Surprise bill grabs the public schools’ lunch money to boost charters

If a maneuver to divert more money from regular public schools to charters were so virtuous, why did state senators go through the sneaky “gut and amend” process to do it?

The procedural trick allows lawmakers to remove language in an existing bill, add entirely different language on a different subject and move the brand-new legislation ahead. It lets senators or representatives move a new bill through the General Assembly even after the deadline for introducing new legislation has passed. And every time it happens, it makes other lawmakers and members of the public wonder what the sponsors of such action are up to. With good reason.

In this case, traditional public schools would have to share federal funding such as gifts, grants and sale tax revenues with charters. This will further drain resources from the traditional public schools to which most North Carolina families send their children.

And it comes on top of a voucher program, public money going to people who pull their children out of the public schools to send them to private ones. That program is likely to face a constitutional challenged based on church-state issues among others.

The point is that this latest development is but another transparent attempt on the part of Republican lawmakers to weaken public schools.

Charters, of course, are publicly funded schools. But unfortunately they’ve come to be viewed by some advocates as private schools with public funding. Some parents disgruntled with regular public schools can join with others to form charters. But results have been mixed, with some charters, winding up with racial and economic imbalances in their student bodies and others with uneven academic performances. But GOP legislators are determined to push ahead with more charters.

Wake Sen. Josh Stein moved to eliminate child nutrition funding from the change because he rightly noted that charters aren’t required to provide meals. He was dismissed by Republican Sen. Jerry Tillman, who said some charters do offer meals and others might want to have them.

The state, thanks to the ideology of conservative Republicans who don’t seem to care about strengthening the public education system, is moving away from the original purpose of charters.

As conceived, charters were to be schools free to experiment with curricula and teaching methods. But now they’ve come to be seen by some of their advocates as almost a separate public-private school system. That’s wrong, and it’s going to be more and more costly for traditional public schools.

This story was originally published September 29, 2015 at 7:08 PM with the headline "Surprise bill grabs the public schools’ lunch money to boost charters."