded to school dis­tricts means exactly that—chartered schools are not bound to tra­di­tional public school’s line-item budgets.

Under most cur­rent charter school law, inter­me­di­aries, such as counties and chartered school com­mis­sions, receive state funds des­ig­nated for chartered schools and are respons­ible for dis­trib­uting them. When counties or chartered school com­mis­sions

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