Seacoast Charter Struggles For Funding

listen:

At Seacoast Charter elementary school, teachers focus on art, theater and music to help kids learn.

(have children playing the xylophone here..)

This past May, children showed off their skills by playing the xylophone .

(little more music)

But this wasn’t part of class, this was a fundraising breakfast for the school.

Sound of people, music,

More than 200 teachers, trustees and parents assembled in the school’s gymnasium to address the funding problem that Seacoast is now facing.

Parent Chan Conrad went up to the podium and asked everyone to look at the artwork on the walls.

Parent1: Take a look around you at all the different things these children have done. We provide this education. At 8,000 dollars per student. The average for New Hampshire public schools is 12,000 dollars per student.

Seacoast Charter receives around 3700 dollars per student from the state – and zero from local taxes.

The school, says Conrad, is offering a much more diverse education for about a third less than other public schools.

Roberta Tenney, the state’s charter school administrator, agrees.

She says the students are flourishing.

Tenney1: Seacoast is an example of the kind of charter a lot of public policy makers say, gee we would really like this kind of thing to continue.

But legislators haven’t figured out how the school can maintain its operating costs.

Seacoast is facing the same funding crisis as two other charter schools – Franklin and Cocheco – whose federal start-up money is running out.

But not every publicly funded charter school is in the same predicament.

The Great Bay eLearning Charter School was founded by its local school district – Exeter Regional Cooperative.

Exeter built a new high school, and Great Bay, with about 70 students, moved in to its former building.

District Assistant Superintendent Steve Kossakoski
told their school board that Great Bay’s students -- mostly from Exeter -- would require a certain number of teachers.

Kossakoski: We’re basically taking those teachers and moving them in to the charter school. Our personnel costs are less than those experienced by a traditional charter school.

But Susan Hollins, founder of New Hampshire Center for School Reform says schools like GreatBay should operate independently from their local districts.

As an education consultant for charter schools, she says the state needs to redistribute the money it has and look at more efficient ways of using it.

Admittedly, says Hollins, New Hampshire doesn’t need to spend 12 or 16 thousand a year on students.

Hollins2: but if we can create schools at eight thousand a student, and students are in tears because they want to go to that school -- students that were at risk at dropping out somewhere else -- why would we not want to continue to spawn schools that work?

But Senator Maggie Hassan of Exeter says policy-makers expected charter schools to run lean and raise their own capital.
During last week’s budget negotiations, lawmakers agreed to provide 800 thousand for the three charter schools no longer eligible for federal start-up money.

But they also want a two-year moratorium on new charter schools.

Hassan1: We thought it made more sense to help them keep going rather than start new charter schools. We are also are concerned that as good as these three are, they haven’t been able to develop a business model three years out that allows them to operate financially at the level we thought they’d be able to.

800-thousand dollars may get the three charter schools by for now, but it’s not a permanent solution.

And charter school advocates say it’s harder to raise private money when donors expect greater state contributions to prove its commitment.

The House and Senate will finalize the budget this week.

For NHPR News, I’m Sheryl Rich-Kern.